Sunday, November 12, 2006

 

Sideways and Kicking

There are two ways to increase speed in the water
1) Reduce Resistance
2) Increase Power
In the past several practices I talked about 2 concepts to reduce resistance. One is being level and the other is being thin (or streamlined). I also talked about to ways to increase power. One being the high elbow position and the other is accelerating from the beginning to the end of the stroke. (You can see more about these at http://gladorca.blogspot.com )

Today I want to discuss Sideways and Kicking.

1) SIDEWAYS

You can swim so that your body is always flat in the water, or you can swim on your side. Swimming on your side is like using a flat bottom boat. Your body is plowing through the water like a barge. The other way is to swim on or towards your side to slice through the water. The reason has to do with displacement of the water. When you are at the top of the water and you swim in a flat position, the water gets displaced in the down, but when you are on your side more water gets displaced to the sides. When you swim freestyle, swimming on your side doesn’t mean completely over on your side, but the body should rotate at least 45 degrees. A great freestyle swimmer will spend about 80% of their times on the sides (40% for each side) and 20% of the time transitioning from side to side. Drills for getting on your side include kicking on your side with one hand up above your head and the other down by your side., kicking with your hands at the side and rotating from side to side, and 12 kicks per stroke drill.


2) KICKING
Any world class swimmer doing a pool event has a powerful and fast kick. Whether you are watching the 50 Meter sprint of the 1,500 Meter event, the underwater view of the swimmers will show a fast, powerful kick. Kicking provides additional power for the swim and makes you go faster, but kicking uses the biggest muscles of the body and therefore a powerful kick will take a lot of energy and air. Should a power fast kick always be used for a masters swimmer? I think the answer is that it depends on your goals and your conditioning. If you plan to do an ironman which involves a 112 mile bike and a 26 mile run, then making sure you have legs for the bike and run become important. In that case a hard kick may improve your performance on the first leg of the race, but you have to decide if the improvement is worth the energy. The swim leg of an ironman is only 1/8th to 1/6th the duration of the race. As for conditioning, if you don’t have good conditioning, then a fast powerful kick will be hard to maintain; however, you should always think about using it in the shorter distances and try to work up to using it in the longer distances. Ankle flexibility is important for swimming. You need to be able to point your toes back and in. To work ankle flexibility you can try pointing your toes when you do your stretching or you can try keeling on the floor with your toes pointed back. Why do the toes need to point in? If they point out, your feet will slice through the water. If they point in, then the feet will act more like flippers.

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