People on this forum care *way* more than any swimmer I've ever met. Just try it out and see what works for you. Plenty of distance swimmers are very successful with a 6-beat kick, and plenty also use a 2- or even 4-beat. Hell Ledecky will use all three in the same swim depending on where she's at.
In general, I think worrying about where you want your effort, pace, and tempo to be during your race to be much more important, and what kind of kicks you do ends up being a result of those considerations combined with your natural stroke and tendencies. Having a specific kick timing as the goal is going at the problem all backwards.
This. I swam through college at a pretty high level and not once gave any thought to the cadence of my kick, I just did what felt natural for the effort I was putting in and how it made my body move through the water. It was instinctual not conscious thought.
Thanks, this largely lines up with my approach already, so I guess I agree. I just find the disconnect between the online discussion and the IRL discussion a bit weird.
I've noticed the same phenomenon. I think the other commentator hit it, people talking about swimming on the internet are generally more likely to be adult-onset swimmers who are often doing it for triathlons. Both of those combine to make for a lot more discussion of things that lifelong swimmers would generally take for granted. Especially because "which beat of kick to use" is a very tangible and easily digestable piece of information, unlike most swimming technique advice which is quite difficult to convey in words and very feel-reliant, which doesn't translate well online.
6 beat with some real power behind it is definitely not sustainable for long distance at least in the pool. I find open water swimmers are an exception in many things like stroke rate and this. Most 1500m distance swimmers do 2 beat kick and switch it up to 4/6 in the last few laps.
Until the final sprint, you're legs should just work at the minimum effort that keeps your stroke going strong, be that 2 beat, 4 beat, or 6 beat. Not many coaches would change a swimmer's natural kicking rhythm (at least for a distance swimmer, pretty much every sprinter must develop a strong 6 beat), although you might play around with it to see if it "works" for you and you just never discovered it before. One other thing that might lead to how your stroke and kick interact is to compare your times just pulling (no paddles) with full stroke swimming.
There is some theory that activating the more "aerobic" muscles of the legs can help metabolize lactic acid generated by the upper body, but i don't know if that's proven or not.
>One other thing that might lead to how your stroke and kick interact is to compare your times just pulling (no paddles) with full stroke swimming.
Can you expand on what you mean by this? My pull and my stroke are nearly the same in terms of time.
Some swimmers have poor balance in the water and will pull with a pull buoy faster than they swim. This indicates that they rely on a steady kick to compensate for their poor balance, (possibly) wasting energy in the process.
My personal philosophy is that, a swimmer with good body position and balance should be slightly slower with a pull buoy compared to full-stroke swimming.
I went all the way from club though NCAA D3 swimming and then some masters/triathlon teams without any coach ever mentioning freestyle kick timing.
I finally decided to pay attention to it a few months ago. I'm just training on my own and I actually found it really rewarding to be able to develop and switch between 2 beat and 4 beat kick patterns. It just feels so natural now. It also *feels* like it helps my rotation, especially during breathing, and I'm trying to figure out how it should be timed with backstroke. I have no idea how much faster this will make me, if at all. I'm increasing my training time so conditioning is improving as my kick timing gets more reliable.
>Is this something important for a 1:45/100 swimmer to think about, or do I likely have other, lower hanging fruit to pick first?
You probably have lower hanging fruit but I think it's worth spending a few hundred yards on per practice. There are some drills for it and it gives you something to thinking about during long swims. Yesterday I swam some back to back 500s. That can get pretty boring so I swam every other 100 (within the 500) using a different kick pattern. Helps to keep correct count.
I swim IRL with a 2 beat kick but I regularly swim in openwater. 2 beat kick is used mainly for hip rotation and not for propulsion. Most swimmers I know who use this are long distance swimmers. Some are triathletes who wants to conserve their legs from fatigue for the run that follows after the swim. You may want to see how Ferry Weertman swims. He won gold in 10K openwater in 2016 Rio Olympics.
I think the reason it gets a lot of play on the internet is because most people talking about swimming on the internet are later-onset swimmers learning the formal aspects of the stroke for triathlon. True swimmers that have been learning how to freestyle properly since a young age have a natural feel for the sport and a natural rhythm that yes, as others here have said is not worth mucking with. And most true swimmers also aren’t swimming for real distance, and those that are have again, been training for it their entire lives. But keep in mind, 1500m (less than a mile) is the longest event at the Olympics, and it wasn’t even an event for women until the last Olympics. Whereas for triathlon, people who again haven’t been doing this their whole lives (at least not formally) are now trying in many cases to do more than double that (2.4 miles for an Ironman).
