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Swim drills and exercises for a stronger kick

Q: I’m an age grouper in triathlon but would really like to know your best swim drills/gym exercises to get a stronger kick.

I love this question as the answer could go off in many directions depending on what is causing the “weak” kick. And even more of a leading question is: as triathletes, do we even need a strong kick? There are schools of thought that say we should “save our legs” for the bike and run!

Let’s start with the basic physiology.

Swimmers need flexible ankles to kick well but cyclists and runners (especially) need a stiffness there to transfer power efficiently for the rebound portion of the stride. These are all competing requirements for the muscles in the ankles, which get less flexible and weaker as we age.

A weak kick is not necessarily “weak”. It could be inefficient, using your legs incorrectly, trying too hard or even being off balance in your swimming. This means there is no one cure to help your kick.

In the end, if you are using your arms to pull in the right direction, your body position is good and you are not using too much energy to swim, you are at that sweet spot as a triathlete. It has been proven time and time again that those who come out the water exhausted can’t bike or run to their potential and have a slow race.

Efficiency in the water is the highest priority. Be willing to lose 2 min in a long swim to gain 10-15 min on the bike!

Below are some of the most common causes of poor kicking.

1. Ankle flexibility

If you do kick drills and you stay almost still (or even go backwards) then you have very inflexible ankles and need to work out of the water to improve.

You can test this out by doing a drill I like to call Sea Anchors. Instead of swimming with nice flexible feet, pull your toes up towards your shins (dorsiflexion) and keep them like that. If it doesn’t make much difference to your speed, then you could do with a bit of work on flexibility. If you feel like you are swimming with anchors round your feet, then you have great ankle flexibility.

Exercises for ankle flexibility

These exercises should be done regularly (at least once a day) over a period of 6 months:

  • Foot circles with toes curled – 10 in each direction

  • Dorsiflexion/Plantarflexion – Dorsiflexion is pulling your toes up towards your shin. Plantarflexion is pointing your toes like in ballet. 10 times on each leg

  • Inverted Dorsiflexion/Plantarflexion – As previous exercise but point the toe towards the centre of the body. 10 times on each leg

  • Foot alphabets – Stand on one leg (this is good for balance as well) and with the foot that is in the air trace your name or the entire alphabet. This ensures you are moving the ankle in every possible direction

  • Forced Plantarflexion – Sit with your toes pointing out behind you. Do not let your toes point inwards. A progression is to sit on both at the same time and try to lie backwards. To start with you may only be able to do this for a second or two but try to extend that time to 30 sec

  • Towel Drags – Put your foot on a towel and use your toes to scrunch the towel towards you. 10 scrunches on each foot. Stop if you get cramp

2. Kick action – over knee bend

We all have seen how lovely and sleek the professional swimmers kick: relaxed ankles, horizontal body and the powerful kick coming from the hip.

But what does this mean? If you kick from the knee instead of the hip (over-bend the knee) your legs flap inefficiently and no matter how hard you kick, it doesn’t help.

Drills for hip-driven kick

  • Kick on your back instead of your front. Gravity will make it harder for the knee to bend out of place

  • Vertical Ballet Kick – In deep water, tread water by kicking from the hip. If you kick from the knee, you will sink. I’ve always found this drill a great incentive for people to learn kicking from the hip. Do 1 min then swim 50m, do another 1 min, swim 50m and a final 1 min

  • Over and Under drill – 25m deliberately kicking with a big slow kick, 25m kick with a tiny but fast kick, swim 50m trying to emulate nearer the small, quick kick

  • Fin Kick – Using long fins (the short stubby ones are no use at all in this drill) 25m kick, 25m swim with fins

  • Pull, Swim, Kick – 25m with pull buoy, 25m swim without aids, 25m kick (with or without kick board) with long fins. Do this an even number of times so all your kit ends up back where you started. Typically 4 or 6 times through

3. Breast stroke leg kick on breathing stroke

Even if you are a half decent swimmer, having a “funny” kick on the breathing stroke is common.

Over-rotation during breathing means you are off balance and you have to do a big kick or a semi-breast stroke kick to get your body back in balance. In this case there is no drill you can do to improve your kicking ability. The only thing you can do is to work on the over-rotation.

Drills for breathing rotation

Over-rotation is cured by curing head position. 99% of the time a swimmer over-rotates because they are looking forwards whilst they breathe. This causes water to stream down the face whilst trying to breathe so you have to turn even further to get your mouth out the water.

  • Chin to Shoulder Drill – By looking back and down (chin to shoulder) you get that classic one eye out the water with your mouth in the gap created by the bow wave on your head

  • Blue Line Drill – Another cue you can give yourself is “not looking at the ceiling”. But it’s hard to tell yourself not to do something so let’s turn this into a positive cue. Pick something on the side (a line round the wall or a row of seats) to focus on instead to prevent your head going too high. If you catch yourself looking at the ceiling, you know you got that head turn wrong and you probably are doing a huge and inefficient kick to correct

4. Kicktastic swimmers

Swimsmooth’s “Kicktastic” swimmers are so called because their arms don’t help them swim at all — it all comes from the legs. But still they are not very fast and they can only do a few lengths before they are exhausted. This is an easy fix (to say, a bit harder and longer to actually cure in the water).

Drill

Use a pull buoy and bands to switch your legs off and only use the arms. One length at a time if necessary. Once you can use your arms, you can reassess which part of your kick is inefficient and work on that.

The band is twisted into a figure of 8 and put round your ankles to prevent kicking. Practice this in your depth to start and if you struggle, turn on your back, open your knees to let the pull buoy pop out and then you can stand up.

Understanding kick patterns

  • Two beat leg kick (kicking for stability and rotation) – This is the sweetest spot you can get for triathletes. Kick comes from the toes, pulls your hip out the way for you to be able to pull a really strong stroke straight through. To get this, you need to work on rotation (which is a whole lesson in itself) but rotation should come from the hips, not the shoulders. If you get it right, your hand doesn’t have to be pushed into the water — it just slides passively into the right place so you are still resting and all your energy can be used on pulling

  • Four beat leg kick (kicking for propulsion) – Lots of good swimmers do this. If you are not doing 2 beat kick, you are most likely doing 4 beat kick

  • Six or even eight beat leg kick (kicktastic or maxed sprint swimming) – See kicktastic cure. If you are max swimming then there is nothing wrong with “going to the legs”. Rebecca Adlington could always be seen in her 800m swims starting to use her legs massively in the last 100m but as that took her less than a minute, I wouldn’t recommend you try to do it for more than the last length or two

Conclusion

No one aspect of swimming can be cured in isolation as it is usually a combination of issues that cause it. The above drills are a great starting point to help with your kick but nothing beats having a coach looking at you and telling you what you are doing wrong.

Most Tri clubs will put on sessions where you can get feedback and if your local club only does beasting squad sets, bring it up with the committee or head coach that you would love to see some technique sessions. You might only do 1700m in an hour but you will come away feeling much better about your technique.

Remember, as triathletes kicking or not kicking is not the point — the point is to come out the water relaxed so you don’t lose more time on the bike or run.

Happy Swimming

Coach T xxx