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
It may be a mistake to dive into the pro/con TI discussion, but I think some of the anti-TI reasoning is off base. (I didn't say all... :) )
1) They look at the 100 Free, then the 50 Free, and say "stroke length gets shorter, TI is wrong". That is the wrong comparison. If you look back at one of Emmett's early posts, he points out that within a given race distance (in his example, the 50 Free), there is a strong correlation between stoke length and speed.
2) People are pointing out irregularities in Olympic swimmers, and saying that it does not fit into TI. But they do not address the question, "Are they faster because of the stroke quirk, or in spite of it?" (Or is it cosmetic, in which case you shouldn't have brought it up. :) )
3) Make sure you are comparing apples to apples, instead of oranges. You have a group of All-American Division I swimmers versus some small community college, it won't matter WHAT technique the JCs use, the playing field is not even. Given two swimmers with the same phyical ability, the question is whether TI gives an advantage over an alternative method. Don't use a freak-of-nature talent who doesn't use TI as an example, unless they tried TI and went slower.
Just to show that I have not been brainwashed, TI is completely wrong when they say to swim like fish. Fish have tails that go side to side. I've never seen *anyone* kick like that. We need to swim like dolphins; our hips can move the same way as their tails. ;)
It may be a mistake to dive into the pro/con TI discussion, but I think some of the anti-TI reasoning is off base. (I didn't say all... :) )
1) They look at the 100 Free, then the 50 Free, and say "stroke length gets shorter, TI is wrong". That is the wrong comparison. If you look back at one of Emmett's early posts, he points out that within a given race distance (in his example, the 50 Free), there is a strong correlation between stoke length and speed.
2) People are pointing out irregularities in Olympic swimmers, and saying that it does not fit into TI. But they do not address the question, "Are they faster because of the stroke quirk, or in spite of it?" (Or is it cosmetic, in which case you shouldn't have brought it up. :) )
3) Make sure you are comparing apples to apples, instead of oranges. You have a group of All-American Division I swimmers versus some small community college, it won't matter WHAT technique the JCs use, the playing field is not even. Given two swimmers with the same phyical ability, the question is whether TI gives an advantage over an alternative method. Don't use a freak-of-nature talent who doesn't use TI as an example, unless they tried TI and went slower.
Just to show that I have not been brainwashed, TI is completely wrong when they say to swim like fish. Fish have tails that go side to side. I've never seen *anyone* kick like that. We need to swim like dolphins; our hips can move the same way as their tails. ;)
