Had my second lesson with a swim coach, and in one hour he corrected my terrible scissor kick when I breathe. I have struggled with sinking legs and bad body position when I breathe. I just can’t seem to continue the kick through the entire stroke, so I end up with a bad scissor kick. The coach broke it down for me step by step using a kickboard, modified catchup drill, then swimming. He had me concentrating on the steady but light flutter kick the whole time. Guess what? After an hour, the scissor kick was gone, along with the dead spot in my stroke and snaking across the pool. Now I just have to practice it every time I swim to make sure it is ingrained into my stroke.
It was incredible how better my body position felt in the water when I kicked continuously. I was taking 15 strokes per length just from the improved kick. I usually take 20+ strokes. Ironically, the hard part was slowing down my kick. It was very difficult to consciously kick slowly. My heart rate was way too high even after an easy 50 because my legs were working too hard. At least this gives me hope of correcting part of my stroke if I can manage to kick slowly but steadily.
There is nothing better than one on one lessons with a former Olympic swimmer. It is incredible how he is able to break down the instruction and get me to correct errors. He also told me that during a masters workout if I start to revert back to the scissor kick, stop and do some gentle kicking with a kickboard until I get it back, regardless of what anyone else in my lane is doing. I can’t keep practicing bad form.
Congratulations are in order! “possibly fixed”…
Curious, what swim coaching had you had in the past? The notion of continuous kicking (i.e. not stopping particularly when you breathe) was a good learning point for me when I learned, too, but maybe because I was too weak, I simply never could adopt a really fast kick rate, or 12-beat kick, etc.! One drill we all really like in the "Triathlete lane " at my pool is the “overkick” which forces us to actually try a bit harder in the kick.
I was taking 15 strokes per length just from the improved kick. I usually take 20+ strokes.
Were you faster per length?
Not trying to be a downer here, but I would caution that typically scissor kicks are tricky to fix because they’re more of an armstroke issue than a kick issue.
People don’t scissor because they’re kicking technique is so off, they scissor because their pull is imbalanced, and the scissor kick is required to offset the errant rotation and balance caused by that errant pull. I suspect you’ll have to do some careful attention to pulling on top of the kickboard work to fix the scissor kick, although it does sound like you’re definitely on the right track in terms of reducing the scissoring you have already.
Just chiming in to caution that while focusing on the back end of the body will help some for that scissor kick, what’s really needed is attention to the front-end pull. I do however think your olympian coach is the way to go and he likely sees your current kick as so problematic that he wants to fix it first before anything else - for sure at some point he’ll deconstruct your pull. Keep up the good work.
(I also suspect the difficulty in slowing down your kick is because you’re so used to the constant counterpressure from that kick to offset the errant stroke - you can see how if you slow down the number of kicks, you’re getting less opportunity to scissor kick your way back into a balanced body position, which may be part of why kicking faster feels easier for you now despite the higher oxygen cost.)