The Power Of The Underwater Kick

For years I've listened to various coaches go on and on about the power of the underwater kick after push off.  If I had any doubt after watching this summers Olympics this video below once and for all proves that no matter what I keep telling myself the power of swimming is underwater.

Right now I can flip and push off the wall or push off the block and if I stay underwater I'll come up last every time.  My underwater kicking and streamline really needs some work.  Which is odd since my butterfly kick is pretty good and of all my kicking I'd say the fastest by far.  Right now during workouts I come up as soon as possible and as one coach says "like a dog on limoneum" I work my stroke as fast bursts of energy.  This works compared to other week underwater swimmers.  But next to the "fasties" it is clear that after each wall these swimmers will have a perfect streamline with underwater kick coming up so far ahead of me time and time again.

Comments

[Canuck Swimmer]

I had the same question as to just how effective more submerged dolphin kicking would be for me knowing how weak I am in my kicking. But when I did some turn work between the flags staying underwater and kicking out to the flags I found my time dropped by about 0.3 seconds - and thats with my horrible kick. No doubt underwater is faster, but my problem is I hate the trial-and-error learning process and the copious amount of water it causes me to ingest. Id like to find a good test set I can benchmark to follow my progress which doesnt require a coach to time me.