Exercises To Improve Kicking Technique

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Jafo19D

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Went diving this weekend and a fellow diver sent me videos he shot. I was horrified to see that I was bicycle kicking. Not the worst bicycle kicking that I've seen but it was definitely not nice to watch.

The next day I made a conscious effort to stretch out my legs during my flutter kicks but I don't have any video to determine if my kicking improved.

I looked for videos on drills you can do out of the water to improve technique and came across one that said to do what we called flutter kicks in the Army. Lie on your back, hands underneath your butt and do flutter kicks with your feet 6" off the ground. Any other recommendations?

And yes I do also use frog kicks. I have seawing novas which some say you can't use for frog kicks but I'm able to use them when there's little or no current. For a bit more current I flutter kick.
 
The only way is to practice in a pool to strengthen less used muscles, or practice straight leg lifts, but those can be hard on your back.
 
Flutter kicks, 4 count, 100 repetitions for the win. A boss of mine use to lead us doing 200 repetitions. Only a few of us made it to 200.

Or just get in the pool and swim leg laps with some zoomers (swim work out fins) and a kick board. On long course, I’ll kick a 200m piece as a break from arm-centric laps. That’ll tighten up your flutter kick pretty quickly.

For frog kick, I use this exercise in the video below. Granted, the abduction phase of the exercise (opening the legs) is where the most resistance is with a strap system but not where your power stroke is at in the water (that’s adduction, or closure of the legs). However, strength in the cocking phase of the frog kick (abduction) allows for concentration on the power phase (again, adduction). Before you know it, you’ll shoot like an octopus.


Back to the pool, swimming breast stroke with no fins will build those legs in no time. There’s nowhere to go with technique except better when you’ve got to get across the pool without fins.
 
There is a kickboard made by FINIS called the Alignment board and is basically a yellow foam triangle with a strap on it that you slide one hand under. It is not buoyant enough to support ones body weight well with the head out of the water, so it forces one to straighten out and assume a good body position for flutter kicking. Put on a snorkel and do some laps with the alignment board without fins and you will begin to develop a decent flutter kick...if you use poor technique you will find that your kick will get you no where and you can use that as biofeedback to modify your kick until you can sense that you are moving forward.

As a swim coach, I don't let my swimmers use any kickboard other than the alignment board:

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-Z
 
Good board. The old tombstone versions drive me nuts.
 
Exercise is always nice, but it sounds like what you really need is some instruction and feed back on how do do the various kicks properly. Flutter kicks may be OK for dealing with currents when away from the bottom, but the frog kick and its variants are the real key to being able to position yourself in the water. and for frog kicks to work, you first need to get your posture nailed down.
 
Exercise is always nice, but it sounds like what you really need is some instruction and feed back on how do do the various kicks properly. Flutter kicks may be OK for dealing with currents when away from the bottom, but the frog kick and its variants are the real key to being able to position yourself in the water. and for frog kicks to work, you first need to get your posture nailed down.
This reason people bicycle kick is that method moves the legs with least water resistance, because they don’t have muscle strength in correct muscles for correct motions, my hubby skates and bikes for exercise, so he has strong muscles for those activities, but not swimming muscles, so he keeps reverting when not thinking about it.
 
Swimming is the best exercise for swimming.
Are you really doing bicycle kicks, pushing with the fins or a bent knee long stroke kick? The Novas work better with that long stroke, the work for frog kick but aren’t optimal.
 
Swimming is the best exercise for swimming.
Are you really doing bicycle kicks, pushing with the fins or a bent knee long stroke kick? The Novas work better with that long stroke, the work for frog kick but aren’t optimal.
I purposely sometimes kick with a bent knee but what I saw on the video was definitely a bicycle kick; like I said in the opening post it wasn’t the worst one I’ve seen but it was a BK. The next day I made a conscious effort to straighten out my legs but I have no way of knowing if it improved.
 
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