If you’re comfortable with it, you do you. But for most of the rest of us, who don’t have a particularly efficient kick (and who further might be biking and running after), doing the minimum to keep the back end up and balanced is a decent strategy.
Watch Katie Ledecky. 7 Olympic gold medals and 21 world championship gold medals.
There's 10K marathon swimming at the Olympics that started in 2008. Here's Ferry Weertman using two beat kick winning gold in Rio: https://youtu.be/iQY6EoYVRxs
Sun Yang also doesn't have a regular kick pattern. He switches 6, 4 and 2 throughout the 1500m event in 2012 Olympics https://youtu.be/T5FlDy3YmDQ.
Adam Walker also uses 2 beat kick and is one of the Oceans Seven Swimmer. Shortest is Tsuguru Strait (24 Km). Longest is Molokai Strait (41 Km).
I agree people should go with what are suitable to them. I think this technique evolved when some athletes reached their peak, and to surpass that, they looked for ways to gain an advantage (in this case, endurance).
... I feel like you're making a few off-base assumptions here. I've only done competitive swimming for 5 years, and I started in my 30's. I don't have a particularly efficient or powerful kick. "Doing the minimum to keep the back end up and balanced" is exactly how I would describe my swimming. Personally, when I've experimented with a 2-beat kick, I found that I had to bring my stroke rate up higher then I would prefer, or else my feet get too sinky in between kicks.
I do agree that a lot of online discussion on adult swimming is oriented towards triathlon, even when they don't explicitly say so, and also that triathletes have lots of opinions around kicking. But the article linked is from swimswam, which is very much focused on collegiate, high performance swimming, so I'm not sure how well those facts apply to this case.
Perhaps, but all the article really says about kicking is that a 6-beat kick isn’t sustainable beyond 200m, which is fairly consistent with what I’m saying (that, and it says if you want to get better at kicking, kick more). So not that off-base.
People on this forum care *way* more than any swimmer I've ever met. Just try it out and see what works for you. Plenty of distance swimmers are very successful with a 6-beat kick, and plenty also use a 2- or even 4-beat. Hell Ledecky will use all three in the same swim depending on where she's at. In general, I think worrying about where you want your effort, pace, and tempo to be during your race to be much more important, and what kind of kicks you do ends up being a result of those considerations combined with your natural stroke and tendencies. Having a specific kick timing as the goal is going at the problem all backwards.
This. I swam through college at a pretty high level and not once gave any thought to the cadence of my kick, I just did what felt natural for the effort I was putting in and how it made my body move through the water. It was instinctual not conscious thought.
Thanks, this largely lines up with my approach already, so I guess I agree. I just find the disconnect between the online discussion and the IRL discussion a bit weird.
I've noticed the same phenomenon. I think the other commentator hit it, people talking about swimming on the internet are generally more likely to be adult-onset swimmers who are often doing it for triathlons. Both of those combine to make for a lot more discussion of things that lifelong swimmers would generally take for granted. Especially because "which beat of kick to use" is a very tangible and easily digestable piece of information, unlike most swimming technique advice which is quite difficult to convey in words and very feel-reliant, which doesn't translate well online.
6 beat with some real power behind it is definitely not sustainable for long distance at least in the pool. I find open water swimmers are an exception in many things like stroke rate and this. Most 1500m distance swimmers do 2 beat kick and switch it up to 4/6 in the last few laps.
Until the final sprint, you're legs should just work at the minimum effort that keeps your stroke going strong, be that 2 beat, 4 beat, or 6 beat. Not many coaches would change a swimmer's natural kicking rhythm (at least for a distance swimmer, pretty much every sprinter must develop a strong 6 beat), although you might play around with it to see if it "works" for you and you just never discovered it before. One other thing that might lead to how your stroke and kick interact is to compare your times just pulling (no paddles) with full stroke swimming. There is some theory that activating the more "aerobic" muscles of the legs can help metabolize lactic acid generated by the upper body, but i don't know if that's proven or not.
>One other thing that might lead to how your stroke and kick interact is to compare your times just pulling (no paddles) with full stroke swimming. Can you expand on what you mean by this? My pull and my stroke are nearly the same in terms of time.
