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!