The Other State of Diving

[TSandM]

Dave, these videos just do my heart good.

I have a question for you -- what are you doing to teach your students to keep their knees up? Although Peter talks about it, and we model it, and I swim around tapping people on their knees, bicycle-kicking seems to be one of the biggest issues we're just not fixing. All of the students in your videos are keeping a good posture -- how do you do this?

 

[*dave*]

Thanks Lynne, I use a cattle prod.

Okay, not really. If I had a dollar for each time I uttered the phrase "If your knees drop, your ass will follow".... I demo this by getting in trim, then slowly dropping my knees. I show them this the first night while talking about snorkeling. I have vid of it and I demo it in the classroom, using a table. In the pool, I will place my hand in the small of their back while pushing up on their thigh, just above the knee to bring them into position.

For chronics, I'll have them grab a ladder rung and just kick while I correct position and movement. Video feedback seems to help a lot, but I think it's a combination of these things.