Backward kick: Help!

[alan_lee]

Am a GUE-F newbie and I was in the pool last night practicing my backward kicks. While I was moving backwards during the catch phase, it was the loading that had me back at where I was in in the first place. I'd positioned the soles of my fins inwards (facing each other), still didn't work. I thought it might've been that I was too anxious and going too fast, so I paused after the catch, then loaded SLOWLY, but still found myself going forward. I guess working in a freshwater environment, struggling with buoyancy control (I've ALWAYS had that problem in the pool, but I know it's not an excuse) didn't help.

I know it takes time to get the skill right, guess it's just my perfectionist nature that demand that I get it right soon. Can't wait to get into the ocean environment to practice!

 

[BabyDuck]

try practicing first without your gear. get in the pool with a kickboard or similar (and swimsuit, if it's a public pool! ), and try to 'reverse' the frog kick. head up & out of the water, feet not quite out of the water, knees bent.

your soles face the ceiling pretty much the whole time. your feet go in little circles from the knee - a bit of a 'jerk' toward your head & body, then hold your feet still in the water column and let your body catch up. that's the little glide.

give it a try. it won't cost you anything but a bit of practice time, and i found that knowing what the stroke should 'feel' like was a huge help when i did it underwater 'for real'.

 

[Sloth]

try practicing first without your gear. get in the pool with a kickboard or similar (and swimsuit, if it's a public pool! ), and try to 'reverse' the frog kick. head up & out of the water, feet not quite out of the water, knees bent.

your soles face the ceiling pretty much the whole time. your feet go in little circles from the knee - a bit of a 'jerk' toward your head & body, then hold your feet still in the water column and let your body catch up. that's the little glide.

give it a try. it won't cost you anything but a bit of practice time, and i found that knowing what the stroke should 'feel' like was a huge help when i did it underwater 'for real'.

This is good advice as a back kick without fins is pretty easy. What this shows is that fins are counter productive to the back kick!

Get a feel for it without fins then start playing with it with the fins so you can get to a point were your fins arent causing foward motion.

Once you start moving backwards you will probably hit the same problem everyone else has were you go backwards and up. Steve White gave me some good advice to keep this from happening by going out of trim. Trim slightly head high and then do the back kick. This will help with keeping a arched back and head up position that you need to do a good back kick at the same depth.

Once you get it down while out of trim start working on it while in good trim and it will start falling in place.

Most improtantly, practice! It's honestly taken me about 80 dives to get somewhat of a back kick. I'm just now at the point where I can do it well out of trim and I'm starting to get it nailed while in trim.

Also what can help is to get in some slight current and back kick with the current. This might help with getting an idea for what it feels like. Obviously it can be misleading if its working or not but it can provide the right sensation of going backwards so you can know what it should feel like.

 

[onfloat]

I praticed on the back of my couch while watching tv. My wife thought I was nuts.

 

[TSandM]

My husband did what's been described above. He got in the pool, no gear, no fins, and on the surface, worked on the back kick just with his feet. He got it really quickly, and soon could do laps backwards (I have no idea what the other people in the pool thought of this!) Then he put his fins on and did it on the surface with the fins. Then he put gear on and did it underwater in our pool, and finally, he took it to OW. He got a functional back kick in about a quarter the time it took me, doing it this way.

 

[SparticleBrane]

Yup -- doing it with no fins first is the way to go. Took me a few tries, then BAM there it is. Might take awhile to get it perfected, but you should quickly have it down. For a bit after I initially started, I would go diagonally upwards. Just takes a bit of finesse.
The 5thd-x Intro to Tech DVD was also quite helpful to show exactly what it looks like.

I can go much faster backwards with no fins than I can with them on. Kinda useless but it's a neat party trick.

 

[Doc Intrepid]

One bit that really helped me was when I realized that posture - head up and back, looking stright forward, back arched, arms clasped out front, etc. - made the difference between going back and up, and going straight backwards. If you begin relaxed and in trim all will be good. If you're not in good trim when you begin, you'll head off wonky. It takes some time...

 

[rjack321]

Getting the back really arched and the head fairly high is key for me to avoid going up. Generally my back kick is so-so. My wife's with her midget "M" jets is one of the best I've seen, maybe its cause she's almost barefoot

 

[DIR-Atlanta]

All the suggestions above are great, but I do have one thing to add. Many people make the mistake of trying to "power" through the kick, probably because they get frustrated that they are not moving, and overcompensate by applying more effort. The back kick is not a power stroke - it's all about technique, and 9 times out of 10 an aggressive motion will defeat what you are trying to do.

It's normal for the backing up part to take a couple of strokes to get started before you really begin noticeably moving. Kicking harder usually does not make things go faster, and often causes people to go "up", since they inadvertently drop their head while (over-)extending their legs.

Try using smaller movements, and make sure you are only catching the "edge" of the fin. And of course it helps if you start out using Jetfins. They seem to make the learning curve on this a little less steep.

 

[TSandM]

One more thing to add -- For both me and my husband, once we got the back kick working well, we agreed that the motion you use feels circular, like your feet are making little circles outward.

The point about being in good trim is an excellent one -- When I've tried different sets of doubles and been out of trim, I can't back up at all.