“It’s supposed to be hard. If it were easy, everyone would do it.” Jimmy Dugan

Swimming is one of the most frustrating things that I do. I get in the water regularly, I can swim far, and I work at it. But I just can’t seem to get any faster. Okay, I am faster than I was a few years ago when I made the decision to get back in the water but the gains have been minimal. Some days, I leave the pool thinking “Okay, that’s getting better.” Others, I leave wanting to pull out my hair.

I know that my lack of speed stems from my kick. When I first started to swim, I couldn’t figure out where to kick from: my knee, my hips, my feet?? Different people were giving me different information. Finally, one of the swim coaches at my club told me that I need to think about floppy feet; I need to relax my feet. Easier said than done.

At a regular check-in with my physiotherapist, who happens to be a Kona Ironman, our conversation turned to swimming and floppy feet. “You have stiff ankles,” he said, “and that makes it harder for you.” A second club coach shared a similar opinion. “As a runner,” she said, “you need to have rigid feet because you are always landing on them. They need to be able to support you. In the water, they need to be loose.”

This winter, I started to dedicate more time to just kicking. I bought a kickboard that has a bit more buoyancy so that I can move a bit faster. That is bit less discouraging when I practise on my own but when I get to masters’ workouts with a less buoyant board, I am back to feeling like I am moving backwards and frustration kicks in again (no pun intended).

A few weeks ago, the same club coach who attributed my stiff feet to running announced that she was going to watch my kick. “I want to see what you are doing. I’ve seen you running and you are fast. I want to figure out why you aren’t doing that in the water.” Not even two laps later, she told me that my right foot points out when I kick, not down. That creates resistance in my kick. Since then, I have been thinking about keeping my legs closer together and my toes down. It seems to be helping; now I can actually create little splashes in the water.

At one of this week’s workouts, I asked a coach if my catch was looking better and it is. However, she pointed out that there is some extraneous movement like rotating a bit too much which is slowing me down, and she explained that it all boils down to the kick. “By working on your kick and keeping that straighter, your body will be straighter. Then, there is less resistance and you’ll go faster.” Slowly, everything is starting to make sense.

Clearly, I need to spend more time kicking. Next to building endurance in the water, that has to be my main focus. I need to loosen my feet and keep them pointing down while I kick so that my body stays straighter and I can swim faster. Sounds simple, right? I guess time will tell.