Crawl | A slightly unusual balance game to release tension in your knees during flutter kicks

Flutter kicking is tiring, isn't it...

It's a common swimming experience that
just seeing a coach bring out a kickboard
during practice makes people feel down (lol).
However, at the pool, you might sometimes see

a kick master who has been doing
kickboard kicks (flutter kicks) for a long, long time.
(And they don't even look out of breath...)
To those of you who are about to give up, thinking,
"That person must be a different species than me!"

Wait a minute!?
The joints used in flutter kicks are
the hip joint, knee joint, and ankle joint.

If there is "tension" in those joints,
the fatigue of the flutter kick will multiply
by two, then four, then eight.

So this time,
as a way to loosen the three joints during flutter kicks,
I will introduce a practice method for the "knee joint,"
which is a surprisingly common pitfall.

Single-leg balance game

Before releasing tension in the knee joint,
there is one thing you must be conscious of
and practice.

That is,
"Can you maintain balance with one leg bent?"
First, treat it like a game,

and try to see if you can maintain underwater balance
in a "posture like when you stretch your front thigh."

⬆︎ Float in a posture like this for 3 to 5 seconds,
and see if you can maintain balance...

⬇︎ If you can do it, try the other side too...

Once you can maintain balance
in this knee-bent posture,
the tension in your knee joints will naturally release.

To explain the reason simply,
people who have tension in their knee joints
cannot maintain balance
in a posture with one knee bent,
so they "cannot bend their knees well."

For me, who was raised being told "don't bend your knees during flutter kicks,"
and for all you veteran masters swimmers,
kicking with bent knees... is something
I think of as "just bending the knees."

To be precise,
"bending the knees while maintaining balance"
is the correct answer.

After trying that
"single-knee-bent balance water game,"
please try doing flutter kicks
while bending your knees and maintaining balance.

I'm sure
your kicking will become much easier.

In addition,
the "single-leg kick practice method" that follows this,
and practice methods to release tension
in the "hip joint" and "ankle joint"
have been published in past blogs and YouTube videos.

Please take a look at those as well.
May the future of your flutter kicks be bright!

Thanks to you all,
the book I wrote
published by Asahi Shimbun Publications
has been reprinted (total of 11,000 copies)!

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

⬇︎ You can read a preview here.