Ready to drop some serious weight on your underwater fly kick?
Today’s swim practice will have you working on the speed of your underwater dolphin kick, teaching you some breath control, and also coach you out further and longer underwater off your breakouts.
Keith Gast, head coach of the Brownsburg Swim Club, likes to use a cheap but highly effective tool to help teach his swimmers to kick further out of their walls–a simple rope that is draped over the lane ropes, providing a “finishing line” for underwaters.
Here is the Brownsburg “Ropes” set.
Take it away Coach Gast!
Underwater Fly Kick Work with Brownsburg Swim Club
Our main kick set throughout the season uses our “ropes.”
We have nylon rope strung through the middle of pool “noodles” with 1lb rubber weights attached to each end. We put the ropes at the halfway mark of the pool, with the noodle over the middle of the lane and the weights over each laneline to hold them in place. This creates a target for underwater kicking.
With the ropes in place we start with a breath control set, then move to speed sets:
1) A set designed to stretch breath control.
- Top group does 16 x 100 Free/Back/Fly at 1:15
- Group 2 does 13 x 100 @ 1:30
- Group 3 does 10 x 100 @ 2:00
- Group 4 does 20 x 50 @ 1:00
- Group 5 does 20 x 25 @ 1:00
The goal is to progress to a higher group each week or every couple of weeks.
2) Next we move to a set of 25s to work on speed/strength all together with the ropes–
- 8 x 25 with fins @ :30
- 8 x 25 with fins @ :45
- 8 x 25 with fins @ 1:00
- Easy Swim
- 8 x 25 off the blocks @ 1:00 sprint choice
3) We randomly add ropes to regular workouts (200s and under) during any practice. Especially on the back and fly lanes.
A big thank you to Coach Gast for stopping by to share this workout with us. You can follow Coach Gast on Twitter here, or stay up to date with the Brownsburg Swim Club at their official website.
More Kick Sets:
- How to Improve Your Kick with Mesa Aquatic Club. Paul Smith, owner and head coach with MAC shares a couple sets, as well as a video demonstration of the “Pushback” kick drill.
- How to Develop an Unstoppable Freestyle Kick. Everything you ever wanted to know about developing a thunderous flutter kick.
- 21 Epic Workouts for Competitive Swimmers. Looking to inject some new ideas into your training? Here are 15 workouts from some of the top swimmers and programs in the world.
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