Swimming with a single kick per stroke at a fast speed takes a lot of training, strength
and coordination. This video takes you straight to what you need to do to avoid wasting leg
energy.
If you can't control what your legs are doing, you won't be able to breathe properly. If
you can't breathe properly you won't be able to correct your swimming technique. Without
good swimming technique, you will not only us the energy from your legs, but from your
entire body.
Aaron has 4 1/2 months to prepare for his Ironman. He improved his horizontal balance
and breath control thanks to the last video. But he still has a hard time getting his legs
in a good position.
The position of the legs while swimming is simple to understand but difficult to apply
in the water. The goal is to lengthen the body as much as possible. According to fluid
mechanics, longer bodies have less resistance in water. One way to visualize the correct
position is to imagine that you are in quicksand. If you cover little area you sink. But if
you lie down you have more area on the ground and you have a better chance of survival.
If you bend the hips and knees the area is reduced and you sink.
It is the same in the water. To stay afloat,
the best thing you can do is cover as much area as possible. And to move fast you must
stretch your body on the axis you are moving.
Aaron decides that in order to move faster he should stretch his legs as far as possible
and not move them. At first it works but when he loses the speed of the push, his legs sink.
So what is it that keeps your legs up?
Three forces are responsible for keeping the
legs up.
The first is the speed generated by the arms. To demonstrate this point we put Aaron on
a board tied to a jet ski. As the speed increases, the collision with the water causes the legs
to rise. That happens on a small scale when swimming. But it is the smallest of the forces
and is really only resistance for the arms. The second force are the glutes and hamstrings.
This force is what we have been promoting on our channel, because it is the least used.
But that does not mean that by keeping these
muscles static they are not exerting force. This static contraction of the muscles is
called isometric. But that's a topic for later. For now you need to be aware that if you only
used this force to keep your feet floating, you would end up too tired to run or bike
comfortably on a triathlon.
The third force comes from the quadriceps. It's literally what we call a kick. In a kick
to a ball the whole body is used to swing the leg forward. The quadriceps is stretched
to accelerate the foot. This is how it works in swimming too.
Aaron says his coaches in the past told him
not to bend his knees. But the knee does bend. What should not be bent much are the hips.
Viewed from the side, the hips are fully stretched
and then flexed at around 12 to 18 degrees. If they flex further, that angle is no longer
acceptable. This movement of kicking the water is the
third force that keeps the feet from sinking. It also balances the rest of the body. The
lungs make your body rotate up from your center of gravity. The kick counteracts that.
Some say that the kick does not serve as propulsion,
that it is just to lift the legs and give balance to the body. That is false. The proof
is that there are swimmers who can kick faster than most people can swim. But again that
is the subject for another video.
Aaron is so used to the bike where he always has his hips flexed over 90 degrees. He never
gets to stretch it. When he runs he does stretch the hips but also reaches a degree of hip
flexion not optimal for swimming.
Aaron thinks he has corrected the problem. But it is not until he sees the video of himself
swimming that he knows he needs to stretch his his hips more.
We are back to the usual problem. How to teach the body and not just the mind of Aaron to
correct the technique?
We have some dry-land exercises that will help him. But while we are in the pool we
will do the following. The first exercise consists of kicking against
the wall. This way he can do bubbling while looking at his legs. He forgets to blow bubbles
out of his nose and water gets in. Uff that's hurts. Remember that underwater, if the nostrils
are not pointing to the ground, water can get in. There are three solutions for this.
Put on a nose clip, put your lips covering your nose, or blow bubbles.
Aaron spends 10 minutes on that exercise.
Now the next exercise is to kick on back. Aaron tries but immediately sinks and gets
water up his nose. He needs to fill his lungs with air so he can float easily. Exhaling
and inhaling quickly and holding it a little bit, Aaron manages to stay afloat. But he
has two mistakes in his kick. His knees come out of the water indicating that his hips
are still flexed too much. We tell him to look at his knees.
The water should bubble up from above the
feet and not from the knees. With that Aaron manages to adjust the hips.
In swimming we mainly use the sense of touch
to improve technique. But sometimes with exercises that allow you to use your eyes, improvements
happen faster.
The second mistake is that Aaron kicks too wide. With shorter and faster kicks you can
move faster.
