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Teaching the Swimming Kick: Mastery

After your kids have learned a new swimming skill, it’s a great time to go back and expand on the skills they already know. When your kids have learned to float on their back, you can expand their practice of the swimming kick. Try these tips for teaching your kids to perfect their kicks.

Quick Trick for Correcting the Swimming Kick

Have him practice gently kicking while he’s floating on his back. If he moves in the direction of his feet, his ankles aren’t flexing enough. Have him concentrate on flexing his ankles more, and like magic, he’ll start to move toward his head. This level of flexion is what he’s aiming for.

The Rhythm of the Swimming Kick

When he’s learned to move his arms in the crawl and backstroke, he can refine his kick more. There’s a rhythm to kicking: kick, kick, pause, kick, kick, pause. The opposite leg and arm act together. In that way, it’s similar to running or walking. When he strokes with the left arm, he should kick with the right leg first.

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Teaching the Swimming Kick: Stage 2

You can start teaching your kids the swimming kick before you even get wet. Once you’re ready to move the swimming lesson into the pool, here’s how to teach this swimming skill.

How (and How Not) to Teach Your Kids the Swimming Kick

Now that you’re in the pool, where do you start?

Why Fins Won’t Help Your Kids Learn to Kick

Fins can help kids without much buoyancy to keep their legs and hips in line with their torsos as they learn to use their arms in the water; however, long-term, they’ll become a crutch, and they’ll alter the quality and feeling of the movement in a way that doesn’t help when your child is learning to kick. You can use fins during the early stages of learning to swim when your child is focusing on other skills, but don’t use fins when your child is practicing kicking.

Where to Start Teaching the Swimming Kick

Practicing the kick at the stairs is a good place to start because it lets your child hold his body even with the surface easily. If he’s not using the stairs to support himself, support him with one arm under his belly and the other hand holding his hands.

How to Support Your Child When You’re Teaching Him to Kick

Have him hold his face in the water, and ask him to squeeze your hand whenever he wants to come up for a breath. When he does, he can press down on his hands to help himself lift his head. You can help him by holding the hand that’s holding his firm.

It’s Time to Move

Walk around the pool as he practices. Remind him to flick his feet like he’s trying to kick off his shoes. Choose one of the six aspects of the swimming kick to focus on at a time.

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Teaching the Swimming Kick: Stage 1

When you’re teaching your kids to kick, you can take advantage of time outside the swimming pool to work on this skill.

How to Teach Your Kids to Kick without a Swimming Pool

Have your child sit in a chair and follow these steps to teach him the important points of the swimming kick.

  1. Demonstrate what it means to flex and to point, and have him practice it without any kicking motion.
  2. Have him hold still while you move his feet for him from flexed to pointed and back again, so that he really feels the ankle and can isolate that feeling.
  3. Have your child sit on the edge of the chair and brace himself with his hands. Ask him to lean his torso back slightly for balance and kick from the hip, keeping his legs straight, his ankles loose, and the kick small and narrow.

Use this opportunity to touch his upper thigh to show him where the work is being done. He won’t get a great sense from this exercise for how important the ankles are, because air resistance is so much less than water resistance, but he will get a good feel for keeping his legs straight and for the range of motion from the hip.

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6 Keys Aspects of the Swimming Kick to Focus on When You Teach

In most strokes, kicking provides stability for your body while the arms provide most of the propulsion. The kick helps your body to stay aligned. In the early learning stages, having a solid flutter kick will help stabilize your child as he learns to position his body in the water and to use his arms to propel himself. Here are six important aspects of the kick to focus on.

The key to the kick is coordination and ankle flexibility.

Six Aspects of the Kick to Focus On

  1. There should be a lot of movement in the ankle, but from the hip to the ankle should be supple but almost straight. The knees should bend very little. It’s not like pedaling a bike. Think length and flow.
  2. Use the muscles at the top of the thigh to move the whole leg.
  3. The leg shouldn’t have side-to-side movement.
  4. The kick should be narrow, with ankles fairly close to each other.
  5. The kick isn’t long like a stride on land is. The up-down movement should be contained within the movement of the water that your arms creates. You can feel this area when you move your body. When you get to the part of the water that hasn’t been moved by your body, your leg will feel more resistance. Keep your kick out of that higher-resistance water.
  6. Ankle flexibility is really important. While your whole leg moves, the foot is like a flipper that provides most of the benefit of the movement. It should feel like you’re trying to flick a shoe off your foot.