Implementing ‘old school’ training can bring about improvement. Quite simply, these methods work, particularly if you know what type of stroke you have and where it needs refining by bringing about a back to basics focus. A swimmer with a strong freestyle kick, whether they consciously or subconsciously use their legs for propulsion, will benefit from improving their rhythm, catch, pull, use of back and lat muscles by including ‘pull’ sets. Swimmers who barely kick at all, whether by choice or not, or have a low leg or hip position in the water, will significantly reduce some of their drag co-efficient in the stroke by engaging an efficient streamlined kick from the hips. It is always quite amazing in a squad or club how a focus on leg kicking efficiency and engaging hip flexors and glute muscles to keep the leg mostly straight while kicking, provides almost immediate speed gains by not utilising quads and hamstrings, which create drag and are very demanding in energy terms. This is often a significant factor holding back the multisport athlete or land-based athlete turned swimmer!
The sessions below help you work on the basics of kick and pull, with the benefits both bring to the stroke. Try to work out your propulsive ratio of kicking to arm stroke, as employing the powerful leg muscles, unless well conditioned with very good kicking technique, will only generate up to 15 per cent of your total propulsion. This is significantly less if you kick from your knees, using your quads and hamstrings. An underwater assessment such as a video analysis is the best way to reveal this ratio.