How much triathlon experience do you have again 
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You’re conflating having an effective kick with “putting in a big kick”.
Gary Hall Snr is a damn good swim coach regardless of what he swam as an athlete. He very much understands the difference in swim styles needed for different distances.
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“What is your swimming history?”
Good question. Retired physician. Three time Olympian (68, 72, 76) 3 Olympic medals, 10 world records. Son, Gary Jr, 3 time Olympian (96, 2000, 2004), 10 Olympic medals. Currently, Head coach and technical director of the The Race Club, which sent 33 swimmers to the past three Olympics and earned 18 Olympic medals.
I was personally a triathlete for 10 years in Arizona competing in Olympic distances only. Now stick to swimming where I have set 6 Masters World Records.
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Popov could kick a 50 in sub 27 seconds!
Larsen Jenson was rumoured to have done 30x50 on 30s kick only. It suggests when the WR is “only” 20.91 that the kick is quite important
Sun Yang was alleged to descend a 100 in about 1:05. His kick was hugely powerful but efficient (I know he had “help” but when you think he only averaged 58-59 seconds per 100)
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Loving the ship analogy. The next time the first aid trained life guard asks if I’m ok I’ll just reply. Yeah fine thanks, just having a brief capsize.
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Rolling: move in a particular direction by turning over and over on an axis.
Rotation: the action of rotating about an axis or centre
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He’s got you all on the 
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You say that but thanks to JC clarifying terminology I think I’ve found my capsize problems 
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corkscrew “drill”, kids love that in a relay race.
Zero, but I have quite a bit of experience of swimming, incl distance swimming.
It might be no great shakes to ex competitive swimmers, but bearing in mind I didn’t take up swimming till I was 25, the fact I once did 3200m Fr in 47m 58sec (=5.59 400 pace) was no mean feat.
I still remember doing Unco for the first time, half the club nearly drowned, then the coach very casually adds “I probably should have got you to use fins for that”
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In his book GH Snr talks about kicking being what he describes as the base speed. IIRC he talks about an Irish Olympian and bringing their 100m time down mostly by workkng on their kick.
It’s easy to focus on propulsion and say keeping the feet up, I think (as a poor swimmer) that the timing is the key, or at least right now. That helps with the balance and also creates a ‘platform’ to pull from.
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Or beached, or run aground, or just scrapped…
Has a life guard ever asked you if you’re OK before ?
The key thing there is 100m…
And, for a decent competitive 100m freestyler swimmer (e.g. 1 min or less), a propulsive kick on the 100m is needed, nobody would disagree with that.
A drill I used to do with my lad (when I had access to a pool where I could actually coach him, they don’t let you in most public pools, ****ers) was what I called “Switch”. Three strokes free, then 3 strokes back, then 3 strokes free etc, he was effectively rotating there.
Absolutely. You’ve not seen real concern until you’ve seen my swim being observed.
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That was an example. You are still conflating an effective kick with doing loads of kicking. The two are not the same. Surely you can comprehend that?
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Swimming in triathlon is a fartlek with accelerations and active recoveries…an effective kick is the cornerstone to those accelerations thus allowing the shoulders to manage the active recoveries at or near race pace
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I know for a fact that the Leeds based elites triathletes (both groups) do a lot of kicking.
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As I said if you, or anyone else, finds that putting a big propulsive kick means they swim a 1500 (or even a 400) faster, and don’t knacker themselves out for the rest of their Triathlon, then keep going with it.
All I would add is have you ever tried swimming with a less emphasised kick ?
that’s because they put it in their kit bag and therefore it is available to use…
If you choose not to develop it then you will have to go without…
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