Fin advice for getting pain in calves

[Marie13]

Getting yourself on video is a very enlightening exercise. If not with an instructor, go diving with a friend and a GoPro. Opened my eyes!

I practice frog kick with the lower half of my body sticking off the side of my bed while watching YouTube videos showing a properly done frog. For some reason, I'm having a very difficult time with it, and going through the leg motions this way is helping to imprint it in my brain, albeit, very slowly!

 

[Plummet]

I suspect and hope that's where he will end up but until he has his trim and buoyancy sorted, as well as gear streamlined, frog kick will be quite frustrating.

As a n00b I may be missing something here, but why does the frog kick seem to be considered advanced? Swimming breaststroke comes more naturally to me. But then again, my feet kinda splay outwards. I also found that flutter kicking with fins made me prone to leg pain and sore feet.

 

[RainPilot]

As a n00b I may be missing something here, but why does the frog kick seem to be considered advanced? Swimming breaststroke comes more naturally to me. But then again, my feet kinda splay outwards. I also found that flutter kicking with fins made me prone to leg pain and sore feet.

Generally most people end up learning frog kick properly on a course like Fundies etc, so it has gotten a reputation as an "advanced" kick. I teach all my OW students frog kick from day 1, BUT...

If you are not horizontal and if you are carrying around a lot of drag (overweighted, every scuba Xmas present dangling off your jacket etc) then frog kick will not give you the speed of flutter, so if you take 2 identical new divers, both certified by a sausage machine process (kneeling on the bottom grossly overweighted, almost vertical in the water etc) and one of them uses frog kick they will tend to fall behind the other divers who are kicking non-stop just to avoid sinking.

That leads to frustration and usually giving up as "frog kick doesn't work". It is really important to consider frog as only a part of being an efficient, environmentally friendly diver. If the OP sorts out his trim and buoyancy, WITHOUT changing to frog, he will feel a great deal of improvement already. If he changes to frog, without the other elements, he is likely to become frustrated with the apparent "inefficiency" of frog kick alone.

When I do Scuba Makeovers, I have found that its best to deal with the big issues first and then frog becomes an easy, natural extension.

 

[Diver0001]

Hello all,

I've had problems in the past with developing pain, sometimes considerable, in my calves on dive vacations. Particularly, trips where I've been able to make multiple dives; once or twice doesn't seem to be a problem.

I've come to the conclusion that its either my kicking technique, type of fins, or a combination of both. Currently, I'm diving with a pair of those old, heavy as sin, military style fins. I'm looking for suggestions for a new set. I'd like something light, and with good propulsion. I do wear boots, so no snorkeling fins.

Thanks!

By pain do you mean cramps?

R..

 

[Diver0001]

As a n00b I may be missing something here, but why does the frog kick seem to be considered advanced? Swimming breaststroke comes more naturally to me. But then again, my feet kinda splay outwards. I also found that flutter kicking with fins made me prone to leg pain and sore feet.

It's not. It's just another way of finning. Not all instructors do this but when I'm teaching OW I make divers aware of the technique and I demonstrate it. We only spend, however about 10 min on frog kicking in OW. Just enough to kick them in the learning curve from "unware incompetent" to "aware incompetent".

I usually focus on getting the flutter kick nailed in OW (aware competent or better) because (a) the majority of divers have less trouble with it and (b) IF a diver has trouble with flutter kicking then it needs to be tackled early or they will often learn "bicycle finning", which is very inefficient and in my opinion can be dangerous if not corrected because the diver's mobility can be restricted by bad technique. Therefore I focus in OW on the flutter kick because at a minimum they need to know this and it needs to be good.

I'm not a fan of teaching multiple kicks at once. I prefer to teach them one at a time so the student has time to focus on what they are doing. Part of this, for full disclosure, has to do with my opinion that you can best learn one thing at a time with focus than to try learning multiple things at a time with insufficient attention to both.... so I focus on one task at a time and do it well. This is something I learned in Kung Fu lessons; perfect one form before learning the next.

That said, In any course (including OW) done in a drysuit we focus on the frog kick. This has to do with the fact that it's just easier to frog kick in a drysuit. In the normal flow we usually introduce frog kicking to "aware competent" in specialties like PPB. This is not done because we think that frog kick is more advanced but because in the way we are teaching the system, we focus on mastering flutter kick first and frog kick second and PPB comes after OW.

I have had rare occasions of students who had considerable trouble with flutter kick but to whom frog kick came very naturally. In one such case I focused the student on the frog kick from the very start because it was pragmatic to do so. My goal (the PRINCIPLE I use) is learning efficient propulsion, not to fit all divers into my personal paradigm. So when it's pragmatic to do so I will adjust instead of making it hard on the student.

R..

 

[Birddog1911]

By pain do you mean cramps?

R..

No cramps, but more after 3 or 4 days of diving, pain from overexertion of the calf muscles.

 

[divad]

No cramps, but more after 3 or 4 days of diving, pain from overexertion of the calf muscles.

I used to get that from zooming all over the place like a maniac flutter-kicking with Avante Quatros.

 

[The Chairman]

I've come to the conclusion that its either my kicking technique,

Learn to frog kick. You'll use less air and look like a pro.

 

[divad]

I

Learn to frog kick. You'll use less air and look like a pro.

I look like a con.

 

[The Chairman]

I look like a con.

But that's before you even get in the water!