How do you use your legs?
If you’re like most of our students, you are probably thinking, “It’s about time”.
You are right – the beginning class does skip leg and kicking lessons. We believe we’d *muddy the waters if we added that detail.
Not knowing how floating or buoyancy work is to swimming as not knowing how gravity works is to walking. Being taught stroke skills to someone who doesn’t know buoyancy is like teaching soccer to someone who doesn’t know gravity.
Besides! Those legs are far away from your mind and lungs and those are the important tools in swimming. Only after you are safe in the deep end, do we even worry about the other skills.
Here’s a tip from the Foundation 1 (Beginning) Class that you might not have noticed. Beginning leg work starts when you let go of all the tension in the legs and they are loose like the tail of a kite.
What happens to a kite if you put a rod on the end? It won’t fly!
What happens to a kite if you add a loose floppy tail? It flies.
*make a situation unnecessarily complicated and less clear
Kicking… Hello, Legs!
Slide #37: Legs are much more difficult to figure out.
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- Why legs are hard (slide with words)
- Far away from our breathing
- They are the first thing we lose control of when nervous (think pacing)
- 5c language
- Do not have a 1:1 correlation
- The sensation is different
- Walking you get the information off the bottom of the foot
- Swimming it is more often off the top or side of the food
- Why legs are hard (slide with words)
Slide #38: How to Start
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- Start basic (slide with words)
- Can they move?
- Can you tell them what to do
- Where do you feel a connection with the water
- Check the foot, legs
- When you have a connection observe the result
- Repeat until you can produce the result on purpose
- Mind your thoughts
- I should go XYZ directions this must be wrong
- I am going XYZ direction this must be how it works
- Start basic (slide with words)
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Slide #39: Types of Kicks
- Flutter (vid)
- Whip (vid)
- Scissor (vid)
- Eggbeater – advanced (vid)
- Swooping many different things (vid)
In the membership, I have added a lesson on how to do the flutter kick. In the meantime keep in mind who invented the flutter kick…or any other of the named kicks. It was someone just like you who didn’t know what they were doing but went into the water and experimented. Perhaps they had watched some fish and said let me copy them or they simply started moving their legs and made connections with the water and with their results. Most new discoveries are not on purpose. They come as a side product, a failure of something else or out of the blue. This is because you cannot look for something that has never been found before. For you, in the water, you are person number one. This is because you are the first and only person with your exact body to discover how kicking works. No two humans walk the exact same way. This is why robots walk so awkwardly. We can give them the formula, but it is still to be discovered how to get them the brain to feel their way into walking.
Luckily you do have a brain and you are very used to feeling your way through physical space. Play and discover. Once you are connected to this then you can start to play and discover using a formula someone else has a name… flutter kick.
Watch Episode 11 Below:
Healing Fear in Warm Water
If you’re like many adults, you’ve been frustrated or embarrassed that you weren’t free to swim “like everybody else.” Half of adults can’t swim, like you! We meet them all the time. They’ve tried every system, including the traditional programs, with no success.
Since 1999, we’ve helped hundreds of adults overcome their fear and discomfort in water with our proven system built on the 5 Circles Teaching Method. The Miracle Swimming system uses the nuts and bolts of mindfulness to address the root of the problem and will transform the way you feel and think about water for the rest of your life.
