Freestyle Kick Technique - Velocity Meter
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- čas přidán 10. 09. 2024
- Age group swimmer Marissa demonstrates three freestyle kick techniques using our Velocity Meter technology. We see many swimmers that bend the knee too much and some too little. Getting the right amount of knee bend in your freestyle kick is critically important as over or under bending the knee creates a huge difference in your efficiency. Find out which technique is fastest and how much knee bend is optimal.
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D1 kick driven freestyler here. something you're missing is that the optimal angle is velocity dependent. 60 degrees is optimal for kicking with a board or in a streamline (low V situations) but becomes too tall at higher speeds. when you reach hull speed in freestyle, the very best are straighter than 60 degrees. relative to the water however, the kick is identical. You should repeat these trials with a rope pulling the swimmers at various velocities to test that dependency.
This is a great point.
You're right , Ethan.
You are right. The ideal angle of knee bend is speed dependent. However, we have tested many elite swimmers at race speed (over 2 m/sec) and found that the knee bend does not differ significantly from the knee bend during the kick. Around 60 degrees still seems to work at top speeds. Usually, one of the three down kicks per cycle is stronger with more knee bend than the the other two. We call it the surge kick.
In addition, the drag caused by the knee bend is lessened to some degree by kicking on surface, compared to kicking underwater. So is the propulsion by losing the ability to play off of the foot vortex on the way up. Most of the propulsion occurs in freestyle kick as the two feet pass each other through the body vortex.
Below is the transcription of this video.
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In freestyle kicking, we found, in swimmers at The Race Club that have good ankle flexibility, bending the knees to around 60 degrees prior to the down kick seems to work the best.
Marisa is a good example of a swimmer that uses this technique, where she reaches about 66 degrees of knee bend prior to each down kick to arrive at a fastest kicking speed.
With swimmers that don't have a lot of ankle flexibility, over-bending the knees during the freestyle kick is a way to generate more propulsion.
We call this technique the 50 yard field goal kick, as the swimmer tries to really muscle the down kicks to increase the speed.
By using this over-bending technique, the foot will come all out of the water during the up kick.
The problem with this commonly seen technique is at the active drawing the lower legs further forward and quickly,
results in significant deceleration with the swimmer slowing down prior to the next down kick.
Over-bending the knees is not an efficient way of freestyle kicking.
Occasionally we find swimmers that do not bend the knees enough during the freestyle kick.
With this under-bending technique the foot never breaks the surface of the water.
With too little knee bend, a swimmer cannot generate enough propulsion from the kicking motion to reach the maximum speed.
For the ideal freestyle kick;
1. Increase your plantar flexibility of the ankles.
2. work hard on the simultaneously down kicks and up kicks.
3. and try to keep the maximum knee bend to around 60 degrees during the up kick.
아래는 이 동영상 음성 설명을 한글로 번역한 겁니다.
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발목 유연성이 좋은 우리 레이쓰 클럽 수영인들을 관찰한 결과 우리는 자유형 차기에서, 아래로 차기 직전 무릎 굽힘 각도가 약 60도 정도인 것이 가장 효과적임을 알아냈습니다.
마리사는 이 기술을 사용하는 좋은 예입니다. 그녀는 매번 아래로 차기 직전 무릎 굽힘 각도가 66도여서 차는 속도가 가장 빠른 속도에 도달합니다.
발목 유연성이 그다지 좋지 않은 수영인들의 경우, 더 큰 추진력을 발생시키기 위한 방법으로, 자유형 차기를 할 때 무릎을 과하게 굽힙니다.
우리는 이 기술을 50야드 *골 차기라 부릅니다. 왜냐하면 해당 수영인은 정말로 아래로 차는 동작에 힘을 가해 속도를 키우려 애쓰니까요.
(*미식축구에서 상대편 골대를 향해 공을 차는 기술)
이렇게 무릎을 과하게 굽히는 기술을 사용하면, 위로 차는 동작에서 그 발이 물 밖으로 완전히 나오게 됩니다.
자주 보이는 이 기술의 문제점은 허벅지를 더욱 앞으로 빠르게 당기는 데 있습니다,
결국 상당한 양으로 감속하게 되어, 수영인은 다음번 아래로 차기 직전에 느려지게 됩니다.
자유형 차기에서 무릎을 과하게 굽히는 것은 효과적인 방법이 아닙니다.
가끔 우리는 자유형 차기 동작에서 무릎을 충분히 굽히지 않는 수영인들을 보기도 합니다.
이렇게 무릎을 덜 굽히는 기술에서는, 발이 수면을 전혀 째지 않습니다.
