Kick half the practice

Sep
4

Kick half the practice

Posted by Kevin Doak on Saturday at: 2:14am (September 4th, 2010)

I was over at a community pool this week since EMU was closed down for maintenance all week.  A respected coach made a few friendly/sarcastic remarks to me regarding how much I was kicking.  Over the course of an hour, each time he came out of his office, apparently I was in the middle of a kick set.
 
His comments sounded something like: "Doak, all I ever see you do is kicking" and "Is there something wrong with your arms?" to "Another kicking set huh?".  Each time he caught me off guard to send one back his way but how I'm training is exactly how I want to be training.  Here is my thought process lately:
 
I have a good underwater kick for about 5 seconds, I'm not exaggerating, this is as long as it lasts while powerful and efficient.  My current goal event is the 100 yard backstroke.  Ideally I will be spending more than half of my race underwater when you consider my limit is 15 meters underwater in a 25 yard pool.  I will spend 66 out of 100 yards underwater in perfect race.  My race is somewhere around 48 seconds so 66% of that time (32 seconds) will be underwater.  I need to increase my endurance from 5 seconds to more than 32 seconds of flawless underwater kicking.  I've got a very long way to go.  My point being... lately I've chosen to kick at least 1/2 my practice.  The people I've told about this seem to think I'm crazy, but I feel that the logic is sound.  If I want to spend half my race underwater kicking, I should spend half my practices kicking.
 
As the pro's say, underwater kicking is the 5th competitive stroke

Practice Information
Dist: 3,200 SCY - (Short Course 25 Yards)
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