A breaststroke leg kick that provides little or no power is frustrating. No problem, there are plenty of drills to correct it. Also, download a bunch of lesson plans to help you teach breaststroke.

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Hi, Mark here. How are you? Hope you have had a great week.

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This week it's all about breaststroke - the leg kick to be precise. The common mistakes made, how to put them right and some lesson plans for teaching all parts of the stroke.

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Breaststroke Legs: Step By Step...

We can break breaststroke leg kick down into 3 basic steps.

Step 1:

Knees bend as the heels are drawn up towards the seat. At the same time, the legs need to bend at the hips, effectively drawing the knees up under the body.

Step 2:

Feet and toes are turned out, exposing the surface area of the soles of the feet to the water, ready for them to drive the water backwards.

Step 3:

The legs sweep outwards, around and slightly downwards in a flowing circular path, accelerating as they kick.

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Common Breaststroke Leg Kick Mistakes

The feet cause most of the problems when it comes to breaststroke kicking. Failure to turn the feet out will result in a lack of power and that feeling of going nowhere.

Failure to turn out both feet and only turning out one foot will result in something known as a screw kick. This is where one leg kicks correctly and the other swings around providing no propulsion at all.

The best exercise for correcting these common faults is to swim on your back (supine) with a woggle or floats held under the arms for support. Then the swimmer is able to sit up slightly and watch their own leg kick as they perform it.

Kicking in slow motion at first making a conscious effort to turn out both feet and ensure both legs and feet are symmetrical is best before attempting to add power.
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Give Me More Basic Drills!

You asked, so I delivered...

For beginner swimmers to practice and swimming teachers to give extra support to your pupils - my eBook 'How To Swim Breaststroke' is yours to download for less than $5. From body position to arm pull, leg kick, breathing and timing, with all the teaching points, focus tips and common mistakes you could possibly need. Click here to go to the download page, or click the cover for a preview.

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Breaststroke Lesson Plans To Download

Here I give you 6 breaststroke lesson plans to download, print if you want to and use when you are teaching. They are each around 30 minutes and cover each stroke part at basic level. You can of course adapt them to suit your pool, pupils and lesson timings. Click here to download your lesson plans or click the button below.

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Forward this email to your fellow swimming teachers or friends learning to swim. You never know, it could make their teaching and learning experiences awesome!

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That's it for this week. Enjoy your week.

Happy swimming!

Cheers

Mark

​Swim Teach​

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