Learning dolphin kick

I would not recommend the large (trainer 1 and trainer 2) monofins for learning dolphin kick.  While they provide a great workout, they can be on the painful side both in your feet and legs.

The tips that I would give you for learning the kick is give yourself a tight streamline, concentrate on generating the power from your hips, and don't rush the kicks.

Press your chest into the water. Then press your hips into the water. Repeat (repeat repeat). The body motion, not the legs, creates the kick.

Stand up in the water and stretch your arms out up above your head (as if you were streamlining). Now, leading with your hands, dive over a pretend bar that's just above the water (as if clearing a hurdle), making an inverted U-shape over the "Bar" with your body. Repeat (repeat repeat).

When you feel like you've got that down and smooth and it really does look and feel like a U-shape rather than an A-frame, once you dive over that bar, pretend there's another that you need to swim under to come up for air. So you're making an S-shape with your body now: over the bar, under the next bar. Repeat (repeat repeat).

Eventually you want to make these motions as if there were far-spaced out monkey bars in the water that you were diving over and under--but they are located at the same height. To do that, use the press-chest then press-hips idea, but it becomes one smooth motion with your arms stretched out in front of you.

Once you have that undulating motion down, it's very easy to put a little extra oomph in there with your legs that's a "kick". What it really is, is like the tail end of a whip snapping. The initiation comes from the body.

very similar motion to a certain bedroom motion if you're a dude. Obviously not how it will be described on a pool deck.....

easiest way to explain it. The PG version is "generate the kick from your hips"

hope this helps.

I watched GoSwim TV's video a dozen times before posting here. They do a pretty good job of the tutorial videos.

I haven't been able to try in the pool but I am trying to do some land drills on undulating my body. When I tried that in the past, it seemed very awkward... perhaps my unathletic body lacks flexibility. 

TriAva that's a good drill. I will use that during off-times in the pool. 

I feel the push from chest (for me) is very little and much more from the hips. Almost feels like all the energy is coming from the hips in this kick. It feels more like pushing the chest and hips in water at  alternating times but not in one motion. The motion seems to break around the abdomen rather than flowing into lower half of the body. 

I thought I was wrong once, but I was mistaken Nah, the above are just some simple techniques (among hundreds) that may help get people started on dolphin kick and/or butterfly and/or dolphin diving if you have to get through a lot of shallow water in a triathlon and/or diving under waves and coming up. It's all the same motion, really, just the timing is a little different and the motion may be more or less exaggerated dep/up the circumstances.

It doesn't sound like it. On a streamline off the wall, there will be some undulation in the upper body but it is indeed mostly from the hips down; as I said, the "kick" is just a final snap of the feet at the end of a whip cracking that consists of your lower body with legs together.

Everyone has made good points here. I would say get used to the motion by trying it with fins too.

If by chance you are interested in learning to do it for backstroke my advice is to try not to push off the wall in a way that sends you too deep -- it is harder to tell when you are looking up out of the water. Also would say you'll need to learn how to hold your head so that water doesn't get up your nose as the air leaks out. As you get better you can really go pretty far (up to the legal limit) which will drop your time and help to conserve energy. You'll be in the same kind of streamlined position as on your belly only on your back. Your arms should be covering your ears in a good streamline. Good luck