Total Immersion origins/theory

I'm not the expert, but his form looks spectacular to me. But I remember seeing a crossover stroke by the winner of a women's LD race a few years ago. I think this is analagous to track. Based on my daughter's experience there, form seems much more important in sprints than in long distance. Track sprints are so short that it's tougher to recover from any error in form, I think. Seems like swimming would be the same way. Not to say that form is irrelevant in long distance.

I can answer that, it's speed. Seriously, how about 1. efficency, 2. balance, 3. talent and, 4. athletic capacity? That is doesn't help very much. For example, there are plenty of triathletes with much greater athletic capacity (4) who still get absolutely smoked in the water. Reminds me of people commenting on football games. "The team needs to run better and stop the pass." Yeah, that's true, but its so general and generic to be completely useless as advice. In any case, that was a rhetorical question. There are plenty of books (including TI) that describe changes in technique for the average swimmer that would make big improvements in speed.

What about 10,000 hours of practice focusing on form, speed and efficiency:). I'm about 14% of the way there now.

I remember the TI book was my very first resource when I decided "gosh darnit, I'm going to learn to swim well." I looked at it as my bible and was completely convinced by everything I read, to the point I defended it here in this forum (with a lot of grief from George:)). I am a case study in the evolution of a swimming style, especially since I started on a masters team. When I looked at the TI book a little more carefully and compared it with the swimmer it often cited (Popov), I found some similarities but also some glaring differences. While Popov had good balance and looked down, he did NOT have a front quadrant stroke as espoused by the TI book. Nor was his catch like that described in TI. Popov had a definite shoulder rotating high elbow catch. How much of his famed lower power output was due to better balance and streamlining versus a better feel for the water and better catch we will never know. The front quadrant concept, now apparently dropped by TI, set me back about 2 years I must say. If it was dropped so long ago, why on earth was that book still in publication 3-4 years ago? I had a catch up stroke until about 1 year ago that I had the darnest time overcoming. Not until I finally shook it have I taken my swimming to the next level. The catch does not get a lot of attention in the TI world. Maybe that's a good thing, I don't know. It's kind of like "spear down and pull down the middle". More emphasis is on the body rotation aiding the pull. One of the concepts I struggled with for a long time was forcibly trying to rotate rather than letting it naturally occur as my recovery shoulder moved forward. I have improved my efficiency and speed by letting it occur naturally rather than thinking about using my kick to initiate the rotation. I've really abandoned the whole core emphasis outside of keeping my core stretched and tight.