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
Interesting post with some good questions, Rain Man.
But you'll never get a TI advocate to agree that you 'train TI, not race TI' because they don't believe it. Good swimming style is good swimming style slow or fast.
Shoulder problems should be a serious issue in swimming, and USA Swimming (and USMS) should be spending more money and time on the issue than they are already. I don't think you can blame TI, however, for what anecdotally seems an increase in incidence. For one thing, I think you mis-describe the stroke. The arm is rarely if ever directly stretched in front over the ears. The hand enters the water when the arm is bent, and the arm stretches and the hand is positioned till the arm is roughly 45 degrees down. (Even if you recover with a straight arm the arm spends little time directly in front.) At no time is the hand still or gliding. The front quadrant swimming is mostly a consequence that the positioning for the pull takes almost as long as the pull and the recovery. To avoid that time difference you either have to rush the setup of the pull, or pause after the pull - both reduce the effectiveness of the stroke.
Rather, I think increased yardage, and especially increased intensity, are the cause of increased shoulder problems in young swimmers. For Masters swimmers, I think it is decades of swimming on aging joints.
What this community needs is an authoritative report on what aspects of the strokes (if there *are* any particular aspects) lead to shoulder problems. How to detect these stroke problems (if they are not intrinsic to a good stroke,) and how to fix these problems. Also, how to identify individuals susceptable to shoulder problems before these problems occur. Finally, there should be institutionalized mechanisms to train coaches on this subject.
Since it appears that Masters swimmers are more susceptable to shoulder problems (is that true?), perhaps USMS should have a more strict accreditation policy for coaches.
One of the arguments against performance-enhancing drugs is the negative long-term consequences. Well, what about the long-term consequences of intense training? In one necessarily worse than another? If we care so much about one, shouldn't we care about the other? (and what if a drug enhanced performance by reducing shoulder damage?)
As an aside, there seems to almost always be an active discussion on this subject (that is, swimmers shoulder) in rec.sport. swimming If you can get through the c*** there is some good information. Don't trust everything (or most things) you read there, however.
Interesting post with some good questions, Rain Man.
But you'll never get a TI advocate to agree that you 'train TI, not race TI' because they don't believe it. Good swimming style is good swimming style slow or fast.
Shoulder problems should be a serious issue in swimming, and USA Swimming (and USMS) should be spending more money and time on the issue than they are already. I don't think you can blame TI, however, for what anecdotally seems an increase in incidence. For one thing, I think you mis-describe the stroke. The arm is rarely if ever directly stretched in front over the ears. The hand enters the water when the arm is bent, and the arm stretches and the hand is positioned till the arm is roughly 45 degrees down. (Even if you recover with a straight arm the arm spends little time directly in front.) At no time is the hand still or gliding. The front quadrant swimming is mostly a consequence that the positioning for the pull takes almost as long as the pull and the recovery. To avoid that time difference you either have to rush the setup of the pull, or pause after the pull - both reduce the effectiveness of the stroke.
Rather, I think increased yardage, and especially increased intensity, are the cause of increased shoulder problems in young swimmers. For Masters swimmers, I think it is decades of swimming on aging joints.
What this community needs is an authoritative report on what aspects of the strokes (if there *are* any particular aspects) lead to shoulder problems. How to detect these stroke problems (if they are not intrinsic to a good stroke,) and how to fix these problems. Also, how to identify individuals susceptable to shoulder problems before these problems occur. Finally, there should be institutionalized mechanisms to train coaches on this subject.
Since it appears that Masters swimmers are more susceptable to shoulder problems (is that true?), perhaps USMS should have a more strict accreditation policy for coaches.
One of the arguments against performance-enhancing drugs is the negative long-term consequences. Well, what about the long-term consequences of intense training? In one necessarily worse than another? If we care so much about one, shouldn't we care about the other? (and what if a drug enhanced performance by reducing shoulder damage?)
As an aside, there seems to almost always be an active discussion on this subject (that is, swimmers shoulder) in rec.sport. swimming If you can get through the c*** there is some good information. Don't trust everything (or most things) you read there, however.
