Now that I've gone through the hassle of signing up as a member of this dicussion group, this gets more and more fun. Maybe I'll get fired from my job :)
Anyway... I'm sure that ALL Masters level swimmers have heard of Total Immersion (from now on referred to as TI) swimming, correct? What are everyone's opinions about TI swimming? I am most curious because as a coach of age group swimmers, I was looking for training videos for our kids. I happened upon TI and liked what I saw... at first.
Here's some background for my experience with TI... very well put together, most of what they teach has been in existence for some time anyway, and they certainly are good for teaching novice/beginner swimmers the basic technique for swimming.
However, when looking to swim fast, and I mean fast, not lap swim quality, but truly competitively, I thing TI has missed to boat completely. Yes, smooth and efficient swimming is nice, but did anyone see the NCAA's? There are 20 year old men swimming 9 strokes per length in breaststroke! We have a number of age group coaches in my area teaching their kids how to swim breaststroke at 6 or 7 strokes a length!!! What gives? Extended glide is one thing, but when you slow down your stroke to such an extent just to achieve long and fluid strokes you sacrifice speed tremendously.
Hey, if you can swim 9 strokes a length at 1 second per stroke that is WAY better than 6 strokes a length at 2 seconds per stroke. Simple math.
Anthony Ervin of Cal swam the 100 free in the follwing SPL... 12 (start)/15/16/16. I could be off but that's what I was able to get from the (ahem- PALTRY) ESPN coverage. Now TI has goal SPL's of 12/13! Hello, if the BEST sprinter in history takes 8 cycles, shouldn't that tell us something? Turnover is very important. Same with streamlining, yes streamlines are nice and quite important but A.E. pops up after 5 yards MAX out of each turn. You only serve yourself well if your streamline is faster than you can swim, most age group swimmers would be well-served to explode out of the turn and swim within 3-4 yards.
Alas, it's been a slow day finishing my work for the week. Just looking to start a nice discussion. It's been my experience that a lot of Masters level swimmers are also engaged in coaching age group swimming at some level, and therefore I feel we can get some good dialogue going on this issue.
Now I've just used TI as an example because that's what I've had my experience with, but more general is what keys do you all stress when trying to mold competitive swimmers?
Au revoir,
-Rain Man
Parents
Former Member
Paul, Emmett,
While I can appreciate the stories about super high SPL definitely be slower, they are to the level of absurdity. I'm most concerned with turnover rate for fairly competent competitive swimmers having SPL's in the 12-18 range. More strokes don't necessarily make you slower if you take them faster. Yes, at some point, an extremely high SPL puts an actual physical limitation on the time you can achieve for a length of the pool.
As far as the wall streamline, I don't believe encouraging swimmers to get up and swim would be fad teaching. There's really more involved, such as tailoring streamline time to each individual swimmers kick strength, and determining the best approach for each of them to take in their own races. I'm just noticing that many age group swimmers are fast off the wall, kick until they've slowed down (they've always been taught streamline is the fastest and to take advantage of it), then they get up and swim and have to "re-speed-up" to their race pace.
A study was done by some students at the University of Buffalo in New York that tested breaststrokers and pullout technique. They found across the board that the swimmers more than made up the distance lost in a quicker pullout by having kept a faster velocity. In fact, the distance lost on the pullout was very minimal, because most breaststrokers when lengthening their pullouts had slowed down so much they hadn't really "lengthened" hardly anything.
The whole problem I have with technique ideologies (such as TI) is that they have adopted their opinion and stick to it to the point that nothing else is considered when it is presented. They have to make some concessions in order to truly develop successful swimmers. Technique is great, but yardage is necessary as well. Drills are nice, but drills don't teach you how to race a 200 freestyle. I love tuning into the TI discussion board to see Coach Laughlin's responses to posters' questions. He may as well have them on auto-reply because he writes back the same thing all the time, drill this, drill that, slow it down, stay long and fishlike, etc.
There's so much good stuff to learn from TI, but the broken record rhetoric gets old. TI isn't a new way to train swimmers, it's a cleverly packaged product consisting of stuff that 95% of educated coaches already knew and were teaching, incorporated as a small piece of the larger training regimen. And the masses of lap, triathlon, and masters swimmers are gobbling it right up at the rate of $100 a pop. To be an effective well-rounded coach you have to watch swimming, read articles, incorporate bits and pieces of what is out there and then come up with a solid program.
-RM
Paul, Emmett,
While I can appreciate the stories about super high SPL definitely be slower, they are to the level of absurdity. I'm most concerned with turnover rate for fairly competent competitive swimmers having SPL's in the 12-18 range. More strokes don't necessarily make you slower if you take them faster. Yes, at some point, an extremely high SPL puts an actual physical limitation on the time you can achieve for a length of the pool.
As far as the wall streamline, I don't believe encouraging swimmers to get up and swim would be fad teaching. There's really more involved, such as tailoring streamline time to each individual swimmers kick strength, and determining the best approach for each of them to take in their own races. I'm just noticing that many age group swimmers are fast off the wall, kick until they've slowed down (they've always been taught streamline is the fastest and to take advantage of it), then they get up and swim and have to "re-speed-up" to their race pace.
A study was done by some students at the University of Buffalo in New York that tested breaststrokers and pullout technique. They found across the board that the swimmers more than made up the distance lost in a quicker pullout by having kept a faster velocity. In fact, the distance lost on the pullout was very minimal, because most breaststrokers when lengthening their pullouts had slowed down so much they hadn't really "lengthened" hardly anything.
The whole problem I have with technique ideologies (such as TI) is that they have adopted their opinion and stick to it to the point that nothing else is considered when it is presented. They have to make some concessions in order to truly develop successful swimmers. Technique is great, but yardage is necessary as well. Drills are nice, but drills don't teach you how to race a 200 freestyle. I love tuning into the TI discussion board to see Coach Laughlin's responses to posters' questions. He may as well have them on auto-reply because he writes back the same thing all the time, drill this, drill that, slow it down, stay long and fishlike, etc.
There's so much good stuff to learn from TI, but the broken record rhetoric gets old. TI isn't a new way to train swimmers, it's a cleverly packaged product consisting of stuff that 95% of educated coaches already knew and were teaching, incorporated as a small piece of the larger training regimen. And the masses of lap, triathlon, and masters swimmers are gobbling it right up at the rate of $100 a pop. To be an effective well-rounded coach you have to watch swimming, read articles, incorporate bits and pieces of what is out there and then come up with a solid program.
-RM
