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That is a true statement, but he also APPEARS to me to be all about swimming effortlessly as well. If you want to swim fast, then the effort has to be there. if you want to maintain a certain stroke length and increase the stroke rate, then you have to put more muscle into it. He's not, but that's how it comes off. He's very much into swimming efficiently and not wasting energy. He says you shouldn't go to the pool to swim hard. You should try to swim fast and the result will probably be that the workout will be hard, but swimming hard shouldn't be the intention. It's a result of the effort required to maintain your goal SPL and SR. He's really into the Finis Tempo Trainer and working on gradually increasing your stroke rate while maintaining your strokes per length.
I'm working with a swim coach right now who's trying to get me to cut out a few strokes per length and swim more efficiently. He had me do a test that illustrated this point. My goal was to swim 50 yards aiming for 14 strokes per length. I couldn't do it, but I did manage 15. I swam that 50 in 35 seconds and the effort level was moderate. Then he had me swim an all out 50. Everything I have. I swam that one in 32 seconds. My form fell apart and all I was doing was swimming hard. The first 50 was at a much lower effort level, but if I did several of them just like that I would start getting tired and the workout would be hard but it would be a result of swimming fast (for me) and not because I simply went to the pool to swim hard.
I think TI could produce fast swimmers, but everyone into TI focuses on effortless swimming and therefore they swim slow. I started with TI when I got into triathlons because I couldn't swim two lengths of the pool without resting. It taught me the basics. Then I moved on and started gaining speed. I don't know what would have happened had I stuck with it. Like I said, I think it has the potential to produce fast swimmers but I never read about people talking about how fast they got using TI and until I do I'll continue to tell people TI is a great place to start and learn the basics and then you should move on and adopt a more traditional approach. But I do think TI is misunderstood by a lot of people. It's not really about effortless swimming. It's about not wasting energy. Big difference.