Crawl | The Path to Effortless Flutter Kick Crawl for True Underwater Bliss for Adult Swimmers [2/4]

Hello everyone.

I am Coach Mori, the director of the Masters swimming team, Torafugu.

Following up on the last session, this is part 2/4 of the path to an effortless flutter kick crawl to help you find true happiness in the water.

The other day, I watched a pastry chef whip heavy cream with a hand mixer.

The trick is to "mix it in a swirling motion without applying too much force."

When a professional pastry chef does it, it looks cool and is so efficient, isn't it?

When I do it, I get tired right away... (laughs)

Ah, this is kind of like a flutter kick...

That's what I ended up thinking (laughs).

It's an occupational hazard, I suppose... 🤣

Now, this time we are focusing on "relaxing the tension in your flutter kick."

・Relax your ankles

First, let's relax your ankles.

Here is a question for you!

Q.
“Where exactly are the muscles that move the ankles??”

If I get into the details,
it will get complicated,
so to put it in one word...

A.
The “calves”

is the answer!

To be precise,
you also use the “shin muscles,” but
when it comes to the muscles that are most prone to tension
and cramping during a flutter kick,
it is the “calves.”

Therefore,
first, let’s relax your calves!

To relax your calves,
if you perform the following
warm-up exercise called
a shaking kick,
I think your calves
will become nice and loose!

・Let the water hit your ankles, not the tops of your feet

People often say,
“Let the water hit the tops of your feet!”
but I feel that
many people end up
putting extra tension in their ankles
when they do that.

So,
the image that helps you relax the most
is “letting it hit your ankles.”

Please use this
as a reference,
and let’s steadily release the tension in your ankles.

・Loosen your knee and hip joints

“Don’t bend your knees during a flutter kick!”

I wonder how many of you
have been taught that?

I am one of those people who was taught that too.

This “don’t bend your knees” advice
is actually
advice from coaches to help you
“move your flutter kick from your hip joints.”

However,
due to daily desk work and the like,
the hip joints have become stiff,
so this movement is a bit difficult for adults...

If you are going to do that,
it is more effective to
loosen them up by moving from the hip joints
using the shaking kick mentioned earlier.

Once you can relax your ankles,
the next step is to loosen your "knee joints and hip joints."

What you need to be conscious of
is very simple!

It is
"to flutter kick while shrinking your height by about 10cm."

For details,
please see this past blog post below

・Searching for a kick you can perform easily for 20 seconds

Now,
once you have released the tension in your ankles, knee joints, and hip joints
and understand the comfortable kicking posture,
next, let's explore the "amount of force"
for a kick you can perform easily for a long time.

The method for this is also simple:
place your hands on the wall and do wall kicks for 20 seconds.

This exercise is
very simple, but
there are four conditions.

① Palms on the pool wall (do not grip).

2. You may breathe as many times as you like (you may hold onto the wall at that time).

3. Kick in a way that tires you out as little as possible.

4. But keep generating enough propulsion so that your hands do not leave the wall.

That is all.

After doing 20 seconds of relaxed wall kicking and
you stop feeling out of breath,
let's increase it to 30 seconds... then 40 seconds.

After that, try swimming
about 10m of no-breath crawl using that relaxed, energy-saving kick!

Then,
you will be able to
keep flutter kicking more easily than ever before.

・Summary

These are the tips
for continuing to flutter kick with ease.

However!

There is one more problem here!

That is,

“the phenomenon where your kick stops
when you rotate your arms in the crawl”

is it.

I will introduce
the cause and the solution
in the next blog post and beyond.

...Actually,
the “2-beat crawl,” which saves energy by reducing the number of kicks,
is not a formal crawl.

In kids' swimming schools,
the criteria for passing the crawl test for children
also includes the item 'kicking without stopping'.

I hope you will practice the exercises I introduce on this blog,
master the crawl while keeping a sustainable kick going,
and be able to swim
a 'proper adult crawl'!

Please look forward to
the next installment.

The book I wrote
for Asahi Shimbun Publications
has been reprinted (total of 11,000 copies)!

If you want to know more
about swimming in an easy-to-understand way,
please pick up a copy at a bookstore.

⬇︎You can read a preview here.