Swimming Kick & Streamline Practice Plan for 13 to 15 Year Olds

Kick speed in honest doses, kick-outs held consistent across every wall, and breakouts timed into strokes. Races are won underwater; drill accordingly.

Easy swims, rockets to marks, one even board width, four dolphin waves off a wall, ankle springs poolside. The professional room opens.

The sprint gear: six all-out board widths (or half-lengths) with FULL rests (a minute-plus: speed's sacred tax), times loosely caught, best and average logged; then two streamline-kick launches at max boil. Speed kicking is nervous-system work exactly like sprinting: few, rested, honest.

The race habit: a kick-out count CHOSEN (say, six), then eight swim lengths where every wall delivers exactly that count in shape before breakout, the contract graded per wall, breaks logged honestly. Consistency beats occasional-heroics: the race's walls all arrive tired, and the contract's habit is what survives there.

The surfacing skill: push-off, the contracted kicks, then the BREAKOUT: the first stroke beginning as the body rises (never after a dead glide-up, never through a wall of drag), six reps per stroke (free and back), smoothness graded. The underwater's gift dies in bad breakouts; the timing collects it.

The ceiling stroke's walls: back push-offs (rocket inverted), dolphin-or-flutter counts, the back breakout's pinky-first first stroke, four reps. Both long-axis strokes leave walls owned.

Logged and dated: speed bests and averages, contract compliance, breakout grades. One easy length swum entirely for feel closes the room.

What to watch today: the contract's tired walls. Fresh kick-outs are universal; the count surviving the session's last lengths is the actual race skill, and the log's compliance column tells the truth. When late walls shrink, the fix is usually pacing upstream (the legs overspent early), which is exactly the management lesson wearing race clothes.