I started triathlon 12 years ago and hadn’t swam competitively or for recreation prior to that. Was dead last out the water for my first tri. Struggled to swim 100 without fatigue.
I got the TI book and read it. No clinics or DVD.
Initially I did the core drills religiously. After a few years , I felt much more comfortable and better positioned in the water and can now consistently swim an IM sub 1:10. Never broke an hour but a bunch of 1:05 with moderate effort. I swim about 8000 yards a week and continue to do the core drills( side swim, press the buoy, superman etc…) each week at least once.
TI drills got me comfortable in the water and has helped me with body position and roll. I admit, I also like the swim smooth website and have been playing around with their ideas the last two years.
All in all, a little guidance, dedication and consistency got me where I am today.
Hate the masters swim groups probably because it reminds me of two a days from high school football.
Good luck
Lots of TI thread over the years.
This is probably one of the “best” and in particular, read and follow what Gerry Rodrigues has to say in the thread: http://forum.slowtwitch.com/gforum.cgi?do=post_view_flat;post=2831900;page=1;sb=post_latest_reply;so=ASC;mh=25;
I haven’t seen the most recent edition of TI; they may have changed this, but the edition I read was just 3 years ago so not that old.
In that edition, it clearly says to NOT do hard sets. It clearly, explicitly says that by focusing on form, you will naturally build the strength and speed needed to swim fast. Not once does it mention intervals or overdistance sets, but repeatedly brings up the ‘swim smooth and easy’ concept. At least in the older edition, it was very obvious - and probably a good thing for me, as I bought into the kool-aid, and dived into the pool as a raw beginner most enthusiastically expecting some big gains on easy swimming.Had I known how hard it would be to get faster, I never would have started triathlon in the first place! This is not mudslinging in the least - that’s exactly the thing I remember as most unique about TI - not the techique drills, not the smoothness, which are all exactly what every good swim coach recommends. It was that swim easy focusing on form but get fast concept. Not overstating this in the slightest at least with the edition I read.
There were two concepts in my edition of the book that struck me as flawed (I’m a lousy swimmer so don’t trust me,go see for yourself) but I agreed completely with everything else in the book and it’s still my #1 referred to book when I talk to total newbs asking me how to get into tri.
-
The whole ‘swim easy’ thing - as discussed above. Didn’t work for me at all - actually for me, didn’t even work at 2:05/100yd pace - I had to swim significantly harder (but not gutbusters) to start improving from even that pace. And yes, I took a few swim lessons which verified that I wasn’t horrendously ugly in the water. Just didn’t have the arm endurance - my max turnover rate then was nearly half as slow as it is now and I’m only at like 1:32/100yds for T-pace.
-
My edition of TI really emphasized swimming on your side, and had an entire popout box explaining that for heavier lean males like me, you had to find your ‘sweet spot’, which it clearly said could be nearly completely on your back (!!). Yes, that’s exactly what it said, and that’s exactly what I followed - so my breathing rotatin ended up with most of my face completely out of the water, to the point that people in the pool were asking my what stroke I was using since it didn’t look like a freestyle stroke anymore. After nearly 6 months of swimming like this, took me 6 weeks of dedicated drillwork after a coach told me to cut it out, to eliminate that over-rotation, which hugely increased my speed - like a 20sec/100 legit gain with no fitness increase. That corkscrew effect really killed me. I don’t know if the current book still talks about that ‘sweet spot’ being nearly on your back, but that was some of the worst advice I’ve ever gotten in swimming, anywhere.
Yeah I’ll agree it doesn’t bring up interval or sets. I think the point they were emphasizing about swimming easy may have been aimed at beginners. If one is at a typical pool, there are people working really hard (splashing everywhere) and not really moving. For those people, swimming easy and working on technique will probably do more for them then increasing intensity. Once you get to a certain level of efficiency, than yeah, working harder is going to necessary. I can’t see how TI could argue against this. Perhaps TI needs to better explain the points they’re trying to make.
#2) Agree with you on this. I had the same problem from the Easy Freestyle DVD. Did end up overrotating and it was a problem that I needed to fix. When I was at the TI workshop one of the daughters mentioned they took this part out in the subsequent DVD as they were aware of this problem.
i’ve never heard of ‘total immersion’. If it means totally immersing yourself in water and swimming as long as you can while holding your breath, then coming up for air, then immersing again. It would be inefficient.
Yeah, it’s underwater dolphin kicks. Tough for longer distance races.
