Over-bending the knees is one of the most common — and most costly — mistakes in freestyle kicking. In this video, The Race Club shows you exactly how much knee bend is correct, and why too much quietly kills your speed.
The numbers matter: freestyle kick should bend the knee roughly 38–50°, while dolphin kick runs 50–70°. Go beyond that range and you drop velocity sharply, forcing you to burn extra energy just to recover the speed you lost. And this isn’t a freestyle-only problem — over-bending shows up across all three non-breaststroke strokes, dragging down backstroke and butterfly too.
You’ll learn how to feel the difference between a propulsive, controlled kick and an over-bent one that anchors you in the water, plus how to dial in the right knee angle so your kick adds speed instead of stealing it. Fix this one habit and you’ll move faster on the same effort.