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
This has been a fascinating and enlightening conversation, with lots of good nuggets tossed on the way. (I'll be trying Rain Man's flip turn method myself in practice.)
Rain Man: I think that if you and Emmett focused on precisely what kind of swimmer you are discussing, you would find yourselves in violent agreement. Both Terry and Emmett in their books talk about the need for interval training if a swimmer is engaged in serious preparation for competition. In fact, in his articles Emmett has discussed learning how to vary your stroke count while swimming a given distance in a given time. (Playing off SL vs SR.) His analogy is having different tools in your tool kit so that during a race you have options for trying to outrace your opponent. The point that TI advocates are trying to make is that simply measuring your training by how fast you go and what interval you use is incomplete. It can be just as challenging, and they argue more valuable, to learn how to swim fast, WHILE MAINTAINING STROKE LENGTH. Terry talks about playing swimming golf: swim a set of whatever on an interval, for each repetition add your time in seconds and your stroke count, and try to make that score go down. Is this conditioning? Of course it is! Do swimmers learn to use a higher SR to go faster? Sure. But, the idea is to learn how to trade off SL for speed EFFECTIVELY, so you swim at a faster but sustainable pace.
Where I think the point of apperant disagreement comes up is that you want to focus on elite competitive swimming, whereas TI aims mostly at fitness swimmers who may have little interest in racing and triathletes. They are trying to reach the latter group, who clearly need to focus on good mechanics first. The problem with many traditional coaching approaches is that they assume the methods that work best for elite swimmers must be best for everyone. (Hey, that's how they got to be elite.) For a new swimmer, that can mean lots of yards using an inefficient stroke. For triathletes in particular, that feeds right into their work-work-work mind-set, and then they wonder why they work so hard to go so slow in the water. TI says that for these folks, learn good mechanics first (which can itself by physically demanding), and let endurance happen. Discuss this with any good Little League coach, and he'll say "Duh!! Of course you teach them the skills first, then work on their arm strength and foot speed." We swimmers want to train like we are all Bonnie Blair, when if fact many/most of us have trouble just staying up-right on skates. So, when you hear that (especially when the more strident advocates riff for paragraphs on end about the alleged stupidity of traditional swim coaching methods), you think they are talking about all competitive swimmers, but they are not.
Next, let me say a bit about the cult/snake-oil salesman issue. After reading some of Terry's articles, I can understand how you would feel that way. He seems to love his cut and paste function, and he tells the same stories and uses the same analogies over and over. When I read a sample chapter from one of his new books on the web, I said to myself "Gee this is the same as one of the chapters in his first book , almost word for word." I've also noticed that most of his messages will encourage you to buy one of his products. However, consider the following. First, since I borrowed a copy of "Total Immersion" from the library about a year ago, I have purchased a copy of it and Emmett's "Fitness Swimming" (about $20 each), and my family got me the two TI videos for Xmas (maybe $50?). In other words, I have spend $90 on TI products, or about two months worth of dues for my Masters club. I'm sure it's great to have this system in which he believes strongly, but I don't think Terry or anyone else is growing fabulously wealthy off of books, videos, pool equipment or seminars. Second, the new drills in the video are better and more effective than the drills in the old book. It could be he is recommending something because he has an objective reason to believe it will actually work. Third, many of the mechanical fine points TI teaches have been around for years. In my mind, that gives the concept credibility. What makes TI different and more effective is how the specific drills fit together and build on each other. Fourth, after dropping $90, total between the two of them, Terry and Emmett have been kind enough to reply to me personally through email when I ask a question and/or post a response addressed specifically to my question on their web sites' discussion forum. Terry in particular is a little fanatical about it. I don't think I have ever waited longer than 36 hours to hear from him. So, maybe Terry is trying to sell me something. But, given that most of what he has provided me has worked, and that he has given many of his ideas and his time to me for free, he has built up just a little credibility.
Finally, lots of people have asked how many Olympians have Terry or Emmett coached. Is it necessary to have an explicit endorsement from an Olympian before one's coaching is considered valid? There are 100's of coaches out there who don't have that credential. Are they all unproven crack-pots until one of their swimmers hits the big time? And, should that be the measure of effectiveness, given that Olympian swimmers are a miniscule, and insanely talented, fraction of the swimming population? In other words, is what is good for them necessarily effective for most swimmers?
OK, I've blathered enough. But, whether you like TI or not, it's not a scam and it does work.
