My knowledge of TI is limited to what I have read here and on other forums, which, now that I think about it is quite a bit.
I too am a former college swimmer. TI seems to be the easiest way for the masses to have access to stroke technique instruction so since anything is better than nothing, I’d give it a passing grade. I will have to say that when I hear the TI discription of “how to swim” it sounds nothing like what I was taught or what I did during my competetive career nor does the language sound like it would “work” as a construct for articulating what is happening at higher speeds. TI will get you through a tri swim leg and may even get you fast by tri standards but I doubt it will pay your way to college. Since no one here is aiming at a college swim scholarship, there is no danger in checking TI out and seeing if it works for you.
My biggest beef with swim discussions here and elsewhere is that they short change plain old work. You can not have proper technique without also working very hard.
Techinique is very important but all triathletes must also remember that the typical MOP swimmer is only working as hard as an average 10 year old on the local age group team. He/she is getting techinque coaching daily, but the little kid is also swimming more yardage than you are. You need both to be fast.
I know jack about swimming. But, from my decidedly swim-challenged POV, I can say that TI is an excellent tool to help non-swimmers learn the basics. I had NO idea what the freestyle stroke was about - as a kid I was taught that you reach forward and pull back hard, and kick like a banshee, so that’s what I always did.
TI helped me get balanced, steamlined, and realize that you swim on your sides, NOT flat on your chest - another thing I always did cuz nobody ever told me otherwise; and I took swim lessons as a kid, and even suffered thru one summer of swim team - like the 2 dudes from Men On Film would say, HATED IT!!!
TI will probably not get one into the Top-10 of the swim leg. At least not in and of itself. If you need(ed) TI, you’ll probably never be a Top-10 swimmer. And that’s ok. Are there more than just a teeny tiny small % of folks who are currently Top-10 TRI swimmers who didn’t swim all thru HS (and probably college, too)? Or any at all?
I’m sure it may be possible for those so inclined, who want to be a Top-10 swimmer, to get lots of coaching, put in massive time and yardage and effort and make that happen. For all the others, yer probably correct in saying that they are better served putting that time into bike and run training.
It’s the law of dimishing returns. After a point, every minute ya try to chop offa yer swim split is gonna cost a LOT more time in training than it may be “worth”.
Easier to just go buy a wetsuit.
PS - it was pretty amazing to watch Terry Laughlin swim in person. Looked totally efforless, silly-low stroke count, yet he was MOOOVING. Like watching a dolphin.
It seems to me that hard work is the inevitable path if you want to see real change in your swimming. I had a discussion with one of my former swimmers who started swimming when he first got to the high school as a freshman. He couldn’t make a length without grabbing a laneline. By the time he graduated he was a 4:39 500y, and a 47mid 100y free. He said that the difference was the freshman year spent killing himself trying to survive the workouts, and the changes he had to make fighting to keep up. He seemed to think the unwillingness to suffer is the reason that people go through so much technique work and don’t improve as dramatically as others. He now coaches on the left coast, and sees that his masters athletes who approach the workouts the same way he did at the beginning of his career meet with tremendous success, but the TI “disciples” (his words) who refuse to even attempt a sendoff they may not make because it may cause them to lose form, they have not improved beyond the gains when they first got into TI. He has several athletes who have recently gone 55 in an IM, and one who did a 19 in an OLY, all of whom began to swim in the last 2 years. They work hard for the 3 workouts a week (~12K/wk), and if he says “okay, 10 x 50 on :35, lets go!” They go. They may fail, but they go down fighting, and eventually succeed. “TI becomes less relevant as your technique improves” this was posted on this thread, and I agree. My AG coach used to say “There is a time for drills, the other 95% of the time you bust your ass.” He coached a few olympians in his day, so I think his opinion is worth considering.
I had no swimming background, swam for a couple of years when I first got into triathlon without any instruction or coaching - basically just swam laps.
After obtaining some level of swim fitness, figured it was time to improve, so I bought the total immersion book. Practiced Terry’s drills for almost a year.
Reduced my warm up swim count from 21 to 13 strokes, and that’s without a flip trun, swimming all the way to the wall, add an efffective turn and I’m porbably doing more like 12 strokes.
As I started to become more efficient I was able to increase my training volume and do more interval work without blowing myself up. I can now do 100 intervals on 15 strokes for what I used to take over 21 strokes to do.
I think speed work and strength training (swim cord around ankles) in the water are invaluable to becoming faster.
I believe total immersion is one component of becoming faster in the water, there’s a point where you can only become so efficient though. Just like anything else, you’ve got to incorporate volume and speed work to continue improvements.
Most fast swimmers, whether you realize it or not, incorporate TI concepts into your swimming, it may just have come at an early age during early years of swimming.
Most of Terry’s points are simple laws of physics and are kind of hard to argue against.
Though in swimming, you’re forced to make concessions to physics because of physiology. Most efficient way to get across the pool from a physics standpoint- dolphin kick underwater. Second most efficient- butterfly stroke over the water.
But human physiology isn’t set up to allow you to do that. Hard dolphin kick is ten seconds to redlining. You make other, less flamboyant tradeoffs in the pool all the time because of body type, body composition, flexibility level, etc. and end up doing things because they make sense from a physiology standpoint even though it’s not optimal from a physics standpoint.
Man I hope you are right because that is how I approach swimming. I am short on technique (but always studying) but I am a grinder and will muscle my way through it.
