- Front Crawl Kick is an important part of the stroke
but one that's often overlooked.
Well it's there to help your body find the correct balance
and position in the water,
as well as contributing to that forward propulsion.
So today we're going to be looking at how to improve
your Front Crawl Kick by utilizing some drills
that we're going to share with you.
(upbeat electronic music)
To practice these drills it's a good idea to have
a kick-board and some fins.
And I'd recommend starting all the drills with fins
and once you feel strong enough then you can do them
without them.
Now we've gone in detail on how to do the Front Crawl Kick
in a previous video which we'll share with you later.
But the main points that you need to remember are to try
and kick from the hip, keep your ankles nice and floppy
and your toes as pointed as possible,
whilst keeping that knee bend to a minimum.
But all of these following drills are going to help
reiterate those points.
Kicking with a board allows you to focus purely on your legs
and admittedly it does change your body position.
But it is a drill so you can focus on this one aspect.
So if you start with both your hands on top of the board
with your arms resting over and that will then
allow you to keep your head and mouth easily out of
the water so you can comfortably breathe and focus
on the leg action.
Now you might find though that having your head up your legs
sink a little bit more so you've got to work a little bit
harder on the kick.
But you can also put your face back into the water
to help lift your hips and then just lift it
when you need to breathe.
Alternatively you can actually put a front snorkel on
so you can keep your head in the water,
and then help with your position throughout the drill.
If you start off with fins it's going to help to work on the
ankle flexibility as it adds that resistance to the water.
And it's also going to aid your forward propulsion making
isolated kick that much easier and as a result
using fins actually slows your leg kick down,
so it gives you more time to think about the movement.
If you can then progress to going without your fins
it'll help you to make your kicks smaller and faster.
So, start by pushing off the wall so you've got that
aided propulsion,
and then do a short section of really fast small kick
and take a long recovery.
So you can focus on trying to really activate the
glute muscles to make sure the kick is coming from the hip.
And it's important to have full recovery so you can do it
really hard and fast as that will encourage to keep your
kick that much smaller and when you return to full stroke
or easy kicking,
it will seem that much more easy and relaxed.
The Side Kick it's a good idea to keep your fins on
but you're not going to need a kick-board.
So push off the wall and rotate to 90 degrees
so that you're facing either the side of the pool
or lane the rope.
And from that position you're going to keep your lower arm
extended out in front of you whilst taking your upper arm
just to rest on top of your hip.
So in this position your legs, hips and feet should be
fully submerged,
but it should help to reduce those sinking hips.
And you want to think of trying to keep a straight line
from that leading hand all the way to your feet.
And if you can swim close to the lane rope or the wall,
it'll help to make sure you've got the correct position
as well as enure that you keep your kick fairly small.
Cause if your start to kick too large then you'll find that
your knees or your feet will start touching the wall.
(upbeat music)
Upright Kicking is as it sounds.
It's kicking vertically in the water and yes it is a little
bit tough as you're going to have enough propulsion
to get your whole head out of the water in order to breathe.
But, for this one you definitely want to start with fins
although hopefully you can progress to doing it without.
So you need to find the deep end of the pool,
ideally next to the lane rope or to the side of the wall,
so that you can have a proper rest when you need to.
And you're going to start by simply crossing your arms
over your chest looking forwards.
Now, you'll soon notice if you've got the incorrect
body positions because if you're leaning forwards
or backwards or if you've got a bit of a bend in the torso
you'll find yourself getting off balance.
So you want to concentrate on trying to keep your hips
slightly forward so you've got that nice straight line,
whilst driving from your legs
and keeping those floppy ankles.
You can progress this then by taking your hands onto your
shoulders, even onto your head and if you're feeling really
strong you can hold your hands out of the water
up above you.
And this is automatically going to encourage you to kick
harder and faster.
Another drill you can do along these lines is starting on
the the bottom of the pool.
So, sinking down, bending your knees and then pushing
off the bottom and trying to kick really hard as you can
for a few seconds to see how high out of the water
you can get.
Obviously though this does depend on the depth of the pool
that you're training in.
(upbeat music)
Kicking fast off the wall will give you that initial
propulsion that can work really well,
as it's much easier to maintain the speed
and forward momentum than it is to build it.
So for this you can either use a kick-board or you can go on
a streamline position with one hand on top of the other
and your hands extended out in front of you.
So for this you want to push off and kick as hard as you can
for around 10 second or 15 meters,
or until you start to feel that speed dropping off.
And then relax take a breathe and just swim back to the wall
and take plenty of recovery between each,
cause you want to make sure that
it's a really high intensity.
As kicking this hard will hopefully help to improve your
efficiency and keep your kick naturally small.
Sticking with hard and fast off the wall,
you can now add in the arms and return to full stoke.
So push off the wall and do a full sprint for about
15 to 20 meters,
really concentrating on that fast and hard leg kick.
Now admittedly this isn't going to be the kick rate that
you'll use when you return to normal swimming.
But it should at least encourage and really ingrain
that efficient kick.
These drills are designed to help you focus purely
on the leg movement so that when you do add them back
into your full stroke, you'll have that benefit of more
forward propulsion as well as a better position
in the water.
Hopefully you've enjoyed it, give us a thumbs up if you have
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And now that video that I talked about that goes into detail
of how to actually do the Front Crawl Kick.
You can find just over here.
And if you want to see a video on swim mistakes
that you might not know you're doing,
well that one is just over here.