Training the 5th Stroke: Progressions & Drills for the Underwater Kick

with Kevin Zacher,
Santa Clara Swim Club (SCSC) Head Coach;
Scottsdale Aquatic Club (SAC) Head Coach & CEO from 2007 to 2021;
American Swimming Coaches Association (ASCA) Level 5 certified coach;
3x American Swimming Coaches Association (ASCA) Arizona Age Group Coach of the Year (2007, 2014 and 2016 );
under Zacher's leadership, SAC was named a USA Swimming Gold Medal Club in 2013, won the 2014 Junior National title and in 2016 the Junior National overall team title;
Zacher-coached swimmers have: broken National Age Group Records, won Individual National Championships, attained National Top 10 rankings in respective age groups, earned Junior/Senior National Qualifying times, qualified for the Olympic Trials and won Olympic Medals

Underwater dolphin kicking is a critical skill every top swimmer needs to master. However, many coaches struggle with how to successfully incorporate the underwater kick into warm-up, drill and training sets.

In this video, Coach Kevin Zacher shares his strategy for helping each swimmer find the right size and tempo of kick for their current abilities. He introduces drills and training sets that build speed, endurance, and power for swimmers of every age group, including warm-up routines his world-class swimmers use on race day to be sure their underwater swimming provides them with the best possible competitive edge.

Warm-up Routine for Underwater Kicking

Coach Zacher addresses the importance of including underwater kicking in warm-ups. This helps activate the core and prepare breathing stamina safely. He addresses the difficulty some swimmers have with breath control, encouraging swimmers to learn how proper breath control feels.

Establishing an underwater warm-up routine during daily practice also gives his swimmers an edge on race day. Swimmers who are aware of small daily variations in their underwater kick are better prepared to sense how their kick feels in race warm-ups and make adjustments to emerge at the right mark with optimum explosive speed.

Underwater Kicking Drills

Zacher shares drills designed to help athletes find their ideal mix of amplitude and tempo of kick for their body type and fitness level. He uses resistance drills to help swimmers feel the water and eliminate dead spots for consistent rhythmic power throughout each kick cycle. Other drills help swimmers hold their ideal body line by challenging their core so that they can engage their entire body in the underwater stroke. Kicking drills work the stroke in both directions, so that the up kick is as powerful and propulsive as the down kick.

Equipment Work

Underwater kicking benefits from the use of equipment that either assists or resists the swimmer's efforts. Adding resistance helps the swimmer feel weak spots in their kick to build consistently rhythmic and powerful strokes. Coach Zacher shows you how to add:

• Nets or kicking socks to build water feel in the feet, to encourage proper angles for maximum propulsion.
• Drag with parachutes to help your swimmers feel that more power is generated from manipulating the movement than from simply kicking harder, creating more effortless speed.
• Assistance, such as with fins, allows swimmers to swim at race speed longer, building familiarity with pace without fatigue that could break down technique.

Training Sets

By creating physically and mentally challenging underwater kick training sets, Zacher establishes the importance of underwater kicking and helps swimmers understand the intensity he looks for in training and in races. Kick speed sets break down world class kick speed into small segments that athletes can master and then build on by increasing duration or reducing rest between sets. Drill/Training combination sets like Cobra Drills help swimmers carry underwater speed through their breakout and into their strokes. Turn sets teach swimmers to treat the approach/turn/pause/underwater and breakout into a cohesive attack on the turns for maximum speed.

Bonus: Question & Answer Session

Coach Zacher engages world-class underwater kicker Ryan Hoffer in a discussion of some of the frequently asked questions he has received when training the fifth stroke. This segment makes it clear that the best underwater swimmers pay attention to detail in training every day so that they can come to recognize natural variations in their stroke. The swimmer describes how training loads may cause "heavy legs" that feel sluggish, and how using fins may help him train on those days. Conversely, he sometimes has "light legs" - when his feet don't feel like they are holding enough water and he turns to nets or training socks to get his water feel back.

Rhythmic and powerful underwater dolphin kicking is not just beautiful to watch - it's increasingly essential for competitive swimming at all levels. Coach Zacher helps age group coaches incorporate underwater kick training in every aspect of swimming, from warm-ups to racing. Improve your swimmers' underwater technique today!

52 minutes. 2017.