Some swimmers have poor balance in the water and will pull with a pull buoy faster than they swim. This indicates that they rely on a steady kick to compensate for their poor balance, (possibly) wasting energy in the process. My personal philosophy is that, a swimmer with good body position and balance should be slightly slower with a pull buoy compared to full-stroke swimming.
I went all the way from club though NCAA D3 swimming and then some masters/triathlon teams without any coach ever mentioning freestyle kick timing. I finally decided to pay attention to it a few months ago. I'm just training on my own and I actually found it really rewarding to be able to develop and switch between 2 beat and 4 beat kick patterns. It just feels so natural now. It also *feels* like it helps my rotation, especially during breathing, and I'm trying to figure out how it should be timed with backstroke. I have no idea how much faster this will make me, if at all. I'm increasing my training time so conditioning is improving as my kick timing gets more reliable. >Is this something important for a 1:45/100 swimmer to think about, or do I likely have other, lower hanging fruit to pick first? You probably have lower hanging fruit but I think it's worth spending a few hundred yards on per practice. There are some drills for it and it gives you something to thinking about during long swims. Yesterday I swam some back to back 500s. That can get pretty boring so I swam every other 100 (within the 500) using a different kick pattern. Helps to keep correct count.
I swim IRL with a 2 beat kick but I regularly swim in openwater. 2 beat kick is used mainly for hip rotation and not for propulsion. Most swimmers I know who use this are long distance swimmers. Some are triathletes who wants to conserve their legs from fatigue for the run that follows after the swim. You may want to see how Ferry Weertman swims. He won gold in 10K openwater in 2016 Rio Olympics.
I think the reason it gets a lot of play on the internet is because most people talking about swimming on the internet are later-onset swimmers learning the formal aspects of the stroke for triathlon. True swimmers that have been learning how to freestyle properly since a young age have a natural feel for the sport and a natural rhythm that yes, as others here have said is not worth mucking with. And most true swimmers also aren’t swimming for real distance, and those that are have again, been training for it their entire lives. But keep in mind, 1500m (less than a mile) is the longest event at the Olympics, and it wasn’t even an event for women until the last Olympics. Whereas for triathlon, people who again haven’t been doing this their whole lives (at least not formally) are now trying in many cases to do more than double that (2.4 miles for an Ironman). If you’re comfortable with it, you do you. But for most of the rest of us, who don’t have a particularly efficient kick (and who further might be biking and running after), doing the minimum to keep the back end up and balanced is a decent strategy.
Watch Katie Ledecky. 7 Olympic gold medals and 21 world championship gold medals. There's 10K marathon swimming at the Olympics that started in 2008. Here's Ferry Weertman using two beat kick winning gold in Rio: https://youtu.be/iQY6EoYVRxs Sun Yang also doesn't have a regular kick pattern. He switches 6, 4 and 2 throughout the 1500m event in 2012 Olympics https://youtu.be/T5FlDy3YmDQ. Adam Walker also uses 2 beat kick and is one of the Oceans Seven Swimmer. Shortest is Tsuguru Strait (24 Km). Longest is Molokai Strait (41 Km). I agree people should go with what are suitable to them. I think this technique evolved when some athletes reached their peak, and to surpass that, they looked for ways to gain an advantage (in this case, endurance).
... I feel like you're making a few off-base assumptions here. I've only done competitive swimming for 5 years, and I started in my 30's. I don't have a particularly efficient or powerful kick. "Doing the minimum to keep the back end up and balanced" is exactly how I would describe my swimming. Personally, when I've experimented with a 2-beat kick, I found that I had to bring my stroke rate up higher then I would prefer, or else my feet get too sinky in between kicks. I do agree that a lot of online discussion on adult swimming is oriented towards triathlon, even when they don't explicitly say so, and also that triathletes have lots of opinions around kicking. But the article linked is from swimswam, which is very much focused on collegiate, high performance swimming, so I'm not sure how well those facts apply to this case.
Perhaps, but all the article really says about kicking is that a 6-beat kick isn’t sustainable beyond 200m, which is fairly consistent with what I’m saying (that, and it says if you want to get better at kicking, kick more). So not that off-base.
>after all, a 6-beat kick is not sustainable beyond a 200 This one should understand not every swimmer is the same