Man: To kick or not to kick, that is today's big question.
Woman: Yes, should we actually be using our legs? Or should we be saving them for the bike
and the run? Today, we're gonna be looking at the role that our legs play in swimming
and seeing how much we actually need to kick in order to swim fast and efficiently.
[music] Man:
Now then, when does leg movement become actual kick? Well, there isn't really any black and
white answer here really, no swimmer keeps their legs entirely still during the freestyle stroke.
The stroke is a full body movement so even during the rotation,
we move our legs to counterbalance, but there is a full spectrum of leg kicks ranging from
barely moving, a slight flutter kick through to a six or even eight beat leg kick and obviously,
everything between. How much you move your legs and how much you kick depends on several factors.
[music] Woman:
The distance you're swimming is probably going to have the greatest impact on how hard
and how much you're going to need to kick. So you're doing a spread 50 meters, well,
for that you need to kick hard and fast the whole way. However, in triathlon,
we don't cover a distance that short, the shortest is probably going to be 400 meters.
When it comes to that sort of swim, if you want to be competitive in the swim phase of a triathlon,
you need to kick relatively strong, but it is a balance because if you kick too much,
it could be detrimental later on, which we'll explain in a minute. The longer the distance,
the slower you're going to be swimming and therefore the less impact your kick
is actually going to have on your pace. It's about weighing up the pros and the cons and the fatigue
that you'd get if you're kicking hard, but the benefit to your pace, if you're kicking hard.
[music] Man:
Now, then you also want to think about why you're kicking, is it to help you to go faster and aid in
propulsion? Or is it to help or to aid in your body position? Are you someone that is prone to
sinking legs and therefore, you kick just to simply keep your legs afloat? Well, if that is
the case, I actually suggest backtracking a bit and focusing on your technique because this is
essentially inefficient. Kicking simply to keep your legs afloat is not the answer. If you're
kicking to help me to go faster, and for speed, well just make sure that you're able to dial it
up or back depending on how fast you want to go. [music]
Woman: The Magic aid, the wetsuit, this can have a significant impact on your leg kick,
most notably because of the way it changes your body position. If you're someone who normally
has sinking legs, and you struggle to keep them nice and afloat, well the wetsuit will
counteract that and automatically put you in a more horizontal position, which will
mean that you won't need to kick your legs so hard to keep them in that place and as a result,
you'll be able to swim faster for the same amount of effort. It is just worth noting,
if you're doing a really long distance race, and maybe you've got a wetsuit that isn't so flexible,
when you are kicking, you're going to be slightly going against the resistance of the wetsuit with
your hip flexors and if you've done a long race and you're then going to be jumping
on the bike, it might just be working your hip flexors a little bit more than you're used to.
[music] Man:
Now, don't feel the need also to maintain the same level of kick throughout the entire swim, there'll
be natural points where you want to increase or reduce the amount you kick. For instance,
the start of a triathlon race is an ideal time to increase the amount of kick because it's going to
get the acceleration and speed up very quickly and perhaps even get you away from the masses,
but soon after that, you're going to want to drop your kick down back to your natural rhythm.
Beyond that, you may also want to increase your kick again, just simply to get your speed
up perhaps to get onto someone's feet and to draft off someone, or maybe even to avoid an obstacle or
get past something. Then finally, coming towards the end of the triathlon swim is another time you
might want to increase your leg kick because if you are someone that doesn't kick that much, well,
you're going to want to get some blood flowing to those leg muscles and ready you for that run into
tier one. [music]
Woman: You need to remember that a strong kick doesn't always mean a better swim because the
harder you kick, the more oxygen your body is going to be demanding and this is actually
going to have a knock-on effect to your breathing, which will affect your stroke efficiencies. Maybe
you'll naturally start to turn your head a bit further in, therefore you can get more air in on
each breath or you're going to be breathing more often, both of which will affect and reduce the
efficiency of your swimming. You're going to have to weigh up that increase in pace that you'll get
from increase increasing leg kick, but also the increase in fatigue, and also consider if you're
doing a triathlon then what effect that's going to have on the rest of the disciplines
because the swim is the only discipline where legs aren't actually doing the majority of the work.
[music] Man: What about
the pros? Well, you notice in shorter distance draft legal racing such as WTF,
Sander [unintelligible 00:05:00], that the athletes have a harder and faster
leg kick and this is for two reasons. One, because it's obviously shorter racing and
therefore they're wanting to go faster, but also, there's an incentive to make
groups because it is draft legal on the bike. Whereas for the non-drafting, the longer distance
racing such as 72.3, and [unintelligible 00:05:20] the athletes tend to have a slower leg kick, more
they're just to complement the arms rather than a serious and noticeable effort. That said,
there will always be a difference from swimmer to swimmer, even at the top of the game.
[music] Woman: Well, a good leg kick can't be forced,
you've got so much else to think about when you're swimming, but you need to work on it separately so
then it should be quite a relaxed action once you add it all back into your stroke. We've got some
pointers that go into detail on the swimming kick, so do go and check that video out if you want some
really in-depth help. We've got a few more basic pointers for you now. The first one is
looking at keeping your ankle relaxed, the floppy ankle. You want to think of it as an
extension to your lower leg and your knee, which is ultimately an extension to your hip. Well,
this ties in with where the kick is actually coming from, which muscles are instigating
this movement, and it's all about the hips. As you start the kick, it's going to be your
hip flexors, which will flex your thigh, which then your knee will follow and eventually extend
in your foot extends beyond that and then as you go to the upward phase of the kick, it's going to
be your glutes that will start to pull your leg up and the rest of your leg will follow and it's that
repetitive movement. If you do want to pop some fins on, that will help you to sort of feel the
exaggerated movement because the fin is obviously an extension of your foot, and you'll get more
of a natural feel of what the kick should be like and you can even do some kick drills purely with a
kickboard, but just remember at the end of that it all needs to combine back into the whole stroke.
[music] Man:
Well, there is no definite answer for how much you should kick or when you should kick,
but hopefully today's video has highlighted the importance of the kick and also how you
should increase and decrease it for natural parts while you're swimming.
Woman: Yes, watch anyways and swimmers will be kicking, it's part of the stroke, so you can't
neglect it. Make sure you work on it and the more efficient it will become, the easier it will be
and the more it'll help you overall swimming, good luck with that. Let us know how much you kick if
you even know, you can do that in the comment section below. Give us a like if you've enjoyed
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