There is a truism in all sports that bears repeating on every pool deck.
That is: It all starts with the legs. Sounds ridiculously simple, of course.
There is no baseball or golf swing, no basketball or hockey shot, that
doesn't start with the lower body. And no need to mention the staggering
obviousness of that statement when it comes to football and soccer... In the
water, it's no different. Your legs are your engines; when they're out of
gas you sputter to a stop.
The fact is, there are no world-class athletes out there without powerful,
coordinated lower body strength. Translation for young swimmers out there:
You cannot be a great swimmer until you are a great kicker. So, why is it
that on countless teams, kick sets are relegated to a post-warm-up,
pre-main-set limbo? A nice respite of garbage yards, as swimmers relax on
their boards, splash through a thousand or so half-heartedly, yank on the
lane ropes, and chat happily with their lane neighbours. This is not
kicking. This is called wasting your and your coach's time. A true kick set
should leave you panting, red-faced, unable to speak - and it should have
the importance of a killer main set.
In recent years, the paramount power of the kick set has gained new
traction. I understand that in spots like Tucson and Ann Arbor, kicking has
been known to take up over 30% of every workout. How has that worked out for
them? Maybe take a look at the 200 freestylers who've come out of the
Universities of Arizona and Michigan the last few years... Think those legs
might come in handy when they flip for home?
Recently, one such kicking savant from Michigan suggested I write about
these kick sets. Former All-American and National Teamer, Chris DeJong,
relished these sets and he spoke about the kickboard battles waged among his
Wolverine teammates.
"It got intense," he remembers. "Me, Vanderkaay, Vendt when he was with us
in '08, we really got into it. The standard was breaking five minutes in a
400 kick - long course. We could do it, and we heard Ian Thorpe was one of
the only other guys ever to break that barrier."
I asked about what happened at the walls - any lane rope yanking in and out?
"We allowed ourselves one pull, no rope, then a flip turn, that kept it
fair," he recalls. Well, maybe not always. Coach Bob Bowman would become
famously infuriated as he watched the greatest of them all, Mr. Phelps,
consistently "exert his independence" by pulling on that rope at every wall.
But if you don't think he took these kick sets seriously too, maybe you
haven't watched his devastating last wall of his 400 IM... That doesn't come
from pure discipline alone.
It's interesting, when we learn to swim, we learn to kick first. At three or
four years old, young arms are often too weak to clear the surface with a
proper pull. Yet those legs are already driving kids up and down the pool.
Draped over a barbell or grasping their first kickboard, that's where they
first learn mobility. The first lesson is clear - learning to swim is
learning to kick.
Then they'll grow a bit, their arms will get strong enough to pull, they'll
learn the strokes. If those strokes come together and the competitive
instinct kicks in, maybe they'll join the team. Then, the hours will
increase, the yardage going way up, and suddenly it's all about the arms.
You figure out how to lazily two-beat your way through another 3000 yard
main set, figure out that the easiest way to crank out the yards is with a
pull-buoy and paddles.
And you ignore the legs at your own peril. Because when you turn for home,
in a close one, a big one, with making a cut or a team on the line, don't
ask your arms for help. They're cooked. It's time to go to the legs.
Brian Sweeney
+353 (0)86 8200084
Skype: SweeneyBrianJ
www.teamtsc.net
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