Matt
This has been a fascinating and enlightening conversation, with lots of good nuggets tossed on the way. (I'll be trying Rain Man's flip turn method myself in practice.)
Rain Man: I think that if you and Emmett focused on precisely what kind of swimmer you are discussing, you would find yourselves in violent agreement. Both Terry and Emmett in their books talk about the need for interval training if a swimmer is engaged in serious preparation for competition. In fact, in his articles Emmett has discussed learning how to vary your stroke count while swimming a given distance in a given time. (Playing off SL vs SR.) His analogy is having different tools in your tool kit so that during a race you have options for trying to outrace your opponent. The point that TI advocates are trying to make is that simply measuring your training by how fast you go and what interval you use is incomplete. It can be just as challenging, and they argue more valuable, to learn how to swim fast, WHILE MAINTAINING STROKE LENGTH. Terry talks about playing swimming golf: swim a set of whatever on an interval, for each repetition add your time in seconds and your stroke count, and try to make that score go down. Is this conditioning? Of course it is! Do swimmers learn to use a higher SR to go faster? Sure. But, the idea is to learn how to trade off SL for speed EFFECTIVELY, so you swim at a faster but sustainable pace.
Where I think the point of apperant disagreement comes up is that you want to focus on elite competitive swimming, whereas TI aims mostly at fitness swimmers who may have little interest in racing and triathletes. They are trying to reach the latter group, who clearly need to focus on good mechanics first. The problem with many traditional coaching approaches is that they assume the methods that work best for elite swimmers must be best for everyone. (Hey, that's how they got to be elite.) For a new swimmer, that can mean lots of yards using an inefficient stroke. For triathletes in particular, that feeds right into their work-work-work mind-set, and then they wonder why they work so hard to go so slow in the water. TI says that for these folks, learn good mechanics first (which can itself by physically demanding), and let endurance happen. Discuss this with any good Little League coach, and he'll say "Duh!! Of course you teach them the skills first, then work on their arm strength and foot speed." We swimmers want to train like we are all Bonnie Blair, when if fact many/most of us have trouble just staying up-right on skates. So, when you hear that (especially when the more strident advocates riff for paragraphs on end about the alleged stupidity of traditional swim coaching methods), you think they are talking about all competitive swimmers, but they are not.
Next, let me say a bit about the cult/snake-oil salesman issue. After reading some of Terry's articles, I can understand how you would feel that way. He seems to love his cut and paste function, and he tells the same stories and uses the same analogies over and over. When I read a sample chapter from one of his new books on the web, I said to myself "Gee this is the same as one of the chapters in his first book , almost word for word." I've also noticed that most of his messages will encourage you to buy one of his products. However, consider the following. First, since I borrowed a copy of "Total Immersion" from the library about a year ago, I have purchased a copy of it and Emmett's "Fitness Swimming" (about $20 each), and my family got me the two TI videos for Xmas (maybe $50?). In other words, I have spend $90 on TI products, or about two months worth of dues for my Masters club. I'm sure it's great to have this system in which he believes strongly, but I don't think Terry or anyone else is growing fabulously wealthy off of books, videos, pool equipment or seminars. Second, the new drills in the video are better and more effective than the drills in the old book. It could be he is recommending something because he has an objective reason to believe it will actually work. Third, many of the mechanical fine points TI teaches have been around for years. In my mind, that gives the concept credibility. What makes TI different and more effective is how the specific drills fit together and build on each other. Fourth, after dropping $90, total between the two of them, Terry and Emmett have been kind enough to reply to me personally through email when I ask a question and/or post a response addressed specifically to my question on their web sites' discussion forum. Terry in particular is a little fanatical about it. I don't think I have ever waited longer than 36 hours to hear from him. So, maybe Terry is trying to sell me something. But, given that most of what he has provided me has worked, and that he has given many of his ideas and his time to me for free, he has built up just a little credibility.
Finally, lots of people have asked how many Olympians have Terry or Emmett coached. Is it necessary to have an explicit endorsement from an Olympian before one's coaching is considered valid? There are 100's of coaches out there who don't have that credential. Are they all unproven crack-pots until one of their swimmers hits the big time? And, should that be the measure of effectiveness, given that Olympian swimmers are a miniscule, and insanely talented, fraction of the swimming population? In other words, is what is good for them necessarily effective for most swimmers?
OK, I've blathered enough. But, whether you like TI or not, it's not a scam and it does work.
Matt