Agree with your comments. I’m glad I wasn’t the only one who got nailed on that over-rotation - it was truly a horrible thing for me to fix. Literally like re-learning to swim all over again.
And also agree with your comment about the audience for TI. It really isn’t aimed at competitive triathletes or swimmers, no matter how much the advocates and fans of the book say it’s “for everybody.” It really is aimed at the recreational “YMCA” swimmer, and as my prior post above, anything faster than 2:00/100yds is fast for the typical YMCA swimmer. At 1:50/100yds, you’re dominating the fast lane at lunch, and at sub 1:40/100yds, you’re so fast that you’re lapping everyone in the fast lane for the typical recreational nonracing swimmers there. For those folks, swimming hard is definitely not as important as cleaning up their form, since the average pace of these swimmers is like 2:20-2:40+/100. I swim at 6 different Ys in the Norcal Bay Area at lunch due to work being at 6 different locations, so I feel that I have a pretty good sense of a typical YMCA recreational swimmer.
With TI swimming I got a 1:10 at IMMT and a :26 at an Olympic earlier in the summer.
I was given the video and wonder if I should just jump into this for the next 9 months or not.
Don’t bother, it’s not very useful or fast. Try a Masters Group at the pool.
TI is just a money maker for Terry Laughlin, nothing more. It shows people how to swim easier doing a screwed up Freestyle technique which should actually be considered a different stroke all together, like Breast Stroke, Backstroke, and now TI Stroke. It’s not faster than Freestyle and you look dorky doing it.
It is soo funny watching the TI swimmers in the water stroking away and going nowhere quickly. So if you want to look like a complete dork, learn it, if not sell it on Ebay and join a Masters Group.
With TI swimming I got a 1:10 at IMMT and a :26 at an Olympic earlier in the summer.
Good job. Unfortunately, if you took 100 randomly selected young men/women nonswimmers, and made them do 2 years of TI without any strenuous intervals or hard swimming, I doubt a majority of them would have similar results.
At 1:50/100yds, you’re dominating the fast lane at lunch, and at sub 1:40/100yds, you’re so fast that you’re lapping everyone in the fast lane for the typical recreational nonracing swimmers there.
Funny, I swim about 1:40/100yds at my local YMCA and consider myself slow compared to the other swimmers… They must be doing 1:20 to 1:30/100… I guess it all depends on region.
I was given the video and wonder if I should just jump into this for the next 9 months or not.
Don’t bother, it’s not very useful or fast. Try a Masters Group at the pool.
TI is just a money maker for Terry Laughlin, nothing more. It shows people how to swim easier doing a screwed up Freestyle technique which should actually be considered a different stroke all together, like Breast Stroke, Backstroke, and now TI Stroke. It’s not faster than Freestyle and you look dorky doing it.
It is soo funny watching the TI swimmers in the water stroking away and going nowhere quickly. So if you want to look like a complete dork, learn it, if not sell it on Ebay and join a Masters Group.
Says the :57 minute swim pb “Pro” IM triathlete…
At 1:50/100yds, you’re dominating the fast lane at lunch, and at sub 1:40/100yds, you’re so fast that you’re lapping everyone in the fast lane for the typical recreational nonracing swimmers there.
Funny, I swim about 1:40/100yds at my local YMCA and consider myself slow compared to the other swimmers… They must be doing 1:20 to 1:30/100… I guess it all depends on region.
You’re in San Diego per your username stats. That probably has one of the highest % of fast swimmers in the country.
If you go to 10 random YMCAs in the country at noon, you’ll be lucky to find even 10% of the swimmers swimming faster than 1:40/100.
The problem with TI, at least for me, was that he describes the path from the result back without explaining the interstitial whys. Being long in the water with an “easy” stroke is the result of good form, but just trying to be long with a glide won’t magically impart good form. Also, to swim fast with a slow turnover requires a great catch and a very explosive rotation, which comes at a cost. As others have said in other threads, form and fitness go hand-in-hand and complement each other. So, I have come full circle with T1 as I have a better understanding of swimming, and I would say that yes - you can swim pretty fast for a triathlete via T1 techniques (which really are not anything different than what everyone else advocates), but it took me 15 years to get there.
I was given the video and wonder if I should just jump into this for the next 9 months or not.
Don’t bother, it’s not very useful or fast. Try a Masters Group at the pool.
TI is just a money maker for Terry Laughlin, nothing more. It shows people how to swim easier doing a screwed up Freestyle technique which should actually be considered a different stroke all together, like Breast Stroke, Backstroke, and now TI Stroke. It’s not faster than Freestyle and you look dorky doing it.
