Butterfly Kick Drills

Vertical Butterfly Kick 

One of the simplest ways to improve your butterfly kick is to kick vertically. By going vertical, you must work against gravity to kick effectively. If you’re struggling with traditional kicking, the change of orientation can help you understand how to do the kick.  

To do vertical butterfly kick, find water deeper than your height. Place your arms on the surface of the water for support as necessary and begin doing a tight, fast butterfly kick. To increase the challenge, elevate your arms out of the water in small increments. 

Butterfly Kick with a Kickboard 

Butterfly kick with a kickboard is terrific for isolating your kick and allowing you to work on this key skill without distraction. The kickboard supports you in the water, so that you don’t have to worry about your body position and breathing. Focus on kicking in a tight, consistent manner, using both legs at the same time. Repeat over a distance that allows you to maintain effective mechanics and a consistent level of effort. 

Butterfly Kick With a Snorkel and Board 

Butterfly kick with a snorkel and board works the kick that happens when your head is down, your hands enter the water, and you’re in a horizontal body position. Your other butterfly kick happens when your head is up, so you’re not as horizontal. Aim to maintain a consistent effort throughout. 

Butterfly Kick With a Snorkel in Streamlined Position 

Doing butterfly kick with a board creates stability. But when you swim butterfly, you won’t get to use a kickboard, so learning to kick without artificial stability is important. 

To work on this, do butterfly kick with a snorkel in a streamlined position, focusing on maintaining a strong, consistent kick. You can also do this drill with your hands straight in front of your shoulders or at your sides. 

Streamlined Butterfly Kick on Your Back 

Butterfly is swum on your front, but an effective kick works in both directions, which makes streamlined butterfly kick on your back a good drill for developing a strong, consistent up-kick. This drill helps you strengthen and condition the muscles on the backs of your legs. 

Focus on those muscles and on a strong, consistent kick. As an alternative, you can do this drill with your arms at your sides.  

Surf Kick 

Surf kick helps you keep your hips up and out of the water when you lift your head to breathe, which can cause your hips to drop. 

To do this drill, hold your arms straight in front of you without moving them side to side while doing butterfly kick. Lift your head up to breathe. Because you don’t have a kickboard to support you, you’ll have to work hard to keep your hips up. This drill will help you develop a fast, powerful kick. You’ll learn very quickly that you need to kick hard. 

Wall Kick 

Wall kick is a good drill for learning how to use your feet more effectively to push backward against the water with each kick.  

To do this drill, lie on your front with your hands on the wall and start doing butterfly kick. Because you’re kicking against an immovable object, you’ll face more resistance than if you were kicking through the water. This extra resistance creates more pressure on your feet, allowing you to better feel what your feet are doing. The goal is to learn to kick in a way that keeps as much pressure as possible on your feet with each kick.  

Tombstone Kick 

Tombstone kick is a great drill for building a powerful kick.  

To do this drill, instead of laying a kickboard flat on the surface of the water while you kick, hold it straight up and down, pressing as much of the board as possible beneath the surface. Your kickboard should stand like a tombstone at a graveyard. 

The resistance created with tombstone kick requires you to be much more stable through your core to control the position of the board. This helps your kick by improving the connection throughout your body, as well as your ability to feel pressure on your feet.  

4-Kick, 1-Pull 

Having a strong butterfly kick is great but having a strong butterfly kick while you swim is what really matters. The 4-kick, 1-pull drill helps you learn to take the kick you’ve developed in isolation and integrate it into your butterfly.  

To do this drill, swim butterfly with four kicks for every stroke instead of the proper two kicks. To make the whole stroke flow, your kicks will need to be added at the right time. You still need to kick when your hands enter the water and when they exit. Do two extra kicks after your hands enter. By doing the two extra kicks at the right time, the whole drill flows smoothly. 

Kicking With DragSox 

DragSox help you improve the strength and skill of your butterfly kick. The resistance they produce challenges the strength and fitness of your legs. Just as important, they encourage a more rhythmic and flowing kick that uses your whole body. If you kick just from your knees with DragSox, you won’t go anywhere.  

You can do any kick drill with DragSox to take your kicking skills to the next level.