Aaron was unable to complete the challenge from the last video. Crossing the pool with
a side kick. He fills his lungs. He pushes himself off the wall with a good horizontal
line. With one arm up and the other at the side, he begins to kick. With the hips extended
and a short kick, he now moves faster. He manages to keep his body on its side and breathe
quickly with partially filled lungs.
He swims a 25 that way and unlocks a new level on the Skills NT table.
He learned to breathe with half his face out and to kick at the same time. But he still
needs to improve his kick.
Now that the hips are stretched, we focus on the ankles. The ankles are very tight.
Having flexible ankles helps improve the angle of support for the kick and creates less frontal
resistance. But improving the mobility of the ankles takes a long time. In 4 and a half
months we are not going to improve it. What we can improve, and it is more important
than mobility, is to relax the ankles during the kick. When the feet are relaxed downward,
the water pushes the ankle into plantar flexion. This gives the foot a better angle to create
propulsion.
To relax the ankles a kick board can be useful. If you don't have a kick board you can simply
kick on your back or your side. But the quintessential exercise to improve the kick is vertical kick.
Aaron does 10-second vertical kick reps. The tips of his fingers are out of the water.
He kicks trying to relax his ankles. He needs to stretch his hips again even if that makes
the exercise more difficult. Remember that what you do often creates muscle memory. Whether
they are good or bad habits.
Now that he has mastered it, he rests a little and makes 5 more attempts. This time with
his whole hand out of the water. The further out the arms are, the more difficult the exercise.
Now that the legs are ready, we go back to
swimming. As you can see Aaron swims much better than before. But there is still something
missing from that kick.
When using a kick board, we see that he still does not use his core muscles to kick. You
see how his hips move from side to side when he finishes the kick. Well that wastes the
momentum. Instead the feet creating support to move forward, the energy is used in moving
the hips from one side to the other.
To visualize this problem, imagine kicking a ball but at the moment of contact the hip
goes back. The ball won't go very far.
To avoid this it is necessary to activate the core muscles and try NOT to move the hips
at the end of the kick.
When the hips are well anchored, the kick can be very helpful. That does not mean that
the hips will not move. The hips also rotate from side to side. But the energy of the kick
is not going to be lost in the hip. By activating the core muscles, the energy travels to the
opposite arm and rotates the shoulders.
Aaron sees Blake across the pool and is confused. He knows that Blake completed an ironman with
a very good time in the swim. But Blake has a swimming technique with a lot of kick. What
is the best technique then to swim 3.8 km easier? Kick a lot or kick a little?
The ideal way would be to kick a little, but it depends on many things. If you want to
maintain a style that allows you to kick a little you need to perfect the kick.
The wetsuit and the salt water help you float.
That means that you need less effort to keep the legs up. But at the Cozumel ironman, where
Aaron signed up, the water is at a comfortable temperature and wetsuits are not allowed.
So we have to keep perfecting the kick. The
more control Aaron has of the kick, the better he will be able to use it at first to accelerate
and escape from the group. To draft off of someone. Or to warm up the legs at the end
before getting on the bike.
In the arrow freestyle video, I demonstrated
how to swim with one kick per stroke. The video is very popular because it looks like
I swim effortlessly at that speed of 1:05 in 100 meters. But what is not seen is the
effort that I am putting with my arms to pull my whole body forward. You also don't see
the effort I'm making with my glutes, hamstrings and lower back to keep my legs close to the
surface. It is not easy to swim like this. If I wanted to swim at that speed for 3.8
kilometers I would have to train a lot. If I was to swim that now, I would rather use
at least three kicks per stroke. Two kicks just to keep the legs up and one to help the
arm pull.
The number of kicks per stroke will depend on each person and the different phases of
the race. But being in control of what your legs do is the most important thing.
The second most important thing about the
kick, whether it is a lot or a little, is the timing. Kicking at the right time creates
a connection throughout your body that makes you swim with less effort.
Aaron could keep going but it’s better for
him internalize what he has learned today and go to his coding job.
In the next video we will see how to create
that connection of the kick with the stroke. We will use exercises in and out of the water
to improve that connection. Subscribe here if you don't want to miss the next video.
Or click here if it is already available. If you want to visit our website click here.
See you there! Swim fast!