Fitter And Faster Drill Of The Week: 360 Dolphin Kick

Welcome to the “Drill of the Week” sponsored by The Fitter and Faster Swim Tour presented by Swimoutlet.com. Swimming World will be bringing you a drill, concept, or tip that you can implement with your team on a regular basis. While certain weeks may be more appropriate for specific levels of swimming (club, high school, college, or masters), Drill Of The Week excerpts are meant to be flexible for your needs and inclusive for all levels of swimming.

This week’s drill is 360 Dolphin Kick. As seen in the video below, this drill works on building a “complete” dolphin kick by working all possible angles of the kick. Pushing off the wall from any side in a streamline, swimmers will slowly rotate 360 degrees as they perform a dolphin kick underwater.

The goal of this drill is to have your swimmers “feel” all sides of their kick. It is common for an imbalance to exist in the dolphin kick, with either the up kick or down kick not being equal on one side. This can cause a weak kick, an ineffective kick, and make it nearly impossible to take advantage of holding an underwater in a race. The purpose of this drill is to correct that and give your swimmers a tool to continue to develop a strong dolphin kick.

During this drill, it is common to see swimmers veering off course and struggling to maintain forward momentum. The challenge of the drill is figuring out how to correct this and develop a powerful dolphin kick from all sides. Make sure to communicate to your swimmers what they may need to correct in order to develop a more even kick. They should be utilizing their core and upper body to create a connection across their whole body to propel them forward.

While this may seem like a more advanced drill, you can use this drill with any age group that has learned dolphin kick. Additionally, the focus does not have to be on making the entire length underwater. Having swimmers go to 10 or 15 meters will let them focus on doing the drill correctly instead of focusing on having to hold their breath. Happy swimming!

Coaches and swimmers should take precautions to avoid shallow water blackouts when performing underwater drills. All training should be conducted by a certified and experienced coach. Coaches and swimmers who use these drills should do so at their own discretion. Learn more about shallow water blackouts

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CRW

7 years ago

We call these transitional kicks, because you do so many kicks on each side then you transition to a new side. Amazing drill no matter what the name!