Kicking Fix Of Your WORST Swimming Mistake, Knees Too Bent
You can learn to swim without knowing how to kick. It's controversial to say that too many swim teachers but it is true. But kicking does serve a function, streamlining. It helps to raise your body in the water, it helps you to steer and it helps you to swim faster. Hence it is only reasonable to teach how to do it and do it well. Here kicking fixes of the knees being too bent. It is one of the worst swimming mistakes.
There are a lot of people that have problems with kicking. Particularly adult learn to swimmers. However, I personally don't concentrate on kicking until the child or adult has good propulsion using their arms. That doesn't mean that I don't teach kicking, I just don't concentrate on it.
I had a comment in the blog post a long time ago when I said that I spend 5 min tops on kicking at the start of class. The commentator was agast and explained to me that they spend up to 20 min a class on kicking. I have to say that to me that is a complete waste of the time of your student. Get them swimming then fix things.
Please, I do not mean that one should be sloppy in their teaching. Good structure and clear explanation and lots of help and praise are essential. But unless they can't get their feet off the bottom, once I have shown them how to kick correctly, I move on, whether they get it or not. Good instruction will fix everything eventually and I see no reason to hold a student back if something is a little imperfect.
Nor is that to say that I am not critical of teachers that hardly ever try to fix an issue. that is just laziness.
I hate to say it but if you are having a problem getting students to do what you ask, you are the one at fault, not them. You need better ways to communicate using different methods to help.
It is in that context that I like this video. It is another way to help with, as I have said, a very common problem of not keeping legs straight enough when kicking. Or to put it another way, having your knees too bent when you or your student kicks.
I have talked about the problem of having too much bend in your knees in other posts:- Freestyle Kick Revisited With Video Drill: Remember The Feeling
- Learning How To Swim as an Adult - Kicking & Buoyancy - Floating Face Down 2
- Swim Kicking Correction (Flutter Kick)
But in this video, the narrator talks about exaggerating glute activation. I think it is a nice neat way to try a different way to solve this problem.
Enjoy
Richard
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