Eggbeater Kick Treading Water For Beginners

Learning The Eggbeater Kick Treading Water For Beginners

Treading water enables a person to stay in one position with the head above water and this is an excellent thing to teach swim students. However, the eggbeater kick is often taught as part of the treading water. The problem is that despite its popularity the eggbeater kick is, in my opinion, an advanced technique and is not something that I would teach as part of treading water for beginners.

Don't get me wrong the eggbeater kick is an extremely powerful and useful kick. It is a normal part of water polo or syncronised swimming but it is also one of the most useful skills that a lifeguard and water rescue personal can have at their disposal.

Lifeguards would use it in a deep water rescue to raise themselves up high enough to perform mouth to nose Expired Air Resuscitation (EAR). This is an extremely difficult thing to do because the lifeguard has to not only contend with the complications of the process of EAR in deep water it is further complicated by the having to blow air through the patient's nose (usually the only safe way to do EAR in deep water) and also the heavy exertion of the eggbeater kick. But this kick is possibly the only one that is powerful and efficient enough to lift the rescuer high enough out of the water for long enough to perform EAR.

Wait... Get Your Lesson Plans Here

In contrast rescue personal only have to use it for a relatively short period of time. For instance, to assist their patient to be connected to a winch or a lifeboat or something similar. That is unless they end up doing EAR in which case their situation is the same as the lifeguard.

Water polo players may be doing it more or less all the time in the water but only need to use the power of the kick when they are catching or throwing the ball (see the video below).

Synchronised swimmers would only use the kick when a particular movement requires it so it would not be all the time.

Let me add that nothing I have said should be taken as denigrating the skill and effort involved of anybody who uses the eggbeater but I think what I have said does honestly reflect the uses of this kick.

Well that rather long-winded commentary is all very well but if a teacher does decide to teach the eggbeater kick as part of there treading water skill set, just how should they go about it and that it the subject of my next article Eggbeater Kick Treading Water For Beginners: How to Teach it.

Enjoy     
Richard