Reverse kick

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BlueTrin

Scallops aficionado
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On Thursday I have tried to learn to do some reverse kicks in the training pool.

I didn’t manage to do it. I can do frog kicks, helicopter turns but not reverse ones.

I googled a bit and saw this thread:

Reverse Kick

There are a few things I noticed and maybe you guys know the answers to my questions below:
  • Apparently I should use stiff fins to learn, and that day I used the club fins which are soft, so I’ll fix this later
  • It is mentioned that you should use the side of the blade ? I thought you had to flip the ankle to use more surface ?
  • Some mentioned to practice in a pool with just a mask and snorkel. If I was to do this, wouldn’t my feet be out of water when I bring them back ?
 
You have to take care in getting your fins back. Watching a diver seesaw back and forth is kinda comical. :D
 
On Thursday I have tried to learn to do some reverse kicks in the training pool.

I didn’t manage to do it. I can do frog kicks, helicopter turns but not reverse ones.

I googled a bit and saw this thread:

Reverse Kick

There are a few things I noticed and maybe you guys know the answers to my questions below:
  • Apparently I should use stiff fins to learn, and that day I used the club fins which are soft, so I’ll fix this later
  • It is mentioned that you should use the side of the blade ? I thought you had to flip the ankle to use more surface ?
  • Some mentioned to practice in a pool with just a mask and snorkel. If I was to do this, wouldn’t my feet be out of water when I bring them back ?

Use a kickboard. Makes all the difference.
 
You have to take care in getting your fins back. Watching a diver seesaw back and forth is kinda comical. :D

Well it was me last Thursday.

At least I was 4m deep so only the other group of students could see me going back and forth underwater :)
 
There are a few ways to tackle this pig. My feeling was that if I felt my forward frog on the bottom tips of my toes, then I should feel the "baccards" frog kick on the top tips of my toes.
 
Bathing suit, kickboard, after a while add booties and fins, pool. Toodle around the pool frog kicking forwards, holding the kickboard out in front of you. Go slow. Now try to reverse engineer the frog. It really is the side of your foot/fin. It also has a kick/recoil cycle like the kick/glide of the forward frog. It’s nowhere near as fast or powerful, but it very useful.
 
Using the side of the foot/fin is based on moving the foot fast, based on posts here and my experience. Drag is with square of velocity so fast helps, and a modest sidewall is enough. So a slow low-drag extend of the legs and then a quick high-drag pull of them back toward you.

I practiced in the pool with mask and fins on the surface, with occasional breaths. The body up/down angle is not what you want, but it is an easy way to get lots of practice trying to figure it out. Plus you can duck down easily and try near the bottom. Your muscles will complain.

Once you get the basics, you can work, on scuba or in a breath hold hover, on moving straight back without any extra rocking of the body or up/down change.
 
I rotate my ankles and use the top of the fin. Stiff fins definitely help, which is why I love my Deep 6 Eddy fins. OMS Slipstreams are OK too, and maybe they'd be easier for you to find in the UK. Once you get it, and get it incorporated into your helicopter turns, you'll be using it on every dive.
 
Here's a video of my student learning the reverse kick. Note that she's using cheap soft rental fins :). The Reverse Kick is best learned with light weight easy fins, or no fins. The weight and stiffness of Jets (and variants) makes it harder to learn the technique. It's like learning to properly lift weights. You start light and learn the correct form and motion. Then you progress to heavier weights.

 
I first learned to use the top of my fins as the propelling surface, and then the sides. They are two different techniques. Using the sides has several advantages, so it is the method I use now. You need to have decent sidewalls on the fins, though--you can't do it with some fins.

This is important:
Drag is with square of velocity so fast helps,
All factors in the equation for the propellant force are simple multipliers except for velocity, which is squared first. So, as Michael/Mc says, making your power stroke fast is important, but the opposite is also true.

Most kicks associated with technical diving, including especially the reverse kick, have two distinct phases--power stroke and recovery stroke. In the flutter kick, there is no recovery stroke--every movement sends you in the desired direction. In the technical diving kicks, the recovery stroke works against the power stroke. This is especially important in the reverse kick, because everything in normal kicking motions, everything your body wants to do, is trying to send you forward. If going fast is vitally important for your power stroke (and it is), then going s l o w on the recovery stroke is also important For most people first learning the reverse kick, everything they accomplish on the power stroke is effectively undone on the recovery stroke.

In addition to the change in speed between the two strokes, think about the resistance you are providing in the water. When you are in the recovery stroke, you want to minimize surface area. Think of pushing knife blades through the water. If your feet are angled insead so that the surface of the fin is pushing through the water, like the blade of an oar, then everything you accomplished on the power stroke will be lost.
 
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