Advice needed when can only do 3 of 4 strokes

[katz568]

Ok so my daughter is nearly 10. She has just been moved up again in her development squad at our club (I coach there so get to watch her and all the others every session). She has never been able to do breast stroke as she has a really bad screw kick and because of this is really self concious, but in fly, back and crawl is pretty ok and always up near the front of the lane. I have noticed more so since moving up that in the above she is always near the front but totally loses it as soon as it comes to breast stroke. She also gets cramp in her toes everytime she swims breast stroke. She has said many times she doesn't want to swim it at all but then she wouldnt be moved if she didn't as it is a rule of the club that they do all strokes.
Does anyone have any ideas on how i can help her as it is really knocking her confidence in her ablilty in her other strokes too.
Many thanks

[laserblazer]

Something I have found that helps is to get the swimmer to make sure their ankle bones are touching when get back to straight legs. This focusses them on their leg action and often eliminates the screw kick.

[Tatter]

I had the same problem with my son. He's still much stronger in the other strokes, but this is what worked for us:

1. He had some 1-2-1 time with a swim teacher for 12 weeks. Only 30 mins at a time, but it gave him the attention he needed to know when it was right and when it was wrong immediately.
It is hard to know when you screw-kick because you cannot see your feet. He was fine on the back (when he could see what his feet were doing), but on the front he was just practising a screw-kick as the club coach didn't have time to focus when there are 16-24 other swimmers to look after.

2. His club coach put him at the end of the lane for breaststroke, but moved him back to the front for other strokes.
This meant he could do a slow, controlled, thinking-about-it, kick at the back for breaststroke, but he knew he didn't have to swim fast to get back to the front of the lane.

Try not to worry too much, she will get it eventually. It will take time, it took my son nearly a year to get a slow, race legal kick.

Edit - I forgot to mention, her coaches are spot on in getting her breaststroke up to scratch. Kids' favourite stroke changes over time. In a few years time she may well decide to make this her favourite.

[Linny]

There are several things to consider here and we don't really have enough information to go on in many respects but as a teacher and a coach I think that there are two main things to do -

1. Stop her swimming bad breaststroke in the lane that she is in when she is swimming in her club because all this does is reinforce the wrong thing. To do this, when everyone else is swimming breaststroke her coach should tell her that she can't; she should swim breaststroke pull with a fly kick preferably or if that is asymmetrical then a flutter kick.

2. Outside of her lane swimming ensure that she is receiving tuition which is specific to her screw kick (can be through the club or outside). This should be fairly short duration work (what Tatter did is ideal) with a zero tolerance approach to her screw kick in order to fix it.

I use -
*going back a step or indeed several steps (always the right thing to do - go back to sitting at the side with feet in the water if you must; then kicking on back with a woggle etc. Every time there is a failure, go back a step again)
*video cameras (I get the other kids in the lane to video what is going on underwater and give immediate feedback)
*direct and immediate intervention (get a better swimmer of the same sex to follow and hit the offending foot every time they get it wrong)

In the long term, it is important for a club to liaise with the learn to swim programme that feeds it and fix these basic problems before swimmers join clubs. I get quite cross when swimmers try out for the club with screw kicks (or even with no idea how to do a breaststroke kick) when they have supposedly finished in a learn to swim scheme. It does noone any favours to pretend it isn't there and/or to hope that it will fix itself whilst continuing to "promote" a child because they are good at everything else.

[ululo]

Spot-on advice, Linny. This is indeed the way to get it fixed.