무릎을 과도하게 덜 굽히면, 수영인은 차기 동작으로 최고 속도에 도달할 만큼 충분한 추진력을 발생시킬 수 없습니다.
자유형 차기를 아주 잘하고 싶다면;
1. 발목에서 발바닥 쪽으로 굽히는 유연성을 늘리십시오.
2. 아래로 그리고 위로 동시에 차는 기술을 열심히 연마하십시오.
3. 위로 차기에서 최대 무릎 굽힘 각도를 약 60도 정도로 유지하려고 노력하십시오.
is it true that you need a strong and powerful kick for getting faster? because some of my swim team mates are kinda bad at kicking but when swimming they are faster than me (i'm a kinda good kicker, mostly faster than my team mates). my own experience is when i started to doing more strechcord stuff, my arms got stronger and my speed doesn't decrease that much (i took 1 month off training). soo yea i wanna know ur opinionn :)
The shorter the freestyle race, the more important is the kick propulsion. In longer swims like the 1500, we see swimmers use very soft 6 beat kicks or 2 beat kicks. But in the 50 sprint, the kick is all in! If you want to sprint fast, you'd better build a strong kick.
@@theraceclub yes i'm aware of that but most my team mates doesn't use kick that much when swimming and still they are faster than me. and what confused me the most is i'm quite good when using fins (either swimming or kicking), the most difference is when kicking, my 50 all out kick no fins is around 48-50 seconds long course and my 50 all out kick with fins is around 33-34 seconds long course, which is a hugee difference, and i still don't know why (i started to think i need move to finswimming hahah)
Is there an optimal angle for angle flexibility? I have extremely flexible ankles ( can go past 180 degree believe it or not) and a ~52 second 100y backstroke kick. I would imagine that the optimal angle would be 180?
On the down kick, the more perpendicular the foot (and bigger) moving down through the body's vortex the greater the propulsion. That requires plantar flexibility and inversion of the ankle.
So as a swim coach, I’ve only ever taught swimmers to kick “up and down” for dolphin kick. For flutter, the down is obvious, so I’ve always glossed over it and focused on telling them to “lift the water to the surface” as a good up kick can produce a powerful down kick pulse it leads to a quicker kick cycle. However I have a good number of swimmers who don’t let their knees bend. Should I also be reinforcing the down kick in flutter? I’m not 100% sure how that will help those who don’t bend their knees (or those who bend their knees too much, especially when on their back) , but I’d love to be able explain it to them a little more
Hey Stephanie, Swimmers can get propulsion from both up and down kicks. The feet (and back of the leg on up kick) play off the vortices to generate propulsion. In free kick, we see a smaller propulsion as the feet initiate the up or down kicks, playing off the foot vortex. Then we see a greater propulsion as the feet pass each other through the body vortex. All swimmers bend their knees before the down kick. The question is how much? That seems to be around 60 degrees-enough that the foot breaks the surface. If your swimmers feet are underwater, they are not bending enough and not going as fast as they could. Hope this helps. Check out our videos on Lane 3 at www.theraceclub.com.
Hi Gerry, hope this finds you and your family well. Another great video, really enjoyed the detail orientation and your instruction. Question at the end of the video you mentioned optimal 60° bend in the up kick, did you mean to say on the ‘down kick’ Like you mentioned in the beginning of the video? Thank you again, and be well
Hi William. The ideal bend of the knee, prior to the down kick, seems to be in the range of 55-75 degrees. This bend occurs at the end of the up kick..so it is a bit confusing. Hope this helps.
@@theraceclub You clarified that perfectly, thank you kindly Gary. Hope you’re doing OK these days, wow what a time.
Greatly informative video! Everything is clear when I see the three different cases with real video clips. But the red-colored angle illustrations are a little bit confusing.
91 (or 90) degree angle is OK. but 66 and 53 degrees are measured from ...????
I think the red-colored illustration line on femur bone should be extended to the ankle and the 66 degree (or 53) angle should be measured from the shin line (__/__),
not from the femur line (__/ ). Thanks as always for all your helpful videos.
Or, if it is said 114 or 127 degrees instead of 66 or 53, would it be easier to understand ...? ...
One can measure angles from either direction, but knee flexion is normally measured from a line with the thighs to the line of the lower legs. One can consider that the line is zero degrees (like we do) or 180 degrees.
My kick is bad I’m 55
Bad back and all. 😭
Keep working on it!
@@theraceclub thank you
Gym and working on my imbalance
Hip and glutes.
Leg press. My weak side is my left side. I do 2/1 With legs etc.
Right side is double stronger.
@@theraceclub I’m 55 in October.
29.7 50 LCM free push start this morning after 3.5km.
Diving for me....good days and bad days. On how stiff I am.