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
My turn to put another 2 cents in...
The first drill videos I was exposed to were the Stanford series made by Quick and Skip. TI (drillsets) are for the most part the same drills put together in a slightly different way. Why is TI though so more overwhelmingly popular? Coach Laughlin's a great salesman. Same stuff, Emmett I can't believe you have 95% of swimmers you say were not taught it. The first thing I thought when viewing the TI videos were "Hmmm, just like the Stanford videos." It's been around forever.
Let me clarify one thing as well. I do not advocate blind yardage at all. I think that is one of the most ridiculous ways to approach coaching age group swimmers. I do however like to mix up speeds a lot. Example 50 or 100 yard repeats build by 25, or 50 smooth/50 fast. Always emphasizing long and powerful strokes but increased turnover to go faster. And it works. We have an 11 yr. old with a decent backstroke who is *painfully* graceful in the water swim 1:30 (age 10), 1:31 (age 10), and 1:29 (aged up to 11) in 3 successive meets. The 1:29 was a prelim race and all we worked on during finals warm-up was increased turnover. I'd say (not having written anything down) she probably took a couple more strokes per length, but she went 1:24.
So what I was getting at (I think some of my words have been misinterpreted or misconstrued in some way) was that you can't stop at drills when it comes to racing. And coaches do. They drill and drill and swim long and smooth then longer and smoother and then the kids get into a race and gracefully swim nowhere near their potential. Take the next step and teach how to race. I would agree that for the most part, 9-12 year olds need more technique than training, but they also must do some yardage. And any good coach will pay attention and make sure that their strokes aren't breaking down.
My main gripe with TI is that they foster this kind of approach to swimming and then tell people that others are going about it in the totally wrong way. That's a farce, others are doing the same drills TI does, and then are taking the steps to improve actual competetive swimming. It's infiltrating age group swimming because the coaches are middle-aged swimmers buying into TI as swimming gospel. Another thing they do is mislead by using people like Popov as their main examples. That's great, Biondi was a long smooth swimmer too but what do they have to say for the likes of Ervin and Klim (highly successful I think) who take 3 strokes to each 2 by Popov. They ignore them because they don't fit into their ideology.
I think what I'm fed up with is what seems to be quite the egotistical manner in which the TI community has presented itself. Getting an individual response out of them is like pulling teeth. Every response is read our book, buy our video, stay long, do the drills, blah blah blah. Not every swimmer falls into one mold. And that's what is being fostered.
My turn to put another 2 cents in...
The first drill videos I was exposed to were the Stanford series made by Quick and Skip. TI (drillsets) are for the most part the same drills put together in a slightly different way. Why is TI though so more overwhelmingly popular? Coach Laughlin's a great salesman. Same stuff, Emmett I can't believe you have 95% of swimmers you say were not taught it. The first thing I thought when viewing the TI videos were "Hmmm, just like the Stanford videos." It's been around forever.
Let me clarify one thing as well. I do not advocate blind yardage at all. I think that is one of the most ridiculous ways to approach coaching age group swimmers. I do however like to mix up speeds a lot. Example 50 or 100 yard repeats build by 25, or 50 smooth/50 fast. Always emphasizing long and powerful strokes but increased turnover to go faster. And it works. We have an 11 yr. old with a decent backstroke who is *painfully* graceful in the water swim 1:30 (age 10), 1:31 (age 10), and 1:29 (aged up to 11) in 3 successive meets. The 1:29 was a prelim race and all we worked on during finals warm-up was increased turnover. I'd say (not having written anything down) she probably took a couple more strokes per length, but she went 1:24.
So what I was getting at (I think some of my words have been misinterpreted or misconstrued in some way) was that you can't stop at drills when it comes to racing. And coaches do. They drill and drill and swim long and smooth then longer and smoother and then the kids get into a race and gracefully swim nowhere near their potential. Take the next step and teach how to race. I would agree that for the most part, 9-12 year olds need more technique than training, but they also must do some yardage. And any good coach will pay attention and make sure that their strokes aren't breaking down.
My main gripe with TI is that they foster this kind of approach to swimming and then tell people that others are going about it in the totally wrong way. That's a farce, others are doing the same drills TI does, and then are taking the steps to improve actual competetive swimming. It's infiltrating age group swimming because the coaches are middle-aged swimmers buying into TI as swimming gospel. Another thing they do is mislead by using people like Popov as their main examples. That's great, Biondi was a long smooth swimmer too but what do they have to say for the likes of Ervin and Klim (highly successful I think) who take 3 strokes to each 2 by Popov. They ignore them because they don't fit into their ideology.
I think what I'm fed up with is what seems to be quite the egotistical manner in which the TI community has presented itself. Getting an individual response out of them is like pulling teeth. Every response is read our book, buy our video, stay long, do the drills, blah blah blah. Not every swimmer falls into one mold. And that's what is being fostered.
