Freestyle flutter kicking

     This time I will talk about the leg movement when practicing freestyle swimming. I know that some people may suggest to learn breaststroke first as the new swimmers but I feel more comfortable and easy starting with freestyle personally as it seems not that strength consuming than the breaststroke.

     After the floating skill that I've mentioned last week, we can try to add the kicking movement to accelerate  this time. New swimmers usually practice it by grabbing the side of the pool as they are not confident to practice in the middle pool but I won't suggest that! Here below are the main reasons:

1. Your upper body will keep holding above the horizontal level when you grab the side so the lower body will sink into the water.
2. If you grab the side, your head will hit the wall when you kick, then you will have a sense not to move forward so you lose the meaning of practice kicking.
3. You can't realize how far you can go with each kick and how much power you need each time as you limited yourself by grabbing the side and not to hit the wall.

     So, pick a kickboard and practice in the water depth that you can handle with, then hold the top edge of the kickboard to concentrate on practicing the alternate kick first. Here below is a video as the demonstration on holding the board and how to do the kick.

     

     As a remind, please make sure that you heels should move up on the water with every kick but not the whole feet so you can produce the large force to swim forward without using too much energy.

     After you can handle the lower body movement, try to hold the middle or bottom edge of the kickboard so your head can go into the water and practice the breathing and kicking at the same time. Every breath can usually hold for 2-3 seconds inside the water when you're doing the kick or you can adjust the time freely for your own preference but I'll suggest not hold it for too long as you may feel hard to take enough oxygen in the next breathe.

     If you forget how to perform the breathing technique in the water, go to here  http://waterworldbynessa.blogspot.hk/2014/09/overcome-your-fear-in-water.html to check out the skill again, enjoy your practice=)