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You wanna make sure that you have floppy feet
Now sometimes you'll run into swimmers who actually have flexed feet
and they'll be stiff and they'll be kicking like this in the water
What you want is to have long feet, you want to have floppy feet on the end
so they're actually catching the water and forcing it backwards
A lot of times you'll find kids that
kick way too big. They'll use that old soccer style approach having
the full swing like kicking a football or something
to where they think the bigger they kick
the more powerful, which means that they're
gonna go faster
That is actually not the case. Now a way to shorten up the swimmer's kick
Here's a little trick. Tell the swimmer not to kick
any wider than their hips--by putting their hands on their hips
raising them up, turning in this way, and then they should be able to kick
now the reason that's so effective is because it gives the swimmer
something to visualize when they're in the water
they may not be able to respond properly if you just say kick bigger
or kick smaller. But if they can think 'I'm trying to kick within the width of my hips'
than it usually gives them a range, a limit that they're trying to keep within
and it'll help them to develop a short in fast kick
rather than a BIG and SLOW kick which might be so big
that it's actually slowing down their kick
Now a pattern means that you have a
constant, consistent repetition within the kick
sometimes you'll see swimmers, with flutter kick especially
is they will do a few kicks and then they will stop or pause
or do a few kicks and let one big crazy kick flop in there
in it interrupts the continuous motion
momentum and speed within the stroke. So you wanna make sure that
you have a consistent kick
Now the easiest way that I have found is to have the swimmers
actually count it. The most common patterns that you'll find in competitive
swimming
are usually the 6 beat or the 8 beat approach
and that means for every full arm stroke
you're going to actually kick either 6 or 8 times
That's 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
Now when you're teaching swimmers this skill
Sometimes they'll count to 6 and then they'll pause
and then they'll start again 123456 pause 123456
but make sure that you emphasize to them that it is a continuous kicking
and that they're counting to 6 but there is no pause in between the six or
eight beats whatever they're doing
You don't want your foot to actually break the surface on the flutter kick.
You don't want it to come
above the surface of the water. You want your kick to be
churning fast but you want it to actually stay below the surface
Now it may appear if you're watching some swimmers that their foot is coming up
but they will have a cusp of water that's actually over top of their feet
they're just
really hanging close to the surface and that's fine
as long as your foot doesn't actually physically break
the surface of the water and you're kicking continuously against water
then you're gonna generate the most thrust from the kick