I can’t find a good answer on this.
I think my kick is holding me back. I’m probably kicking too much and wasting my energy. How often should I kick per arm cycle (i.e.: left out and in, right out and in = one cycle).
At this time I’m not even counting, but the more I read about it, the more I’m convinced that this is what’s preventing me from improving my time.
I haven’t been anything but a recreational swimming since high school, but usually people who waste energy on kicking do so not through their timing, but through the size of each kick.
Your flutter kick should be tight, efficient and fast, with very little splashing.
Do you use a kickboard? Working with one can help you hone your skills. It will help you get to the point where the kick becomes almost background effort to your strokes and breathing.
ETA: Freestyle is the one stroke where I think the rhythm of the kicking can easily fade into the background, really.
I usually do a 5-beat or 6-beat kick rhythym on crawl. (That’s kicks per cycle of the arms.) The former is for distance, the latter for sprinting.
I think that I was taught this back in the days when I still thought about my stroke… nowadays, it’s all on automatic.
Also: I’m not sure that you’d be “kicking too much” and wasting energy. If it’s moving you forward, it’s not wasted energy. If you’re exhausted because of your kicking, I’d recommend working on your arm pulls, instead.
Depends on the swimmer and the distance/speed involved. 2-8 kicks/stroke. 6 is common for sprints, with distance swimmers doing as few as 2.
When I was on a swim team (cough) years ago, the number of kicks varied a lot based on speed and distance, as stated above. It’s really more what feels natural for you - I don’t have a strong kick, and I think mine is 2-3 soft kicks for every arm cycle. My kicks really just help keep my lower body balanced while my arms do the work. I do remember learning from the swim coach to focus on the arms and the legs would fall in line, then we would work on making the kicks more efficient instead of more numerous.
On faster swims or for people with stronger kicks, you might kick more or harder. I would suggest finding what is most comfortable for you - if you think you are kicking too much, you probably are. What you might be feeling is the effects of trying to adjust your arms to match your kick, instead of adjusting your kick to match your arm cycles. Does that make sense? Kicking can actually be counterproductive if it is keeping you from maintaining a steady arm movement.
The important thing to remember is that kicking does not move you forward. Well, OK, it moves you forward a tiny bit. But have you ever used a kickboard? Kicking by itself is extremely slow. In freestyle, propulsion comes primarily from your arms.
The purpose of kicking in freestyle is to keep your body more or less horizontal, or at least prevent your lower body from dragging in the water. So you are wasting energy if:
[ul]
[li]Your knees are bent a lot[/li][li]Your feet are coming completely out of the water[/li][li]You are making big splashes[/li][li]Your feet are going down very deep in the water[/li][/ul]
So as the posters above said, your kick should be small, right below the surface of the water, with very little splashing. Try a kickboard for a few laps to practice your technique. IME, the actual kick rhythm doesn’t matter so much unless you want to get really competitive.
You need to consider getting someone at the pool to watch you swimming and help you identify the problem; it is very rare that a person can figure it out for themselves.
Pretty often the problem with kicking is too much tension from hip to ankle; but equally often it is arching the back too much or having the head too high in the water. Because freestyle is all about body position in the water, a problem can seem to occur in one place when in fact it begins with a problem entirely elsewhere – you cna experience the problem where you are compensating for a different thing altogether.
I’m going to have to disagree. While the kick does not provide full on speed, but I know of people that can kick a 50 in the same time that I can sprint it. So a good kick is important. I can do a 50 in just over 30 seconds, the top swimmers do it the mid 20s and these are Masters swimmers, not Olympic type swimmers.
I tend to have a very slow kick, usually around 2 kicks per cycle, though on a sprint I do pick it up. The longer the distance usually people kick a lot less. The kick comes from the hip, the knees shouldn’t bend much, though I still have this problem. If you really want to improve you’ll have to do lots of kicks.
Yeah, the kick is very important to getting speed. Back when I competed mumble years ago, the main power of my freestyle came from my kick. And I wouldn’t even say that freestyle propulsion comes “primarily” from your arms. That’s the case for a lot of swimmers, but by no means all.
It’s all kind of hard to diagnose over the Internet, though. EmAnJ if you want to tell us why you feel your kick is holding you back, that might help. Is all your focus on keeping your kicks going while swimming? Legs tired after swimming while arms aren’t? Not going anywhere while only kicking, but moving pretty good while doing full stroke?
Coach just told me the other day that I should be doing 3 kicks per stroke. I never got to ask him if that meant 3 kicks per complete stroke (as in both left and right arms) or 3 kicks for each single arm stoke.
This is pretty much what I was going to say. My kick was always shitty and most of my stroke was pulled by my upper body
shiftless: It was 3 per each arm when I swam.
On distance swims, my kick contributes very little to propulsion. It basically just keeps my back end afloat and horizontal. For instance, when I swim with a pull buoy (a float you put between your legs so you don’t have to kick), my speed is completely unaffected. Anyway, for distance swimming, I kick between 2-4 beats per cycle of the arms), and the arms provide more than 90% of the propulsion. For distance swimming, I rarely think about my kick much.
For sprints, it’s completely different. I can move very quickly through the water with a kickboard and a sprint-type kick, even without adding the arms (but this is very tiring). Doing a sprint with arms and legs, the arms still provide at least 60% of the propulsion. During a sprint, I kick between 6-8 beats per cycle of the arms.