Types of kicks

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SeaHound:
Can any one please tell me what different finning techniques are? What types of kicks are there and when they should be used? Thanks

There are only a few kicks I use all the time.

- Flutter kick (alternating moving legs up and down)
- Frog kick (sweeping legs to the back)
- Helicoptor turns

Of that I think I use the Frog kick about 90% of the time. The reasons being that it's less work than flutter kicking and it doesn't kick up silt. I use the flutter kick mostly in the swimming pool when showing students how to swim. At our school they teach you flutter kicking at the OW level and frog kicking with the drysuit specialty.

A Helicopter turn is also useful for rotating without a lot of flapping around and/or kicking up silt. I use this one often too.

There are also some kicks I use some times.

- Reverse frog kick (frog kick done backwards)
- Modified flutter kick

The reverse frog kick is very difficult to learn but handy for stopping forward momentum or moving backwards without pushing off of things. I'm not a real expert at this yet but the more I master this kick the more useful I'm finding it.

Modified flutter kick. When in a drysuit a long sweeping flutter kick isn't always comfortable. When my knees are bent (most of the time) it's best to use a frogkick but you don't always have the room to do a frogkick so then I use a modified flutter kick (short strokes with bent knees) to move forward a bit.

I'm sure other people have their favorite kicks too but these are mine.

R..
 
To build on Diver0001's post, a flutter kick is most useful when a constant power stroke is needed ... such as when swimming into a current. A frog kick is most useful in just about every other situation.

A frog kick is what they call a "sculling" kick ... meaning that you kick once, glide ... kick once, glide. It's a very efficient and relaxing way to dive ... but if the current's strong enough, you won't get much glide out of it.

For more power in a sculling kick, I use a variant of the scissors kick ... kind of a cross between a frog and flutter where I move my feet apart (one up, one down) and bring them back together without actually crossing them over. It's not something I learned in a course ... I just developed the kick over time because it works well in current but still provides the advantages of a sculling kick.

What's important to keep in mind is that with any of these kicks you will lose efficiency if you overkick. Most OW classes teach their students to flutter using the entire leg (from the hips down) in the kick. That method provides power, but it also leaves a whirling trail of silt behind you. For the flutter, a more effective method is to use less leg and more ankle in your kick ... think "floppy ankles". Keeping the knees bent slightly upward also helps direct water movement back behind you instead of downward ... which has the advantages of both increasing your forward momentum and kicking up less silt. That, of course, assumes that you're swimming in a horizontal plane, as you should be doing. Also remember that as you dive (again, assuming a horizontal positon) you move within a "slipstream" of disturbed water around your body. Try to keep your fins within this slipstream ... the more you do so the more effective your kick will be. You can accomplish this by using small kicks rather than large ones ... again, think floppy ankles and less leg in your kicking movement.

To frog kick properly you should keep your knees bent ... the flat side of your fins should be horizontal and parallel to the plane of your body. How you kick depends on the type of fin you're using. A standard blade fin works best with mostly ankle movement. A split fin requires less ankle and more lower leg motion.

The one I really don't use much is the dolphin kick ... where you keep your fins together and use hip and leg movements to propel yourself thru the water. They taught me this in OW ... and I don't think I've used it in a practical manner since. It's kind've fun once in a while, but never really seemed like an efficient way to move thru the water in scuba gear.

Hope this is helpful ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)
 
What they said. I use frog kick a lot, which was easy to do for me since I'm a swimmer, and it's basically the breaststroke kick.
 
Hi Seahound,
check out this link. it has videos of different kinds of kicks,
http://www.divinglocker.com/GUE_training.html
half way down the page you will see where the videos are. right after this statement: In water skills you should be comfortable/. most of my dives my son and I work on these
drills you never know when you might need to use them.
Cory
 
I am looking for information on the helicopter kick. This thread so far is the only one I can find with it mentioned in it. The link to the video seems to no longer be working. Any ideas where I can find more info on this?
 
As others have stated, I flutter only into a current, or if I need to get somewhere fast.

My frogkick more resembles the motion of the feet when one is treading water. I make small elliptical patterns with my fins with the knees bent so the force is directed away from the bottom. This method burns very little energy and commands the lowest RMV in my opinion.
 

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