Frog Kick

A finning technique that sweeps the fins together horizontally like a frog, sending thrust straight back and keeping wash off the silt below.

The frog kick is a finning technique borrowed from the breaststroke: with knees bent about 90 degrees and fins up behind you, you rotate the fin blades outward, sweep them together in a horizontal arc, and glide as they meet. All the thrust goes straight backward, in line with your body, rather than angling down toward the bottom the way a sloppy flutter kick can. Between strokes there is a genuine glide phase, which makes it a slow, efficient, restful way to cover ground.

Its defining virtue is that the wash stays up and behind you. That makes the frog kick the default propulsion in wrecks, caves, and caverns, and over any silty or fragile bottom, where a single downward fin stroke can trigger a silt-out or damage coral. It only works from good horizontal trim with the fins elevated, done feet-down it loses both its efficiency and its silt protection, so frog kick and trim are learned as a pair.

A shortened version, the modified frog kick, moves only the ankles and fin tips for tight spaces. Stiff paddle fins respond best; very soft split fins make the technique mushy. From the frog kick position you can also transition directly into the back kick and helicopter turn, which together give a diver full slow-speed maneuverability in every direction without ever using the hands.