The Complete Handbook of Kickboards
The Practical Guide for Swimmers, Coaches, Facilities, and Retailers
by Alumigogo Books
non-fiction
Master the details of kickboards: selection, use, maintenance, and business applications for pools, coaches, and retailers.
About this book
Kickboards are ubiquitous in swimming but rarely understood in depth. This handbook provides the practical, detailed knowledge that coaches, facility managers, competitive swimmers, and aquatic retailers need to make informed decisions about kickboard selection, deployment, and maintenance.
Whether you're outfitting a team, running a swim facility, training seriously, or building a business in the aquatic equipment space, you'll find concrete guidance on board types and specifications, how to choose the right kickboard for specific training goals, correct usage and technique, long-term maintenance and repairs, brand and supplier landscape, market trends, and answers to the questions professionals actually ask.
This is not marketing material. It's reference-grade information written for readers who want to understand kickboards as equipment—not casual consumers, but coaches, business owners, and serious swimmers who make decisions based on facts, specifications, and real-world outcomes.
Reader Reviews
Mark Young
★★★★★I bought this for my swim program—we have about 30 kickboards and I needed to know more about what we actually owned and when they needed replacing. Chapter 1 alone justified it; the technical details on buoyancy and material degradation are exactly what I needed. My only gripe is that the maintenance chapter could've had more photos or diagrams showing damage patterns, but the text is clear enough to work with. Solid reference.
Brenda Martinez
★★★★★This is thorough and well-written, but it felt like overkill for my needs. I was just looking for how to pick a good kickboard for my son's summer league, and the chapters on business opportunities and future trends weren't relevant to me. That said, everything I did read was accurate and practical—no fluff. If you're a coach or run a facility, this is worth it; if you're just a parent buying one board, it's probably more than you need.
Kathleen Rodriguez
★★★★★Finally, something that treats kickboards seriously. I've been coaching for 15 years and this is the most comprehensive, no-nonsense resource I've seen. The breakdown of foam types, the maintenance protocols, and the honest section on how chlorine actually degrades different materials—this is what I've had to learn through trial and error. The business chapter is practical too; I'm actually considering a rental side business now. Excellent work.
Jessica Thomas
★★★★★Very helpful for our facility refresh project. We needed to figure out what specification to standardize on and how to rotate and maintain stock, and this handbook gave us that framework without the marketing noise. A few of the supplier details in Chapter 6 felt a bit light, but I appreciate that the authors didn't just list every brand—they focused on the positioning and strategy, which is what actually mattered for our decision. Worth having in the office.
Michelle White
★★★★★I was skeptical about whether a 40,000-word handbook on kickboards could be useful, but this is genuinely excellent. It's not pretentious; it's just thorough and honest. The chapter on how different foam densities affect buoyancy and how pool chemistry degrades boards is the kind of concrete information you can't find anywhere else. I've already recommended it to three other coaches and a retailer I know. This is what technical reference should look like.