Terry Laughlin did this to a large degree with total immersion. Took much Bill Boomer's work and made a book out of it. It wasn't really all that much ahead of its time among people in the know when it came out. That doesn't necessarily mean that it wasn't valuable.

Since he has gotten started Terry Laughlin's best work has probably been to figure out how to *TEACH* people to swim, nt necessarily ground breaking swim technicque.

Then you have Phil Maffetone pretty much selling arthur lydiard's run training program and throwing in some sugar busters and barefoot running to boot.

Part o fit that the books and tapes are for the mass market, these materials aren't really meant to reference every single pice that they are derived from. That standard is really what academic papers are held to, not books like these.

In fact maffetone mentions lydiard and laughlin mentions bill boomer. But I agree that you can get the impression that it is totally new stuff.

On the other hand as you say the value of the work is still good. There is no other single book out there like swimming made easy that gives a nice progression on how to learn all four strokes. There's not really anything that puts all the endurance training stuf together including nutrition out there like maffetoen does in his book.

Wow...another triathlete that's heard of Professor Boomer. I assume you come from a swimming/swim coaching background?

I've had the privilege and opportunity to go to the Boomer and Nelms clinic at the Olympic Training Center a couple of times, as well as have them come out to our swim team to work with our swimmers. I think some of our swimmers are in the "Boomer Chronicles" videotapes that USA Swimming produced.

I'm currently teaching/coaching athletes training for their 1st triathlon in swimming, and it's been an absolutely great experience to apply the breathing and body positioning drills with them. No offense to Coach Laughlin, but in IMHO I sincerely believe in his efforts to streamline the process, he left out a lot of the basic foundations in order to promote his book and weekend clinics. Once we were able to clear up a lot of the breathing "issues" and teach body positioning, teaching someone to swim is relatively easy. However, this takes more time than just a weekend clinic, and hence is a harder sell.

Not even going to touch on the Maffetone subject. I've had enough of that discussion after going on a triathlete group ride right after getting out of an exercise physiology class.

Just my $.02.

Dave

"However, this takes more time than just a weekend clinic, and hence is a harder sell. "

I don't know much about Professor Boomer or your coaching methods, I'm sure they are great. But I felt your TI comments were a little unfair. I've done a TI weekend clinic, have watched their freestyle DVD, have read Terry's book--"Triathlon Swimming Made Easy", have taken refresher lessons with my TI coach, and have spent a great deal of time on the TI discussion board. I've never heard Terry L. or anyone at TI say that you can learn to swim in a weekend or promote their clinic as such. In fact, the one thing they emphasize at every opportunity is that you should take your time with the drill progression until you can become completely comfortable with each one. The clinic teaches you a process to learn to swim with balance and efficiency, and I walked out of it with the tools that I can use to gradually and continually improve my swimming for years to come.

With that being said, I am very interested in anything to improve my stroke and if you can point me to any writings or other resources by Professor Boomer, I would be eager to read them.

Thanks,

Barry

I'm not trying to promote myself over Coach Laughlin...I greatly respect his abilities as a coach, speaker, and motivator. And he has done a tremendous job in getting more people into the sport of triathlon through his weekend clinics. I freely admit that he also does a very fine job of promoting himself and his program, and makes pretty good money doing so (NOT there's anything wrong with that), both things of which I am quite envious of. :-)

I do see where my posting can come across as "unfair", as I tend to type a bit faster than my brain catches up sometimes. Keep in mind, my last contact with TI is/was 5-6 years ago, so if the course HAS changed, than my apologies in advance.

My point of "contention" is, if you will, that the underlying principles and foundations of the drills that are taught in TI are based in physics and biomechanics. And these things ARE important, and are worthwhile in spending time learning about them (in the water and on the deck, not necessarily in a classroom). However, the underlying response of being in a unfamiliar environment (since most of us spend our days on land) is not calm and peace, but rather "fight or flight".

Basically, and realize is this just my viewpoint, we are not designed to be swimmers. Various factors in the aquatic environment combine to make our lives complicated when we try to swim. First, there's no solid platform. Second, for swimming velocity purposes, we are in a horizontal body position. Third, and the one thing, IMHO, that every swimmer of all abilities needs to work on, is that we cannot get air on demand.

The TI program is, from what I've seen (keeping in mind my limited perspective of course), focused on initially creating swimming velocity through increasing distance per cycle/stroke. This is of course based on pretty good science, as it is very similar to what we do when transitioning from walking/jogging/running. But the primary reason new swimmers (especially younger ones) start with a very fast turnover is because they are doing "survival" swimming...meaning they're just trying to move their arms and legs to get their next breath, and not to move across the pool. As a result, their posture gets all funky (yes, that's the technical term) and swimming velocity is compromised. Tell almost anybody to take a deep breath, go down underwater, and hold their breath...and what do they do first? They invariably push/pull/kick their body (mouth) higher out of the water first. And what does this have to do with swimming? My point is that if a swimmer has a difficult time regulating his/her breathing response, then the ultimate potential of the organism in the water is compromised. This is what Professor Boomer refers to as "unguided choices".

After "learning" to breath in the aquatic environment, you still have to deal with the horizontal body position (balance) and lack of platform, which makes it even more complicated. Complications like core alignment, change of torque values within the body through the stroke cycle, transfer of energy, etc..Much more complicated than most of us can be taught on a single weekend (not that Professor Boomer and Coach Nelms haven't tried)...and much more complicated that I can explain in a forum...but that's a personal limitation of mine. It's good that you are able to follow-up with the multi-media interactions and coaching...however, it's just my perception that you are more the exception than the rule.

Let me make clear...I'm not intending to badmouth what Total Immersion teaches, I just believe, as a purist, that they leave out some very important "tools" that can help a swimmer make progress both on their own, and with a coach. My viewpoint is that these "tools" will make more of an impact later on, and should be included on the curriculum.

I realize that I haven't really explained what these "tools" are, and I really don't intend to electronically, as I lack the skills to properly present them in this format. But I extend an open invitation to any Slowtwitchers that if they are ever in the Phoenix-area, give me an email, and I'll try to put you in the water and show you what I mean.

You can check out http://www.parametrix-inc.com/index.php for some articles and presentations by Professor Boomer. However, most of the files are password protected, and are usually only accessible by those who have attended those clinics.

Just my $.02. FWIW.

Thanks for the input.

Dave

Thanks for your thoughtful response. You are correct that the TI progression has evolved a lot in the last few years. In fact, someone told me recently that none of the drills from the first book are in the newest material in their original form. I've heard the TI instructors say that Terry and crew have tried hard to analyze the progression shortcomings and make sure they evolve over time. I do think if you look at the current material, you'll find that some of your points have been addressed. That being said, I don't want to argue the value of one program over another because I think TI is fabulous, but I don't doubt for a second that your program is fabulous too.

I agree with your points regarding breathing. The "relaxed" integration of the breath into the stroke is the hardest thing to do and it took me some time to get comfortable with it (heck some days are still better than others). If this is a key focus of your method, I'm sure it is time well spent.

thanks for the link.

Barry