I have a student in one of my classes that is a great swimmer. I asked him what was more important for swimming: faster turnover of the arms or pulling harder with the arms. His answer was “Neither – it’s kicking. My legs are really sore after races.”

For the past year I have been working on relaxing my kick. For one reason, the Total Immersion book talks about having an easy relaxed kick. Also, I was having IT band problems, which I sensed was partly due to over-kicking in my swimming. I was over-kicking to compensate for bad balance in my stroke. My strategy was to relax my kick and improve my balance by using my core body for balance rather than my kick.

I did a lot of swimming with my legs tied together with a large rubber band to immobilize them, and I just pulled with my arms. This idea did help to improve my balance, but better balance did nothing for my swimming speed.

So, after talking with student, I did a swim workout where I did alot of hard kicking. It did make me a bit swim faster. However, my IT band tightness came back. Grrrr! I need to find some middle place between kicking for faster swimming without causing IT band problems!