10 Breaststroke Kick Drills

Phase 1 — Feel & symmetry

Drill 2: Kick on Back, Hands at Sides

This drill uses the supine position to give swimmers real-time visual feedback on their own mechanics — something that's impossible when face-down in the water. Back-position kicking is one of the most underutilized tools in the breaststroke coaching toolkit.

Kick breaststroke on your back so you can watch your own knees in real time. Keep the knees roughly shoulder-width apart and submerged throughout recovery. Focus on bringing the heels to the hips — not pulling the knees toward the chest. Swimmers are often shocked to see how wide or how high their knees travel when they can finally observe the pattern directly.

Phase 1 — Feel & symmetry

Drill 3: Back Kick With Board on Knees

This companion drill to Drill 2 adds a simple piece of equipment to create instant tactile feedback on knee position — one of the most effective corrections available for the "knees-up" fault.

Place a kickboard across your thighs while kicking on your back. The board becomes an instant mechanical alarm: if you pull your knees forward toward your chest instead of drawing your heels to your hips, your knees lift the board — and you know immediately. This tactile feedback loop is far more effective than verbal coaching alone for correcting the "knees-up" fault.

Phase 1 — Feel & symmetry

Drill 4: Streamline Kick on Back

This drill builds directly on Drill 2 by adding a full overhead streamline while kicking on your back. The swimmer must now maintain a tight, extended body line — arms locked overhead, biceps squeezed to the ears, hips level — while executing the breaststroke kick pattern. The additional challenge of holding the streamline introduces a range-of-motion and hip stability demand that exposes weaknesses invisible in the simpler back-kick version.

A sagging hip is the most common error here. When the core cannot maintain position under the dual demand of kicking and streaming, the hips drop and the kick loses its mechanical advantage. Coaches should cue swimmers to "push your belly button to the sky" and keep the ears covered by the arms throughout the drill. This directly mirrors the streamline position achieved after a breaststroke turn, making it highly transferable to race-pace performance.

Phase 2 — Power & rhythm

Drill 5: Kickboard Kick on Front

With foundational symmetry and body awareness established in Phase 1, swimmers are now ready to build propulsive power and train the rhythm of the kick cycle. The kickboard drill is a workhorse of breaststroke kick development — familiar to most swimmers, but frequently executed with critical errors that undermine its effectiveness.

Hold a board extended in front and kick continuously. Removing any need to think about arm timing or breathing mechanics allows full attention to kick quality. The key instruction that most swimmers miss: add a full 2–3 second glide between kicks. Frantic, continuous kicking without a glide trains the wrong rhythm and eliminates the speed-carrying coast that defines elite breaststroke. Count the glide out loud if necessary.

Phase 2 — Power & rhythm

Drill 7: Heel Tag

Place your hands behind you just above your glutes — palms facing out toward your feet — and attempt to tap your heels to your hands on every single kick recovery. This drill trains the heel to travel up toward the seat on a short, direct path, correcting the deeply ingrained fault of the knees dropping down and forward during recovery. That faulty pattern increases drag and robs the kick of its mechanical advantage before the propulsive phase even begins.

The back version of Heel Tag is the entry point: it's easier to maintain the hand position while supine, and it lets the swimmer focus entirely on the recovery path without worrying about breathing. Once the movement pattern is grooved, progress to the front version: the swimmer is now face-down and must turn their head to breathe, adding a mobility and coordination demand that closely mimics actual breaststroke swimming. The front version also allows coaches to observe the kick from the pool deck and give immediate feedback.

Phase 3 — Pressure & integration

Drill 8: Wall Kick

This drill targets foot pressure and positioning during the propulsive phase. Using the wall as a tactile reference helps you feel continuous pressure through the full sweep and exposes left–right asymmetry.

Face the wall, hold the gutter or lane line, and kick breaststroke against it. The tactile sensation of your feet pressing on the water — with the wall providing positional reference — makes it immediately clear where in the kick cycle you lose pressure. The most common finding: pressure disappears mid-kick because the feet fail to stay turned out through the full sweep. Coaches can stand at the wall and observe foot positioning without any video equipment. The drill also identifies left-right asymmetry in foot engagement.

Fixes: feet not turning out, loss of pressure mid-kick, asymmetrical catch.

Phase 3 — Pressure & integration

Drill 10: Three-Kick / Two-Kick, One-Pull

This is the signature integration drill for breaststroke kick development and the essential bridge from isolated kicking back to whole-stroke swimming. Swim full breaststroke but insert extra kicks into each stroke cycle: begin with three kicks per pull, and as timing and coordination improve, progress to two kicks per pull before returning to standard swimming. Between each kick, the body holds a tight, fully extended streamline — no early arm pull, no premature head lift.

The drill accomplishes several things simultaneously. First, it overloads the kick, building endurance and power in a sport-specific position. Second, it forces the swimmer to experience — and eventually internalize — the streamline between kick and pull. Third, and most critically, it exposes timing collisions: the deeply common fault of initiating the arm pull before the kick has finished. That collision kills speed by creating simultaneous drag from both ends of the body. When swimmers do the three-kick pattern, they must wait for the kick to complete and feel the glide before the arms move. That waiting is the lesson.

1. Three Kicks, One Pull

   Maximum kick overload. Train the wait. Hold the streamline between every kick before the pull initiates.

2. Two Kicks, One Pull

   Intermediate integration. Rhythm starts to feel closer to full stroke. Timing collision fault is exposed.

3. Full Stroke

   Return to one kick, one pull — with the glide now fully internalized and the timing clean from the drill work.