Leg fins lift your hips & straighten your kick, which lifts your torso horizontal. This reduces water drag on your chest. They also encourage you to kick with straighter hips, to improve kick technique and streamline your legs. They improve your kick for freestyle, backstroke and fly.
Because regular foot fins are on your feet, they sink your hips down in the water when you swim. You can feel your chest dragging through the water. Foot flippers also make you bend your hips too much. This slopes your thighs down in the water and increases thigh drag. So they don’t help to improve kick technique. Worse, foot flippers reinforce a different kick to good swimming without fins.
Good squad swimmers have higher hips, kick with straighter hips and swim fast. However, you see many swimmers at the pool who kick with hips too low in the water and who bend their hips too much when they kick. Their legs slope down in the water, increasing drag. So their kick doesn’t feel so good and is low in power. This is a common problem which gets worse with foot flippers.
Leg fins overcome these problems because they attach to your legs. So the water flow over the fins lifts your legs and knees. This lifting gives you higher hips and straighter hips which improve kick techniques for freestyle, fly and backstroke. In fact, these fins speed up your whole stroke swimming as improving your kick helps you to improve your arm pull as well.
Your body remembers your higher hips, straighter hips and improved kick, even after you take off your leg fins. So they improve kick technique for your normal swimming without fins too.
Now you can have fins for extra speed and have higher hips, straighter hips and improve kick technique!
See related FAQ about higher, straighter knees for a better kick.
See all FAQ about smooth forces for faster swimming.