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
Ion,
I think your use of Jochums quote from 'Gold in the Water' is a little out of context with the subject matter in this discussion. 'We fix technique at race speed, not in drills...' I believe is his comment in regards to which swimmers, Grote, Torres et al, those swimmers who have years of experience not ones learning how to swim. When teaching someone to swim we don't just throw them in the water and say swim to the other side (chances are they won't make it) and then try to correct what they did - but we start off with a series of drills, practicing arm pulls (standing, holding onto the wall, a kickboard) we work on breath control (bobs, kicking with the face in the water) all of those are drills to slowly build up to swimming until they can actually swim with some resemblance of a stroke then build onto that technique and fine tune. I have seen and heard of other world class swimmers workouts and they do drills, Popov would do drills based on stroke count (doing things like trying to swim a 50 as fast as possible with a low stroke count, then come back and do it again with a lower stroke count - still a drill) others do 100's of one arm swimming.
For those that question the validity of a technique or theory - should, change is not always bad and something comes along by thinking differently. A fairly recent article about cycling and Lance ARmstrongs climbing technique and pedaling. For a long timehills were climbed in as a tough a gear as possible, getting as much ground gained as possible with each pedal stroke, if you've watched the tour de france Lance Armstrong actually spins more, he doesn't try to power up the hills, they've also taken note that he tends to keep his heel higher than what was considered optimal (whatever he's doing it sure works for him- and seems to go against the convential thinking).
Ion, keep at your stroke technique, have faith in your coach in developing technique over power. When I play golf I love to hit my driver 250+ yrds, the only problem only about 220 yards of it is straight the other 30 yrds or so puts me into the water or two fairways over, so I'm better off hitting using an iron and keeping the ball on my fairway (remember the shortest distance between two points is a staright line), but I still go to the range and play with the driver so one day I will be Tiger Woods (maybe not as far but at least my ball will stay on the Fairway).
Ion,
I think your use of Jochums quote from 'Gold in the Water' is a little out of context with the subject matter in this discussion. 'We fix technique at race speed, not in drills...' I believe is his comment in regards to which swimmers, Grote, Torres et al, those swimmers who have years of experience not ones learning how to swim. When teaching someone to swim we don't just throw them in the water and say swim to the other side (chances are they won't make it) and then try to correct what they did - but we start off with a series of drills, practicing arm pulls (standing, holding onto the wall, a kickboard) we work on breath control (bobs, kicking with the face in the water) all of those are drills to slowly build up to swimming until they can actually swim with some resemblance of a stroke then build onto that technique and fine tune. I have seen and heard of other world class swimmers workouts and they do drills, Popov would do drills based on stroke count (doing things like trying to swim a 50 as fast as possible with a low stroke count, then come back and do it again with a lower stroke count - still a drill) others do 100's of one arm swimming.
For those that question the validity of a technique or theory - should, change is not always bad and something comes along by thinking differently. A fairly recent article about cycling and Lance ARmstrongs climbing technique and pedaling. For a long timehills were climbed in as a tough a gear as possible, getting as much ground gained as possible with each pedal stroke, if you've watched the tour de france Lance Armstrong actually spins more, he doesn't try to power up the hills, they've also taken note that he tends to keep his heel higher than what was considered optimal (whatever he's doing it sure works for him- and seems to go against the convential thinking).
Ion, keep at your stroke technique, have faith in your coach in developing technique over power. When I play golf I love to hit my driver 250+ yrds, the only problem only about 220 yards of it is straight the other 30 yrds or so puts me into the water or two fairways over, so I'm better off hitting using an iron and keeping the ball on my fairway (remember the shortest distance between two points is a staright line), but I still go to the range and play with the driver so one day I will be Tiger Woods (maybe not as far but at least my ball will stay on the Fairway).
