Another question that came up on the Discussion Forum

I recently attended a weekend workshop, I learned a lot about the drills but struggle with them due to my poor kick. I’m now starting to work through fish, skating and the underswitch drills wearing fins, using very gentle kicks to keep my momentum. When I take the fins off and try some whole stroke swimming I seem to lose balance, that seems to lead to frantic kicking and it all becomes a bit of a mess….

Should I just forget about whole stroke swimming for a while and work my way up to it through the drills using fins, I don’t want to become reliant on the fins or have them compensate for poor balance, but without them I go nowhere which leads to a lot of frustration!

One suggestion I can offer is to do 8 to 10 very-short repeats of Superman Glide to Skate as your warmup in every practice. Go to Right Skate one way, then to Left Skate coming back to the starting wall. Stand when you need to breathe or lose your glide. Do these to increase your sense of effortless, weightless, gliding in SG which should lead to less "need to kick" in Skating.

After you feel a decrease in that need, add 3 Switches or strokes following a prolonged moment (long enough to inventory head and hand position and degree of rotation) in Skating. Your sole goal is to experience a few switches or strokes on which your legs just "harmonize" with what the upper body is doing.

Even a brief experience like this provides a non-struggling experience to build on. From this brief experience build, incrementally and patiently, from 3 to 5 to 7, etc. relaxed UnderSwitches or even full strokes.

This will allow you to build skills and the capacity to do skillful, relaxed drills and swimming for longer stretches without relying entirely on fins.

You can still use the fins for some of your practice, but the imprint of easy legs without fins will help make your fin-assisted practice even better. I would recommend doing all your whole-stroke without fins. As suggested above, start with short distances — perhaps just 3 to 4 strokes, starting with SG, then Skate, then Stroke. With patience, you should see your capacity for non-struggling whole stroke should grow steadily.