The key to a fast freestyle: why coaches should teach swimmers to kick
One of the most foundational things a coach can teach a new swimmer is a good kick. The entire stroke of freestyle is dependent on a consistent thrust through the water. Here are three reasons why coaches should teach swimmers to kick on the first day of practice.
The legs are the strongest muscle in the body
Your legs contain the strongest and the largest muscles in your body including your quadriceps, glutes, and calf muscles. Not only that, but your lower body makes up 35% of your total weight. Young swimmers don’t have good technique so we need to utilize every single muscle that is available to get them to the other end. This means that coaches should focus and encourage swimmers to use their kick from the first day of practice.
Teaching kick improves body position
Another reason why coaches should teach swimmers to kick is because it helps properly align the body as it is propelled through the water. While you have a strong kick, it forces the body not to sink because it is constantly being pushed forward to the wall. Reducing as much drag as possible is a very important thing to do for new swimmers who don’t have that proper technique.
A strong kick helps the axis
When observing top swimmers compete, coaches can see the rotation of the shoulders and hips that drive swimmers through the water. For each stroke, swimmers rotate about different axes to maximize the strength/drag ratio. A weak kick makes swimming with the proper hinge and rotation practically impossible because a proper catch and pull cannot be accomplished. Read more about why a swimmer’s axis is important and how it leads to proper technique in my blog the secret of the axis.
How do you teach good kick to new swimmers?
Most swimmers can be timid their first day in the water. The best way to introduce swimmers to a good kick is just by making them kick with their hands on the wall and feet away. Use a whistle to make them kick and produce as much splash as they can for 5 seconds, then give them 15 seconds of rest. They enjoy it because they can see the results of their kick.
This kind of kicking promotes the bending of the knee to make a splash, which is bad technique. But, this is the first step to getting new swimmers comfortable with the water and teaches them that their kick is the most important part of their stroke. The proper kick technique comes from the hips while the legs are kept mostly straight. Make sure to advance swimmers from the wall kick to kicking with a kickboard to encourage the proper technique.
Interested in teaching the proper freestyle? Learn about the seven best freestyle drills to teach proper freestyle to beginners in my blog post! Going through that progression will slowly ingrain the proper technique into your swimmers over the course of your season.