Freestyle kick and body streamline position.

The kick during freestyle should be something natural that you do without thinking about it.

To improve your freestyle kick to the point where you no longer have to think about it, you need to perfect it by doing drills every day, and the best way is to separate the kick and the stroke, to do that, you will need a kickboard.

If you don’t have a kickboard, you can do flutter kick on your back.

The first you need to focus, and this is something you have probably heard before is the ankle flexibility.

Here it is shown the difference between kicking on dorsiflexion and planta flexion.

As you can see, he doesn’t go forward at all when his ankles are flexed like this:

As soon as he changes them, he starts moving forward:

This means that the ankles can act as a parachute or as fins, depending on your flexibility.

Here is a good ankle stretch to prepare your ankles for a better kick:

One problem with the kick board is that it puts your head out of line, and therefore the legs can sink a little. This is not a natural position of your head when you swim

So, try kicking with kickboard like this:

You can put up your head to breathe like in breaststroke or butterfly, you will be doing your neck and your freestyle position a favor.

You can also simply kick on your back with a streamline.

Finally, you will notice that the kick is not wide, the wider the kick the more effort you will need to move forward, so, focus on doing small kicks, trying to bend your knees very little.

The hips will move a little because this is where the legs will initiate the movement.

Swim fast!

By Mauricio Uranga & Emiliano Mora

Last updated May. 04, 2022