So how’s your side breathing coming along? Good? Good! Now we can get started on our flutter kick. This is the kick you will use for both freestyle and backstroke swimming, and is especially easy to learn.

The main thing to remember when learning freestyle kick is to keep your legs all the way out behind you, and never underneath you. This may seem like an obvious thing to say, but you’d be surprised at just how many people try to do a bicycle type kick while swimming freestyle! Lay on your stomach with your hands on a kickboard in front of you, and let your legs float up behind you. Once they are at the top of the water, begin your kick.

Make sure your knees bend just a little bit; keeping them too straight will not allow you to move forward, and bending them too much will make them sink to the bottom. Keep your ankles loose, letting your feet just flop around back there. The speed of your kick, along with it’s strength, will determine the speed of your overall freestyle swimming. The harder and faster you kick, the faster you will go.

After you feel like you understand the basics of this kick, try doing it with your face in the water. If you want to focus solely on your kick at this point, and not your breathing, use a swimmer’s snorkel and keep your eyes down to see how fast and how far your kick is moving you.

Keep your kicks small and fast. Doing big kicks, where your feet come all the way up out of the water behind you, will use too much energy and will make you tired. Think of snapping your legs down towards the bottom of the pool on each kick; this will help you keep them small too.

When you are able to do a few laps with just your kicking, try putting it together with your side breathing. You can try holding the board while doing this, but just know that you will have to turn your head a little more than normal in order to get your mouth above the arm that is holding the board.

Do a few laps of flutter kicking with your side breathing, and you will soon begin to get a feel for your body’s natural rhythm. You may feel comfortable with a fast kick or a slow kick, but as long as those feet are staying up, it doesn’t matter what your speed is. I will talk more about timing in the next post, which will teach the basics for freestyle pulling.