Frog kick efficiency

[dmaziuk]

Note the fins she uses

 

[Angelo Farina]

It’s interesting that your modified frog kick was more gas efficient than your frog kick.

As said in my previous message , this is true for the majority of divers, as just one over 5 can perform a correct full frog kick. For the one over 5, the full frog kick performs better.

 

[Doc Harry]

As an aside, if the goal is to raise your feet up away from the silt, I don't see what's stopping you from doing that and using your fins the way they were designed to be used: doing flutter or dolphin kick with just your ankles.

= Modified flutter

 

[lexvil]

Diving ain‘t swimming, there are countless ways to use your fins to suit the conditions you find yourself in which may change several times in a dive, practice in a poly to developed the needed muscle memory/strengthening and dive dive dive until you find yourself automatically switching the kicks without thought, unless you‘re into making look at me videos use whatever kick you need when you need it, this of course is just my opinion.

 

[berndo]

My buddy mentioned that he only needs about 1 frog kick to do the same distance than 2 of mine.

I think many people have a bad kick.
Don't try to copy someone elses movement.
Best way to learn is this IMHO:
Be in trim and neutrally bouyant and than try and just feel for at what angle you feel the most resistance with your fins. Than push youself forward like you would from a pool wall. You really just need to feel for and find the point of most resistance. As you glide don't move your feet. Once you found your fin angle try to keep your knees close together and swim back and forth over a platform with you chest a couple inches from the platform so your knees would hit the platform when they drop. Swimming over a platform or bottom of a pool is better than using videos as it gives you direct feedback. See how far you can glide with a single kick.

This laying on a bench to try and imitate a certain movement stuff doesn't help you find that angle of most resinstance, so it's not helping you much IMHO.
So don't go by how it should look but how it should feels. Like you paddle in a canoe, you paddle just fast enough to get the most resistance from the water.

 

[OTF]

@Angelo Farina can you explain in more detail what those physiological differences are that prevent some people from doing frog kicks? Is it about ankle flexibility? In other words, explain exactly what makes a frog kick "perfect" and why many people can't do? In my experience just about anyone can get it with practice, but perhaps there is a higher standard of perfection for competitive swimming. I just don't know what that is.

 

[Angelo Farina]

A perfect frog kick require a high degree of mobility of all the thee joints involved, and precise control of the muscles.
These are two separate issues.
Regarding mobility of joints, it is required to:
1) open the legs by more than 90 degrees (that's hip opening mobility)
2) twist the feet so that they form a flat angle (180°) (that's hip rotational mobility)
3) flex the knees so that the heels touch your butts (usually tested asking the student to squat - many people cannot squat)
4) flex the ankle up and down, showing that the ankle can exert a rotation going from the feet perfectly aligned with leg (extended) to the feet forming an angle of less than 90° with leg.
In my experience, almost 50% of students fail at least one of these 4 mobility test. Of course with hard work in the gym one can try to extend his mobility, but most people simply refuse doing that.

Let's come to the problem of lack of control. This is a general problem for novice scuba divers, which does not just involve frog kicking, but their general incapability of controlling precisely and independently the movements of their body, as a number of innate or acquired reflexes kick in, causing almost involuntary movements and counter-reactions.
This is particularly severe for athletes, who spent a lot of time doing exercise in other sports, so they acquired what is improperly called "muscle memory". A term which I always considered inappropriate, as muscles have no memory, it is the nervous system which produce these automatic movements.
It is much easier to learn a reflex than to remove it when acquired. Hence these sporty guys, particularly runners and cyclists, are used to "alternate" movements, when one leg goes forward the other goes backwards.
So, no problem teaching them a good flutter kick, very difficult to train them with frog kick, or the much more efficient dolphin kick with a monofin.
This is the worst case, as when fitted with a monofin these guys or girls tend to try moving their feet not in parallel.
Usually they are so frustrated by this experience with the monofin that they give up with the finned swimming course after a few lessons.
As said, at the end of a typical 20-lessons finned swimming course, just 1/4 or 1/5 of the students master an efficient dolphin of frog kick, whilst almost all of them perform a quite decent flutter kick.
This is my experience as a finned swimming instructor: perhaps with 100 hours in the swimming pool, instead of 20, a student can learn a decent frog kick also starting from an impaired initial condition.
I never managed to get this result in one of two 20-hours courses.
I (and my wife, who is also a finned swimming instructor) usually gave up with these students, after in the first 4-5 lessons we did see that they were impeded, and focused them on learning proper asymmetrical kicking styles, such as flutter kick and alternate frog kick (what some people here calls "modified frog kicking").
The real good thing of frog kicking are the sliding pauses between each action and the next. Which requires to rest completely immotional in a hydrodynamic position. For most students, this is the greatest difficulty.
On the other hand, when you learn to kick well and to stay immotional until you stop advancing, it is possible to make a 25-meters pool in underwater mid-depth frog kicking with just 4 kicks.

 

[dmaziuk]

Warning: don't try this at home, it's bad for you, there are less damaging stretches for the joints involved
If you can do this, you can frog-kick well:

 

[BlueTrin]

Warning: don't try this at home, it's bad for you, there are less damaging stretches for the joints involved
If you can do this, you can frog-kick well:

What are the less damaging stretches?

It went very silent after you posted that picture @dmaziuk … I can only guess everyone in this thread is trying to recover after trying that pose

 

[happy-diver]

I was wondering if anyone here had ideas or drills to speed up the learning process and get an efficient frog kick.

the diving here is around 4-5m depth average

Mate, until you can do it, diving at four of five metres is a mess
so what you do is throw all your drills in the rubbish bin forever
and go boat diving below 10 metres where everything is slower
and easier until you discover some kicks that suit you, naturally