Want to swim fast breaststroke? It’s time to start kicking! The breaststroke “frog kick” drives 70-80% of your stroke’s power and speed, so if you’re swimming with poor technique, you’re probably having a tough time getting faster.
Check out four of our favorite drills to help you hone your breaststroke kick, improve mobility and increase power. Then, put these drills to work in our go-to set for breaststroke technique.
Breaking Down Breaststroke Kick Technique
Before we dive into the drills, let’s review what a good breaststroke kick looks like. Think about your kick as four steps:
Related: How to Swim Breaststroke with Perfect Technique
- Up: Bend your knees, flex your feet, and drive your heels up to your butt using your hamstrings.
- Out: Turn your toes out and start kicking out, like a frog. Don’t let your knees go too wide, though. Keep them about shoulder width apart to reduce drag.
- Around: As your legs begin to straighten, bring your feet around and start to squeeze them back together.
- Together: Point your toes and zip up your legs, returning to your starting position in streamline.
4 Drills for Breaststroke Kick
These drills are great for your breaststroke kick technique and power. Take your time with each drill to feel what your body is doing and adjust for maximum efficiency.
Streamline Kick on Front
To start, we’re kicking in streamline. Push off the wall on your stomach, and hold streamline just under the surface of the water as you do breaststroke kick.
Think about driving your heels to your butt with every kick. To breathe, lift your head. Don’t worry about doing a full pull here – just grab a quick breath and get back to streamline!
Feel free to use a snorkel for this drill to avoid lifting your head.
Heel Tag on Front
Heel tag is a great way to improve your mobility and work on driving your heels to your butt. Starting on your stomach, place your hands behind you, right above your butt. Every time you kick, tap your heels with your hands. If you can’t physically tap your heels yet, that’s ok. Keep trying and over time you’ll build the flexibility!
Time your breath as if you’re doing a full stroke, but with no arms. Lift your head, take a breath and drop back into your streamlined position before kicking.
Heel Tag on Back
Next, we’ll take the heel tag drill onto our backs! This version of the drill is easier, so if you’re struggling to do heel tag on your stomach, try this version instead.
Start on your back, and place your hands behind you. As you kick, tap your heels to your hands. This time, don’t let your knees break the surface of the water, and keep your body parallel to the surface.
Don’t let your knees go too far apart. Try to keep them shoulder width apart if you can!
Streamline Kick on Back
We wrap up this drill selection with a classic: Streamline kick on the back!
When kicking on your back, think about maintaining the same range of motion and body position as you were during the previous drills. Keep your streamline tight and don’t let your hips sag to the bottom of the pool.
Breaststroke Drill Set
Try this breaststroke swim set to improve your kick and overall breaststroke efficiency. Log this workout in the MySwimPro app for detailed tracking, analytics and personalized intervals.
Warmup
- 1×300 Freestyle Easy @ 5:00
- 4×50 IM Order @ 1:00
Drill Set
16×25 Breaststroke @ :40
- 4×25 Streamline Kick on Front
- 4×25 Heel Tag on Front
- 4×25 Heel Tag on Back
- 4×25 Streamline on Back
Main Set
5×100 Freestyle & Breaststroke @ 2:00*
- 100 Freestyle
- 25 Breaststroke & 75 Freestyle
- 50 Breaststroke & 50 Freestyle
- 75 Breaststroke & 25 Freestyle
- 100 Breaststroke
*On these five 100s, focus on perfect kick technique. Slow down, don’t rush and think about driving your power from your kick.
Cool Down
1×100 Freestyle Easy @ 1:30
Consistency is key when it comes to improving your breaststroke kick. Work on it a few times per week, if not daily, and you’ll start to see improvements! Take your training to the next level with a personalized Training Plan in the MySwimPro app.
2 Comments
I want to learn
Don’t like the idea of bringing the feet up to the butt. There is no propulsion for the first part of the push back (until the final snap) so why take it up so far and waste time? A shorter flex and snap can save a precious fraction of a second per stroke. Co-ordinating that with a faster arm stroke is not difficult. Taught to me by Brent Rushall – USRPT proponent.