How Important is Kicking?

From: Steven van Bodegraven 

Sent: Wednesday, 15 April 2009 8:48 AM

Well, from the TI point of view, kicking is important, in particular engaging your entire core when kicking. When swimming TI your arms are not used to pull you through the water – they are used to obtain some momentum (as they are ‘dropped’ into the water) –  instead ‘power’ comes from the combination of your legs kicking in time with the roll of your body (and the momentum of your arms) which is all held together by your stomach muscles (or core). TI swimmers will swim with a 2-, or 6-beat kick depending on their level of comfort in the water. The more comfort and the greater balance usually means less kicking. The goal, I think, is to get to a 2-beat kick, especially for distance swimming. If a person is not swimming with a 2-beat kick, and they are swimming using TI, they are generally using the intermittent kicks to balance or they are simply slowly getting out of a bad habit of kicking and pulling to swim.

If your son isn’t kicking much he’ll clearly be developing his upper body more to sustain the distances and speeds he is aiming for. If he isn’t making the distances of obtaining the times he wants it may be because he is tiring sooner as he isn’t swimming with the whole of his body. Look at the size of your arm muscles compared to the size of your stomach (core) and leg muscles. There is a big difference. The smaller arm muscles will tire much sooner.

Kicking with TI develops naturally and isn’t an area we generally need to focus on. The most important point with regard to kicking while swimming TI is to kick or swim with straight legs, not bent at the knees. The timing a person settles on depends on their balance and comfort in the water, which generally develops and improves in time.

Having said that the stronger your leg and core muscles are the more ‘power’ will be obtained so in the least encouraging kicking and developing his leg muscles will both be important wether he is swimming TI or not.

TI does not have specific drills for kicking (I think. If there is, I don’t yet know about them J). Perhaps the biggest change that could be made now is to develop his awareness of how much he is kicking, then increase the amount appropriately through drills and application. Perhaps ask the swim coach for a suitable kicking drill and sets. However, what I then recommend is to perform the drill enough to develop the kick but then take the awareness and feelings from the kicking drill into his swimming, not just revert back to what he was doing.

Make sense?

From: Dunstan Bertschinger 

 

 Thanks Steve, for your thoughts on kicking.

I really enjoyed reading that.

 

For me the key point of difference with TI is that kick and pull

are co-ordinated into one whole body movement.

 

Some naturally talented swimmers will discover this ‘by accident’

but the TI drills are designed to teach it systematically. The key

factor here is that we teach a streamlined position on each side.

These are then linked with a weight transfer at the hips and

through the whole body. Using a kick board / pull bouy or band

isolates the kick / pull so if these drills are used it is essential to

do some work to re-integrate these movements into a whole

body context.

 

David if you are interested in finding out more about the TI

approach to the kick and how we teach it I recommend you

use the TI discussion forum via www.totalimmersion.net

 

Dunstan