Written by : lisa boucher
at : 22/04/2023
Do you feel like you're swimming with an anvil tied to your feet? Do you feel like you're swimming with an anvil tied to your feet? Here are a few tips to improve your kicking technique and stop your legs sinking.
If you have very muscular legs, they will tend to sink quickly because they are very dense, we agree. However, this is not a disadvantage if you follow certain basic rules. Here are the two main recurring problems.
To find out if you need to correct this error, pay close attention to the position of your head and the orientation of your gaze. If you look ahead while swimming, your head will be slightly raised, so your neck and trunk will point downwards, your body will tend to sink and your legs will sink. Whereas, if you look at the bottom of the pool, your head, neck, trunk and pelvis will be aligned on the same horizontal axis. You'll then be in the most hydrodynamic position possible to swim without resistance.
A little tip: swim with a board in your hands, arms stretched out in front of you, and force yourself to place your head between your two arms, so that they cover your ears. You can breathe as often as you need to, raising your head in front of you to catch your breath.
The clap is a movement starting from the hip and mobilizing the knee as well as the ankle and foot. It's not the same as pedaling a bike, running or cross-country skiing! The ankle must remain supple, the joint relaxed, the foot pointed. Together, they must perform a whipping movement, both up and down, and up and down as the foot rises
The efficiency of the kicking motion will affect your ability to propel yourself and move with more or less speed. Although your kicks will mainly serve to keep your legs on the surface of the water, they will also propel you so that you have enough speed, and therefore inertia, to stay in line.
If you've got stiff ankles, you'll always find it hard to do a proper and really effective kick. However, there are a few simple things you can do on a regular basis to loosen up both joints. The first option is to manually mobilize your ankles: sit down, on the floor or in a chair, place one leg over the other and grab your foot, then make circles to create rotations, then flexions/extensions by lowering and raising your foot.
The second option is to put your ankle in maximum extension for a few seconds: position yourself on your knees on the floor and sit back on your heels. If your knees ache when you're kneeling on the floor, you can remain standing, place the tops of your toes facing the ground and bring your heel up to extend your ankle.
A little tip: the shuffle is often easier to do in the dorsal position. You can improve your shuffle by sitting on the edge of the pool, with your legs in the water and your torso tilted slightly backwards, resting on your hands. Then try kicking with the aim of creating eddies on the surface of the water. These eddies should be created by your feet whipping up the water towards the surface.
