Frog Kick Blues

[drbill]

I've never been able to perfect the frog kick (especially with my split fins), in part because I'm knock-kneed. When I was a competitive swimmer, I couldn't do the IM because my breast stroke kick was illegal.

 

[Storker]

Sorry, guys, I'm not able to stay off the bait here.

So how do you pedal a push bike? One cycle of the pedal and then roll or pedal at a constant speed. If you glide your speed reduces and the next kick you use energy accelerating back up to speed. Newton's first law of motion. When you maintain a constant speed you only have to overcome drag or water resistance.

If you're gonna go all academic and theoretical on the topic, have you considered significant versus insignificant effects? Does moderate acceleration to low speeds make up a significant part of the total energy consumption, or is it not significant compared to the energy spent to overcome hydrodynamic drag? Is 100% theoretical energy efficiency more important than the effect of resting periods on heart rate and thus oxygen consumption/CO2 production over the time submerged?

If you have hard physiological data on those questions, I'm gonna be all ears. Otherwise, I'll defer to practical experience rather than theoretical arguments based on Newton's laws. Even if I've got an engineering degree.

 

[nimoh]

As much crap as I have given beaverdivers in other threads for suggesting that a heart rate monitor in a dive computer is necessary, I sort of wish I had one so I could experiment with what different kicks at different speeds do to my heart rate

although, I just realized that this thread has gone off topic since it is about how to frog kick, rather than why to frog kick

 

[Foxfish]

The OP suggested frog kick helps minimise air consumption. The simple physics clearly demonstrates it doesn't. I notice that some people don't agree with my explanation. By way of further explanation I recommend you read my previous post.

 

[danvolker]

The OP suggested frog kick helps minimise air consumption. The simple physics clearly demonstrates it doesn't. I notice that some people don't agree with my explanation. By way of further explanation I recommend you read my previous post.

Foxfish,
I sincerely hope that if you ever visit the desert, that you don't use physics to decide that rattle snakes would not be fast enough to be able to bite you

 

[GCullen94]

Fox fish, The frog kick is not meant to be the fastest kick out there. It is meant to be an efficient kick that maximizes water pushed by the blades while minimizing heart rate and keeping breathing rates low. The object of having a "rest" phase in a kick is to allow your body to relax and not become an aerobic workout. Another reason for the frog kick is to minimize silt and damage to the reef from the downward wake of a traditional flutter kick.

GC

 

[nimoh]

The OP suggested frog kick helps minimise air consumption. The simple physics clearly demonstrates it doesn't. I notice that some people don't agree with my explanation. By way of further explanation I recommend you read my previous post.

I can make an equally coherent argument to the contrary:

The frog kick helps minimize air consumption because it has a resting phase and we use less air while resting. It is also self evident if you know simple first year college level physics and also since energy equals mass times the speed of light squared.

I'm kidding of course. In reality, I am much more comfortable doing a frog kick and feels very effortless. I generally only resort to a full flutter when I need a lot of speed (which is rare) or a modified flutter when going through a narrow space.

 

[Diver0001]

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A ScubaBoard Staff Message...

The thread has been rolled back to before the deliberate derailment. Additional trolling will result in more than just a mod post.

carry on.

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