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Here are some general guidelines we would apply to using any artificial training tool.
Before you use it make sure you…
- Recognize what skill the tool is meant to help you improve, and how.
- Recognize what the tool does not do for you and why.
- Be careful of the ways the tool may create new problems or bad habits.
- Use the tool in such a way that you eventually no longer need to use it.
Here are some good reasons you may want to use fins:
- You want to feel water flowing continuously over your streamline body while holding Skate Position.
- You want to be able to take slow-motion strokes without legs sinking.
- You want to turn off your kick and let the legs stay lifted behind, but still require your core to stay engaged (exactly what a pull-buoy will NOT do for you).
When you use fins, consider how you are shaping your kick – the kick can be generated from bending the knees, bending at the hips, or from rotating the legs inside the hip socket. Each of those emphasizes a different set of muscles and trains the kick differently. The fins magnify the force you feel in each kick and so makes it easier to notice which muscles you are using. They will get tired more quickly!
Use fins temporarily to allow you to take your mind off the back end (legs) while you concentrate on training the front end (arms).
Use fins in a cool down set to give the arms a rest and load the legs muscles for more conditioning. Pay attention and form the kick in a way that has them loaded and kicking in the way most similar to how you will form the kick in whole stroke.
Use fins in passive drills to create flow of water over the body so you can test and fine tune positions of your body parts – this is particularly useful in Skate Position. But avoid turning it into a kicking drill, where getting to the other wall becomes your focus.
The main service of the fins is for adding lift to the legs without having to really kick at all, not for propulsion forward. And use them in such a way that you eventually don’t need to use them. Avoid creating a dependency on any device.
For all these purposes above we prefer to use the Finis Positive Drive Fins.
Here’s the short analysis of these fins:
– They permit great ankle flex, better than my zoomers.
– The ellipsoidal blade does permit a much tighter kick pattern, much more like my barefoot one, and in all four strokes. These are especially nice for dolphining because you can turn the feet inward just slightly.
– The thrust of these is snappy and full, but allows an even faster kick rate and more thrust per kick than normal ‘zoomer’ type fins.
– They are much lighter and more compact than zoomers, and fit more nicely in the swim bag because of it.
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