The kick during freestyle should be something natural that you do without thinking about it. To improve your freestyle kick to the point where you no longer have to think about it you need to perfect it by doing drills everyday. The best way is to separate the kick and the stroke. To do that you will need a kickboard. If you don’t have a kickboard you can do flutter kick on your back.

The first thing you need to focus and this is something you have probably heard me say before is the ankle flexibility. Here I show you the difference between kicking on dorsiflexion and plantar flexion. As you can see here I don’t go forward at all when my ankles are flexed like this. As soon as I change them I start moving forward. This means that the ankles can act as a parachute or as fins, depending on your flexibility.

One problem with the kick board is that it puts your head out of line, and therefore the legs can sink a little. This is not a natural position of your head when you swim. So try kicking with the kickboard like this. You can put up your head to breathe like in breaststroke or butterfly. You will be doing your neck and your freestyle position a favor. You can also simply kick on your back with a streamline. This is how I usually kick because I don’t like the kickboard that much.

Finally, you will notice that the kick is not wide. The wider the kick the more effort you will need to move forward. So focus on doing small kicks, trying to bend your knees very little. The hips will move a little because this is where the legs will initiate the movement.



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