"If I kick harder then I will stay afloat and swim further." ...a common misconception among beginners learning to swim. Relaxed and smooth is the key to an effective and efficient front crawl leg kick.
Hi, Mark here. I hope all is well with you.
In this edition of Swim Teach News, we are looking at front crawl leg kick technique and a basic exercise to help practice and fine-tune it. If you're a teacher, my resource library is packed with drills and lesson plans to help make your teaching efficient, effective and fresh.
Leg Kick Technique Using a Kickboard.
A great exercise to try out is kicking, holding a float or kickboard in both hands straight out in front.
Aim: to practice and learn the correct kicking technique.
Holding a float or kickboard out in front isolates the legs, encourages correct body position and develops leg strength.
Key Actions
Technical Focus
Common Faults
Download a full set of 22 basic drills to improve front crawl, covering body position, leg kick, arm pull, breathing and timing and coordination. 'How To Swim Front Crawl' will have you swimming with smooth and efficient technique. Click here to discover my Freestyle eBook.
My library of swimming resources for teachers contains everything needed to get the job done efficiently and professionally. Adaptable lesson plans, assessment tools and all the basic drills covering all four basic swimming strokes.
Swimming teacher resources that save time by taking the hard work out of teaching swimming. Click the button below.
| Take me to the Swimming Teachers Resource Library |
That's it for this week. Stay focused, stay in touch and stay safe.
Happy swimming!
Cheers
Mark
ps - did someone forward this to you? Subscribe here.
I've been teaching swimming for over 30 years and I built Swim Teach so that I can share all my knowledge, wisdom and experience from the thousands of swimming lessons I have had the pleasure of teaching. Take a look back through my previous newsletters and see what you missed.
Your weekly insight, one mini story, one practical step to try today and one question to consider - all in a five minute read. Hey, Mark here. I hope you've had a good week. Most beginners try to learn a stroke too early. They think the answer is breaststroke or front crawl. Usually, the answer is something simpler: get comfortable, learn to breathe, and learn to glide. One insight Swimming gets easier when you stop trying to “swim” straight away. The real foundations are much less glamorous:...
Your weekly insight, one mini story, one practical step to try today and one question to consider - all in a five minute read. Hey, Mark here. Hope you've had a good week. This week, we are keeping lessons fresh! Lessons get stale when the teacher repeats the same drill in the same way. The problem usually isn’t the drill. It’s the lack of variation around it. One insight Good swimming teaching is rarely about inventing completely new content every week. It’s about taking a sound exercise and...
Hi there, Mark here. Teaching adults isn’t like teaching children. Adults carry fear, assumptions, pride, embarrassment - and often a lifetime of avoiding water. If you use the same structure you use for kids, you’ll both end the lesson frustrated. You don’t need to invent a new approach. You just need the right one. Teaching Adults How To Swim Why Adult Lessons Fail Adults aren’t lacking technique - they’re lacking trust and confidence.Trust in the water, trust in their body, and trust in...