Progress with the flutter kicking

Hello,

reporting on progress with the (front-crawl) flutter kicking

It seems my last post on this topic was
https://theswimforum.palstani.com/t135-forearm-paddles#1904

Meanwhile various health problems prevented proper, continuous progress, but hopefully most of it is under control now.

The pure flutter-kicking (without arms) is the only non-full stroke exercise I do. I don't believe in any other form of technical exercise to be beneficial, but the isolated flutter kicking is very close to real swimming, and actually to get the INDEPENDENT flutter kicking established takes many years, and can't be learned just by swimming full stroke.

What I found consistently, for now over a year, is that (for me) the best form of training is to push off from the wall in streamline, and to kick without breathing, until you stop the kicking, since you need to breathe.
That's the most natural body position. After coming for the breath, I don't think one should continue (at least the non-professional) -- too much stress. So I have two modes:
- either turning on the back and continuing with backstroke, emphasise on kicking; that feels very natural;
- or keeping up the hard consistent kicking, and going to full stroke: I believe that is very important, and quite hard to do.

Small kicks (at least it must feel like that), always fast, that seems to me most important. It must feel good, and you need to feel the propulsion from every kick. No need to make any special effort to get the feet out of the water. Important the basic movement by straight legs, from the hips, with added very fast but relaxed full leg extension.

The alternative for me is using the Power breather snorkel
https://www.powerbreather.com/en/
(with hardest breathing resistance).
With that snorkel you can fully concentrate on projecting power, but at least for now I am not able to get into the same good "water position" as just using the streamline position (arms straight in front, squeezed together at the head). I put "water position" into quotation marks, since I don't know exactly what it is, that makes me quite a bit slower with that snorkel, but it is something missing: with the pure streamlining (without snorkel) after 10m or so the kicking starts feeling really good, it "makes sense", "feels right", every kicks propels you forward, while with the snorkel it's more like "just hard work".

Regarding times, I am currently at the following.

I always use the beeper (Finis metronome) for counting, but concerning the legs not all for any kind of synchronisation.
In fact I believe for a proper flutter kick it is important that it is fully DECOUPLED, and that all of that 2/4/6/8-bit kicking is fundamentally wrong. The legs are not subordinated, but independent. They do their thing, and if that happens to fit into some pattern, so well, but one shouldn't force anything (for a fast, propulsive flutter kick at least).

For the beep-"feeling" however it feels better to use my standard frequencies, which are currently: 75 strokes/min minimum, 85 strokes/min "medium" (remember I don't do 100km in a row ), 100 strokes/min fast. Actually I use 0.8s/stroke, 0.7s/stroke, 0.6s/stroke (for easy computing of times).

So for 50m kicking (in the 50m pool) I go for 0.8s/beep, for 25m kicking I go for 0.7s/beep.
I furthermore believe in nice round numbers (makes live much easier) for target-times.
For kicking in streamline (without breathing, 25m at most) the target is 30 counts, that is, 30*0.7s, i.e., 21s for 25m. It took me some time to nearly get there, and I am not there yet, but 21.7s/25m is the current (reproducible) best. The main problem is the non-breathing. I still have major problems here, but (very) slowly it gets better. I believe I currently could already do it in 21s/25m, but the all-out is not possible currently.
Once I reach the 30 counts/25m, I will go for 0.69s/beep, until I reach the count of 30 (from above), and so on ...

With the snorkel I always do it currently in 23s at best (typically starting around 28s, then working down). Here I can go all out, but something doesn't feel completely right.

For the full stroke my attention is still on kicking strongly, consistently and stably. The kicking is responsible for the water-positioning, the pull can fully concentrate on only providing propulsion. It feels good, but is very very hard (for me). No dispositional rotation.

I think we are all speechless at your achievement!

I reckoned a long time ago that the outboard motor effect cannot be synchronized with arm cadence. and it was evident watching the FINA World Championships recently in the 1500m with Wellbrock, Romanchuk and Paltinieri coming down the last 50m.

Earlier in the race, Paltrinieri, who has dominated lately has a very modest leg action.

Since freestyle is an assymetrical stroke type, the legs and arms corrdination is quite difficult in freestyle.
If you try to focus on synchronization (such as 2bk or 6bk in each stroke), you loose stroke efficiency(cadance). However, if you kick continuously, evertyhing becomes easier related with the stroke because arms and legs work independently(but also this leds to more energy consumption). In order to get used to this energy consumption and achieve a good fitness level, you must do lots of kick board sets and/or leg dominant drills (suck as side kick drill, catchup drill). Also training with the fins is useful in my opinion.