By Olivier Poirier-Leroy on SwimSwam
Each day you go to the pool for practice, you are building a performance.
When the red hand on that big, white analog clock swings towards 60 to kick off a big main set, you are molding things like:
Technique. The different energy systems. Building strength and power. And refining the habits that you’ll use on race day.
This is especially the case with your underwater dolphin kick.
The Cost of Improvising Kick Counts
Often, swimmers will show up to the Big Meet, stand behind the blocks, and then start plotting how long their underwaters are going to be.
But the problem with dolphin kicking by the seat of your Speedos is that the conditions are a whole lot different compared to practice.
You’re swimming faster (thanks tech suit, taper, and shave down!). You’re carrying more speed off the walls. Your heart rate is elevated. Adrenaline is pumping through your limbs.
In these moments, the temptation to maybe kick out a little further, or kick out purely by feel, makes sense.
But staying under longer isn’t automatically faster.
For example, let’s say you’re feeling particularly ambitious and decide to kick out further than you normally would.
That decision comes with a significant metabolic cost. Venckunas & Achramavicius (2024) had swimmers do a 200 free fast twice—once with their regular underwaters (5m) and again with 12.5m breakouts. Blood lactate more than doubled with the increased distance (7.9 versus 3.3mmol/L).
That’s a big shift in physiological demand from a few extra dolphin kicks.
Extending your underwaters beyond what you’re accustomed to can also change your breakout, potentially costing you valuable speed during those crucial opening strokes each lap.
Those first few strokes—with a breakout that’s cleaner than the pool deck in the morning—can often exceed mid-pool swimming speeds (Veiga et al., 2017).
But if you’re kicking out to the point that you’re breaching the surface and gasping for air, that breakout is going to get stuck in the mud and cost you speed.
And this is where a kick count in practice can be of such value when you race.
Work Your Kick Count (and Make it Intentional)
There are a lot of benefits to using a kick count every time you hit the water in practice.
With one, you can:
Stack up a ton of dolphin kicks over the course of a workout Work your dolphin kick and breakouts at different intensities Improve your breath controlAnd of course, make your dolphin kicks automatic when you hit the competition pool.
You won’t have to debate how many dolphin kicks you are going to do, or wonder how many kicks you need to take to surface, or wonder if you can hold your kick count on the last lap when you’re gassed—the months of kick counts in training take care of that for you.
And to be sure, a kick count in training doesn’t mean you use the same kick count for every wall on race day.
When swimming a 200, you may do five dolphin kicks off the start, and then four on every wall. Or save a underwater with more dolphin kicks on the final wall to sneak past the competition.
The point is that these are intentional kick counts that are trained in practice, over and over and over again, so that you can just turn your brain off and let your dolphin kick do the talking on race day.
Make it Automatic
So here’s the challenge. This week at practice, pick a kick count. Doesn’t need to be absurd. Doesn’t even have to be a kick count, per se—you could set a goal of kicking out to a specific distance (e.g. 10m) instead.
And then stick to it in:
Warm-up During drill work When no one is watching Through all of the main set Even during the warm downRepeat it so much that it becomes boring. Second nature. As normal as the smell of chlorine.
Because racing fast under pressure is almost never done by the swimmer who is lost in the mechanics of swimming while racing. It’s done by the swimmer who can turn their brain off and let their body unleash the hard work that was done in training.
Ryan Murphy, Olympic, world, NCAA champion and an absolute beast under the surface, puts it more succinctly:
“If you don’t apply the kick count every time in practice, it won’t pay off in a race.”Yessir.
Happy kicking.
Level Up Your Underwater Dolphin Kick
Olivier Poirier-Leroy is a former national-level swimmer, 2x Olympic Trials qualifier, and author of several books for swimmers, including The Dolphin Kick Manual: The Swimmer’s Ultimate Guide to a Fast Underwater Dolphin Kick.
The book is a beastly 240+ pages of actionable insights and research into elite dolphin kicking technique and performance. It details everything from mastering undulation to vortex recapturing to structuring a dryland program for dolphin kicking success.
The Dolphin Kick Manual combines evidence-based insights with a collection of 20 ready-to-go sets and a 6-week Action Plan to help swimmers set a course for dolphin kicking success.
Train smarter and kick faster.
Learn more about The Dolphin Kick Manual
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