I have found mine. It comes in the form of blue foam board. They make you hold it in front of yourself and kick in the water. Yes, my kick sucks, it is worse than I ever imagined. I just came back from masters swim where we started out with 300 stroke, 300 kick, 300 pull. I think all the other swimmers (five people) had about 50 yd left in the pull when I started the pull. About 200 yd into it, I was sitting in one spot kicking, but not moving. The good news is when I started the 300 pull I was able to hold pace with the person in my lane. I think I agree with Shawn that if the wetsuit does what the pull buoy does, things are looking up.
Hmm! I thought, that is strange, why couldn't I keep up with her doing regular stroke. So Meghan in her soft early 20's voice says, do your ankles bend (how old do you think I am?). I respond "usually". She says, I saw you breast stroke a couple times your kick looks strong there. Yea, before triathlons that is the stroke I mostly did. Well we need to work on the kick. Short, tight, extend your ankles. I did a set of 4 X 50 kicks and it went better, but man I was getting smoked.
She also picked up on some small things that really helped my regular stroke. On arm I was coming out of the water with my elbow when I get tired and the other arm my palm was down which was telling her I was not pulling the whole way through the stroke. So we did drills. They were nice, it was 50 drill, 100 perfect stroke (yeah right), 50 increase (get faster as you go). I think I did 1800 yd (yeah a mile), of course this was an hour. I believe the 500 kick time wise was equivalent to over 800 regular stroke, also effort level was high for the kick.
5 comments:
You are not alone with the awful kick. I am hoping to make July kick month. Largely in preparation for the Tango Swim with fins. Hopefully I can shed some light on how to improve.
I had the same problems when I started taking lessons last year. I videotaped my mechanics and watched others and then met with the aquatics person at the Boro. It has helped but I'm still not great at it.
After the Pull Buoy experience, I honestly believe my feet have been anchors. Which makes sense in everything I read, but I thought I was doing better than what I was able to do today. Scary.
I am changing my work schedule to get to this swim at least twice a week. In the summer I could go everyday if I wanted to. This explains why no matter how much better I feel my arm stroke is doing, I can't swim much faster.
Matt, by the way I haven't counted strokes once at either class, I am way to busy keeping up.
I understand completely. I couldn't even count laps when I first joined the class, too busy trying to survive.
I would love to have some time with a coach and a video camera. I feel I've kind of hit the plateau with my technique. I think if I could see what I'm doing, get back in change it. Then watch to see what that looks like, I might be able to advance more quickly from here.
I really can't use that as an excuse. I've got plenty to work on.
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