Swimming Pic of the Week - April 25, 2008

Wiken...I think you meant the SECOND kick. Am I correct?

Setup efficiently that is.

Downward orientation? At some point your feet are going to snap downward and not really sure how you can tell that it is too much at a downward orientation with a still photo. If she is more of an undulating 200fly stroke her kick amplitude and body position is going to be more dynamic versus the sprint, flatter orientation. Example: Phelps versus Crocker.

Not sure what you mean by backwards orientation.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpfy0Z6xPtY...

watch ian crockers fly, where is the explosion of air going on the kick? It is going down, the reason it looks like his is going backwards is because he is moving so fast. I can pretty much gaurantee you she is not moving that fast. Have you analyzed your stroke from a side view under water?

Plus you always kick down, the air will always go down in some way, shape or form.

What I was trying to get at without saying is that you can try all you want to "think" about a backwards orientation, but you can't do it IMO (Only Sprinters thread comes to mind). You are still kicking down and with ankle flexibility you will a get a much quicker snap in the kick. And yes if you're kick is smaller and quicker your splash pattern will look more towards the back because you are swimming with a much quicker tempo and shallower body amplitude.

Honestly, the phrase you are using is getting in the way for me. As a coach when I hear backwards orientation on the fly kick I think too much from the knees and pushing back with your lower legs more so than a fluid body movement generating the kick from the hips/abs. For me, that type of kick will result more in what we see in the picture. The dolphin kick is generated from the abs and hip movement. I would describe it more as a smaller, quicker kick and with a shallower body amplitude, the kick in relation to the entire stroke.

Misty not a full speed tells me that her kick is not as forceful as if she were at full speed, that the splash maybe bigger. Like Crockers.

This is my last comment on this.

If you had read my post completely I told you where I feel our problem is, your choice of words and what they mean to me. Whether or not her kick is too deep (not downward, all kicking is down and up and all kicking is done to push water behind us, i.e. backward) is up to her type of butterfly and her ability/flexibility. If you are arguing to use the phrases you do, you can stop. I was trying to explain where the problem was coming from and yet you continue to argue that your "backward oriented" kick being superior.

I never intended to argue about what kick is better, infact I feel power-balanced kicks are better suited for a flatter sprint-oriented fly and a kick with bigger amplitude is more suited for a more undulating, distance-oriented fly. Its all about stroke type and fluidity.

The fact maybe that her fly stroke is too much of an up and down motion/orientation, making her swim more vertically than horizontally. This could be from a number of issues, which is why we see a kick that is deeper in the water. To merely work on the kick alone is not going to fix things, you have to look at the middle of the body and see where the problems begin. Ask why is the kick so deep, don't make assumptions that the kick is "bad" or "wrong". She maybe doing that because, as I said earlier, her stroke inefficiencies maybe causing this type of kick to get back to the surface to breathe/take the next stroke.

Stroke correction begins with imbalances in the torso and work there way out to the extremities.

The swimmer is doing butterfly, and I don't take the pictures off.