So as far as body balance is concerned with a two-beat kick you have the option to keep your body in a balanced stroke or not. And that’s kind of the issue with the two-beat kick, to be honest, because if you’ve ever seen someone who’s like super jerky down the pool like there was a kid on my club team that I remember was a bobber and whenever he would swim he would bob up and down. You would see all the movement above the surface of the water and it was because his body balance was off. He was doing something to try to find his way down the pool. He tried to just make himself feel evened out because he wasn’t feeling super supported by the water. If you ever want to swim with a super off-balanced body, you need to try this. When your right arm enters in Freestyle, into the water, kick down with your right leg, and vice versa. When the left hand enters you’re going to kick down with the left leg. You’re essentially firing everything on one side of the body and then firing everything on the other side of the body, which will give you that jerk in your stroke. You’re going to be heavily leaning towards either the right or the left, which is going to mess up your ability to feel like you’re floating, which is going to cause that bob. If you’ve never actually swum with an unbalanced stroke, sometimes it’s good to feel that, So that if for some reason you’re tired or something’s wrong or maybe you grow or you’ve got a kid that, you know, had a great Freestyle at the age of 10 and then for some reason, the age of 14 is just off- It could be due to this. As opposed to a six-beat kick, you don’t have an option to be off-balance because to do six beats or six kicks per arm stroke cycle, you can’t do it unless it’s truly on balance. The six-beat kick is more ideal. It means you have to kick more to do that kick, but that the timing of when the kick and the arms happen ensures that the body stays in the correct body balance. It’s the opposite of the two-beat kick example I gave you above. If your right hand enters at the top of your Freestyle you’re going to kick down with your left leg when you make that connection through your spinal fascial line you’re going to feel really body balanced to the water. You’re going to feel a lot better, feel supported by the water, and are going to feel like you’re floating. The same thing that if the left arm enters it would be the right leg kicking down.
