this week we're going to explore an idea of how to help a young swimmer develop a more narrow or
shallower kick and butterfly if they are over kicking now we're starting with step one here
in this illustration but what we're looking to minimize is the bend in the legs now this is
pretty small right here and what we're looking for but a lot of swimmers will have to try to
drive from the kick in the back and so you'll see the feet coming way out of the water you'll see
the the body going more of a vertical position because the legs are at a very acute angle so
the first thing we're going to do is just allow this one we're first thing we do is put on fins
so we're putting fins on to overload the back a little bit however we're asking the swimmer
not to kick and so what ends up happening is that we're losing the second kick as the legs just drag
so we're focusing the attention of the swimmer to the front end trying to get the head position
right and the the connection on the front and and especially we're gonna pay particular attention
to the hips making sure the hips rise on each press of the chest so the legs should just flow
and not drive the kick from the back so basically what we do is we simply take this idea or concept
and we put the swimmer through a series of descending twenty fives so we were swimming
fast or descending butterfly in one direction and then we would go easy freestyle in the other
direction so that the focus was really on not overloading the butterfly but really thinking
about limiting the kick and keeping the focus on the front end of the stroke as we required
the athlete to speed up we've started to see the kick naturally come in now again this is a swimmer
that does have a second kick already we didn't have to teach this former how to do the second
kick so if you have performers that only do have one kick this probably isn't the bus methodology
or the best path to this this swimmer already has a second kick so by limiting the kick we're
not really cutting it out because you'll see as we add it back or as we require that he goes faster
so he had gold times that he had to hit and we started to see if you look here the difference
between this second kick there so there's a thing there's a little bit further back here so there's
the second kick which is pretty still pretty good but we don't see a huge amount of disruption to
the body line between the torso the thighs and the feet so it's still a pretty nice line but
then because we've been limiting it so much or he hasn't been thinking about you'll see
here that it's not there and then it's going to come back in so it's a little inconsistent
as he goes a little bit of the mid pace but as he continues to go faster and faster we'll see
that that kick does come in a little bit more naturally so by telling him not to kick the the
son the athletes will will just drag the legs by putting the fins on even if they drag the
legs what ends up happening is that they get some propulsion and some movement forward so
you can see here as we start to get to speed the kick is a little bit more natural he feels better
and we're not driving from the legs the legs are flowing behind the body and that's really the goal
so start with no kick so again very limited kick at the beginning just allow the legs to flow and
follow and then by the time you get to the last the last 25 you'll see the kick starting to come
in then it becomes a little bit more natural and the body line that we want and not over kicking
from the back so it's kind of fun it's good for the athlete and it's a good teaching experiment