It is soo funny watching the TI swimmers in the water stroking away and going nowhere quickly. So if you want to look like a complete dork, learn it, if not sell it on Ebay and join a Masters Group.
Says the :57 minute swim pb “Pro” IM triathlete…
That’s ALOT faster than you and in the top 10% of IM’s,.
I’m not claiming to be a Pro, nor am I slagging on other swimmers.
Man, I must be really bored to keep feeding the troll.
At 1:50/100yds, you’re dominating the fast lane at lunch, and at sub 1:40/100yds, you’re so fast that you’re lapping everyone in the fast lane for the typical recreational nonracing swimmers there.
Funny, I swim about 1:40/100yds at my local YMCA and consider myself slow compared to the other swimmers… They must be doing 1:20 to 1:30/100… I guess it all depends on region.
You’re in San Diego per your username stats. That probably has one of the highest % of fast swimmers in the country.
If you go to 10 random YMCAs in the country at noon, you’ll be lucky to find even 10% of the swimmers swimming faster than 1:40/100.
Probably true. I live in San Diego and have been literally swimming a few months and did a 1:20 2.4mile USMS ow race without a wetsuit, and it got me dead last, I think. Maybe I beat 1/2 70 yos???
However, put a wetsuit on me and I’m prolly 1:12 IM swim which is MOP. The only reason I can swim at all is my swim buddies, two ladies, swim 20 and 24 minute miles. They stop every 1/4 to 1/2 mile to wait for me to catch up. Yes, SD (So Cal in general) has sickly fast swimmers.
I’m going to start masters next week!
Lol, trihard4me apparently is a retired pro,who’s half black and half white ,he also said he will spit in the face of relay racers at triathlons,according to his other thread. Like to see him try this on me at superfrog later this month,let’s see what happens to him then.
Lol, trihard4me apparently is a retired pro,who’s half black and half white ,he also said he will spit in the face of relay racers at triathlons,according to his other thread. Like to see him try this on me at superfrog later this month,let’s see what happens to him then.
Apparently you missed Dan’s caution in the witch hunt thread, where violence or even virtual intimations of violence are pretty frowned upon.
John
No violence,haha,he’s a troll who’s never even done a 5k
See this thread,where he threatened violence:
http://forum.slowtwitch.com/...earch_engine#4142945
Personally, I’d make sure to spit on them, accidently, with a mouth full of Gatorade on the run, cut them off on the bike and swim over the top of them on the swim, just for kicks.
What the fuck is wrong with you?
Selling his Kona spot on EBAY
http://forum.slowtwitch.com/gforum.cgi?do=post_view_flat;post=4155494;page=1;sb=post_latest_reply;so=ASC;mh=25;
And on letsrun asking why triathletes are pussies, big time troll
http://www.letsrun.com/...d.php?thread=4785886
Coming from a competitive speed skating and cycling background, I went for my first open water swim with a friend of mine and I had no clue what I was doing other than trying to keep myself from drowning. Another person saw me swimming with my head coming up and I was sinking with every breath stroke. I mean, I was doing it all wrong but working twice as hard as everyone else out there.
That night, a guy stopped by my bike shop and dropped off a disc and it was total immersion. That night I watched it over and over and couldn’t wait to try this technique out. I went to the pool the next few days and the following week I went back out for the open water swim and people could tell an difference and more importantly, I felt so much better in the water.
So, I think it’s a great start to find your “base technique” but then everyone has their own little things they find that help them go a bit faster of feel relaxed. You need to find it but remember that the basics are always important.
With TI swimming I got a 1:10 at IMMT and a :26 at an Olympic earlier in the summer.
Good job. Unfortunately, if you took 100 randomly selected young men/women nonswimmers, and made them do 2 years of TI without any strenuous intervals or hard swimming, I doubt a majority of them would have similar results.
This.
TI overemphasizes the glide phase, and presents a lot of concepts without the steps in between to reach them.
It will work for a few people (the spaghetti at the wall concept), and those people are generally the ones foaming at the mouth chanting “Terry is a god!” and berating everyone for their poor opinion of it. As I said, if you really don’t know how to swim, and don’t have access to a decent instructor, then TI can at least teach you to complete the swim. You may be one of those magical ones that it “clicks” for. The system is not bad for basic instruction, but there are much better resources out there (Swimsmooth and finding freestyle are two primary ones).
John