Not much argument with what you said, except for one thing, TI incorporates some of the concepts of fast swimmers, not the other way around. The stuff that is being described in alot of TI doctrine is stuff that I heard from my age group coach when I was 8 y.o. That was 1972. TI has repackaged it, and done a pretty good job of marketing. A look at the work of Bill Boomer and it is obvious where some of TI’s stuff comes from.
Most efficient way to get across the pool from a physics standpoint- dolphin kick underwater.
You mean in in the absence of human physiological constraints (i.e. need for oxygen) dolphin kick is most efficient - strictly hydrodynamically speaking? You’re talking efficiency and not power or work, correct?
Hydronamically speaking. Watch the fish these days, and for races of 100 meters or less, the good ones will underwater dolphin kick until the 15 meter mark (stroke rules permitting) where they legally have to surface under FINA rules.
Hydronamically speaking. Watch the fish these days, and for races of 100 meters or less, the good ones will underwater dolphin kick until the 15 meter mark (stroke rules permitting) where they legally have to surface under FINA rules.
Sure - I was swimming in college when that rule was establish for backstroke - cant remember the guys name - but he kicked the entire first length underwater. Came up at the turn with fresh arms (but legs spent) and well in the lead.
But wasn’t he maximizing power, not efficiency (from the physics sense)? - the latter of which decreases as power output increases. Dolphin kick might be faster per unit energy expended - but that is different then efficiency, which is most simply expressed as energy per unit work.
I guess the point that I am trying to make is that you can be slower but more efficient (running and swimming at least) or fast and less efficient (i.e. more power) and the key in teaching swimmers to improve is to idenitfy the point that maximizes effciency and power. Expressed as the balance between speed and turnover, for example.
I have had several people take my swim clinic in New York who first took the Total Immersion program. They were very easy to spot. All they did was lie on their sides and glide. One person actually turned over on his back and said he was taught to do this when he got tired.
It took many sessions to undo what they had learned. None of them had any idea as to how to pull through the water or to utilize their legs.
I have seen the “TI” DVD and all the demonstraters hav great high elbow recovery. The reason for it is never explained.
From my point of view, the program seems to be a simplistic view of swimming.
One thing that strikes me with TI is that while it emphasizes the need for slipperiness in such a dense medium, it doesn’t address that water density slows you down FAST no matter what, and that you have to keep pushing against it to over come it
There is an undue focus in this discussion and on a whole ST forum on TI, its methodology and structure. There are many other coaching approaches that may work (or may not) for athletes. TI should be acknowledged for its brilliant marketing and promotion capabilities first, and for providing “brand name” option for many multisport athletes. But this should not discount achievements and methods of dozen of other (and dare I say) better coaches.
As a former “serious swimmer” (Eastern European elite youth swimming program leading to a pretty successful US college swimming career), I trained under a variery of good and bad coaches (including short stint under Doc at his last year at IU). I also coach multisports professionally, and had been exposed to a variety of “officially approved” swimming methodologies (USAT, TNT, USS). In my opinion, TI would not improve my swimming performance (defined as combination of race speed at sustainable effort) even on my worst day. I am willing to speculate that years of swimming developed me into more efficient swimmer with my own “college swimmer” stroke, which may not be the most efficient for the complete swimming beginner triathlete, but certain TI elements/drills just make me slower in the water and/or feel counterintuitive and uncomfortable.
For example, at one of the coaching seminars where TI coaches (pyramid scheme representatives) were sharing (marketing) their coaching methods, I was repeatedly told by one such person (who would never qualify to be even on the lowest Div. III team) to change my stroke immediately as it was “incorrect.” Incorrect from what? Would we not by now all be intelligent enough and agree that single perfect freestyle technique does not exist, and good swimmers should not be forced to fix their (maybe even peculiar) but efficient and fast stroke?
I also was pleaded with to always swim consciously, never lifting my “internal eye” from every stroke I take. Very contradictory to what I believe in - training/imprinting proper sequence of neuro-muscular movements at some early technique-acquisition phase of your sport career and letting your body perform such indefinitely while letting brain focus on other, more important, race issues…
In general, I feel that “be one with water” is a nice holistic spin which means nothing to the beginner swimmer. There are too many “cute” drills names and explanations in TI, and sometimes I feel that it’s really done in effort to make swimming more complicated…
I picked up the TI book, tried the drills and gave the book away within the next couple of weeks. I swim +/- 10K per week and feel pretty good by the time I finish each of my swims. The protocol and drills were not for me.
“Sure - I was swimming in college when that rule was establish for backstroke - cant remember the guys name - but he kicked the entire first length underwater. Came up at the turn with fresh arms (but legs spent) and well in the lead.”
David Berkoff - not sure of the year. He has actually done a few tris and open water races in the Pac. Northwest - I believe he resides in Poulsbo, WA.
hi doug… i have read many of your threads here on slowtwitch and i appreciate all of them. I too took the TI clinic a few years ago (after taken a 25 yr break from swimming) and re-learned their style. Although i will not say anything negative about them, i know they are lacking in both the propulsion and kick aspect. I would love to meet with a good qualified coach to help me work on these areas. I believe that you are in NY and i am here in Michigan. Any contacts over here that i can get ahold of?
I have a large group of people from Detroit who come to Curaco every year. Are yo anywhere near Bikesport (Tom Demerly’s store) Andky Kennedy is doing some coaching in that area. He is very good and understands swimming.
