4.4. What is the Difference between 2-Beat and 6-Beat Kick?

In freestyle, we distinguish three kicking methods based on the number of beats per arm stroke cycle: two-beat, four-beat, and six-beat kick.

The six-beat kick is the model technique for competitive swimming, it’s the most common and correct number per stroke cycle, meaning three kicks per left arm stroke and three kicks per right arm stroke. Anything over 6 kicks is wrong and is too fast a frequency, which isn’t efficient at all and costs us too much energy.

It’s easy for me to tell you how many kicks there should be, but for you, counting them will be a superhuman task.

And what’s more, when I start stroking with my right arm, I need to start that trio of kicks with my right foot.

And when I start stroking with my left arm, I start those three kicks with my left foot.

This is where the real confusion begins, and coordination-wise, it’s one of the hardest things to explain and teach. I’ve found that I start with the two-beat kick first, and once that clicks into the right place, you can smoothly transition to the six-beat kick. Let’s try it together.

The two-beat kick is one kick per stroke. When I stroke with my right arm, I kick with my right foot. When I stroke with my left arm, I kick with my left foot. It’s a very slow frequency, and the kicks serve only to maintain the correct body position at the surface. The two-beat kick doesn’t give us any significant propulsion, it doesn’t speed us up in freestyle, which is why it’s suitable for longer distances, for health swimming, and any maintenance training.

Notice that the range or span of the kick is very small, and after kicking, we try to keep our legs as close together as possible and wait for the next stroke with those joined legs. Legs spread apart mean terrible water resistance and terrible slowdown or even stopping.

Other swimming schools ignore this basic physics, and in my opinion, for example, the total immersion method unnecessarily spreads the legs almost into a split. If with each kick the span, the preparation for the kick is too large, then obviously it slows down the forward movement, because by spreading our legs we create enormous water resistance for ourselves, and each stroke becomes an acceleration from a standstill. Instead, let’s try to make the kick as small as possible to fulfill the purpose of position and balance.

Try practicing the two-beat kick with a snorkel during training so you don’t have to worry about breathing. It looks like this, and focus on a narrow kick and joining your ankles after kicking.

If your legs tend to sink toward the bottom, you can try the two-beat kick with a snorkel and a pull buoy. The pull buoy primarily serves to prevent us from kicking and using only our arms, but we can also use it as a flotation device for slow kicking.

The six-beat kick essentially builds on the two-beat. Instead of just one kick per stroke, we add two more.

Sometimes we can add just two small ones without force, which again only serve to improve body position so the legs don’t sink to the bottom. Look at the demonstration.

And now it’s already a model six-beat kick, just still in a more or less energy-saving mode.

But if we put the same force into all kicks, it costs us more energy, but at the same time, our legs propel us forward more.

Finally, there are hybrid counts, such as one-beat, three-beat, four-beat kick, and it’s basically something in between – a kind of limping between two-beat and six-beat kick. The four-beat is still relatively common and has a rhythm of 1+3 kicks, usually 1 kick on the breathing side, 3 kicks on the non-breathing side.

It’s necessary for everyone to find a rhythm that suits them. Generally, one isn’t better than the other; even at the Olympics, you’ll see professional swimmers with two-beat kicks and four-beat kicks in longer events. It takes patience to try all variations and find comfort in one of them.

As I said – I recommend starting with a two-beat kick, which we can still mentally perceive and coordinate, and then incorporate the six-beat kick into it.