The Problem With Most Kick Sets
Walk by most lanes during kick sets and you'll see the same thing: board out, easy effort, swimmers talking, yardage piling up with nothing gained. Kick gets treated as recovery time instead of training time. If you want kick sets that build speed, you have to train kick the same way you train swimming — across zones, with intent, with a purpose for every rep.
Train Kick Across Zones, Not Just One Gear
Kick has an aerobic system, a threshold system, and a sprint system, same as swimming. Most teams only hit the first one.
Aerobic kick — moderate effort, board optional, used for technique work and as active recovery between hard main-set work. It has a place, but it's not where speed comes from.
- 8 x 50 kick on board, moderate effort, :10 rest. Focus on hip-driven kick, not knee bend.
Threshold kick — sustained fast kick that forces pacing control, no board, streamline position.
- 6 x 75 kick, no board, best average held within 1 second per rep, on 1:30.
Sprint kick — short, maximal, full recovery, no board, race-position streamline.
- 10 x 12.5m max-effort kick from a push, :45 rest. Coach kick count and time on every rep.
Vertical Kicking
Vertical kick strips away the board and any wall assistance. It exposes weak hip drive and builds kick strength and core stability fast. Use it for strength work and as a diagnostic — swimmers who can't sustain rhythm vertically usually can't sustain it horizontally either.
- 6 x 30 seconds max-effort vertical kick, arms crossed, :30 rest.
- Progress to holding a small weight overhead for advanced groups, or add breath control for conditioning.
Position Matters: Board, Streamline, Back
- Board kick isolates the legs but lets swimmers hide bad hip position — the board takes the load the hips should be doing. Use it for controlled technical work, not for speed.
- Streamline kick, no board, is close to racing position. It demands core engagement and transfers directly to underwater work and breakouts. This is where your threshold and sprint kick sets should live.
- Kick on the back builds ankle flexibility and up-kick strength — critical for backstroke and for a strong underwater dolphin off every wall. Don't skip it just because your group is mostly freestylers.
Fins: Useful Tool, Easy Crutch
Fins have a real training purpose. They also hide real problems. Know the difference.
Fins help with:
- Overspeed work — kicking faster than normal race tempo to teach the body what fast feels like.
- Underwater dolphin development — added propulsion lets swimmers hold a tighter, faster rhythm while building the pattern.
- Ankle flexibility work for swimmers who are mechanically stiff.
Fins hide:
- Weak ankle flexibility — the blade does the work the ankle should.
- Poor hip drive — swimmers can look fast on fins with almost no hip involvement.
Rule of thumb: use fins for speed and tempo work, not for aerobic garbage yardage. If a swimmer can't hold decent technique at moderate effort without fins, that's information for you, not something to cover up.
Underwater Dolphin as Its Own Skill
Underwater kick off the wall is not the same skill as kick during the stroke, and it needs its own dedicated work. With every wall counting toward race time, this is one of the highest-return things you can train.
- 8 x 15m underwater dolphin from a push, max effort, on 1:00. Track kick count and time to 15m every rep — both numbers should trend down over a season.
- 4 x (5 x 5m breakout) — isolate the wave pattern and breakout timing separately from the full underwater set.
Tying Kick Tempo to Swim Tempo
Kick trained in isolation forever doesn't transfer. At some point it has to connect to the stroke tempo the swimmer actually races at.
Say a swimmer's 100 free tempo is 1.15 seconds per stroke cycle. Build a set that trains kick slightly faster than that:
- 8 x 25 kick with fins, tempo trainer set at 1.10–1.15, :20 rest, full streamline.
Pair it with swimming at the same tempo in the same practice — 50 swim at race tempo, 25 kick at matching or slightly faster tempo — so the nervous system links the two.
Sample Practice Pulling It Together
- Warm-up: 6 x 50 kick on board, easy, :10 rest — aerobic, technique focus
- Vertical kick: 4 x 30 seconds max effort, arms crossed, :30 rest
- Threshold: 4 x 75 kick, no board, best average held, on 1:30
- Underwater speed: 8 x 15m underwater dolphin, max effort, off push, :60
- Tempo tie-in: 8 x 25 kick with fins at race tempo on tempo trainer, :20 rest
That's around 1,200 meters of kick work, and every rep has a job. Compare that to 2,000 meters of easy board kicking with nothing to show for it.
SwimIQ helps with the planning side of this — turn a rough kick set idea into a structured practice, check that the intervals and rest actually match the zone you're training for, and see at a glance whether a week's kick work is skewed too aerobic before your swimmers ever hit the water.