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
I disagree with almost everything Ion has said.
:rolleyes:
First off, you mentioned pg 47, where the book talks about keeping the hand in front longer. YOU used the word "pause", which I think it wrong. The hand is in front doing two things: active streamlining (while the other arm is pulling), and "catching" the water (to get a powerful stroke). If all you are doing is letting your hand hang in front, no wonder you did not see any improvement.
You accused Laughlin of excessive marketing. He is being a cheerleader at times, which is needed for people new to swimming. I think it deliberately sabotages its own marketing. The book describes what they are teaching in the classes. The purpose of the book is to give the swimmer the skills to be their own coach. After reading the book, I have yet to attend a class, and don't plan to.
You mentioned how TI didn't work for you. Besides the fact that a single swim is hardly going to tell you anything, if your friends noticed that much of a SR change, then I would say you weren't doing it right. The goal is not to minimize SR, it is to keep a long SL as you pick up your SR.
pg 30: "As you begin to approach the upper limits of how quickly you can move your arms, you can usually speed them up even more only by decreasing your stroke length... Increase one and decrease the other by the same amount and your product - velocity - doesn't budge."
pg 33: "First, you have to learn how to position your body so it moves as far as it possibly can with each stroke (SL); then you have to get fit enough to take those strokes at a high rate (SR)... They always make their most dramatic improvements when they give up a bit of their SR in order to gain a lot of SL."
Reducing your SR is *NOT* the same as TI. Laughlin states this quite clearly on pg. 107: "It's possible to get too carried away with this business of eliminating strokes when you're down to such a triumphantly tiny number of strokes that you're taking forever to get to the other end."
You mention Anthony Ervin, I'll mention Popov. You talked about the hundreds of people in this thread; I doubt that there are even twenty people posting in this thread, and the views have been varied. You have failed to address pg 31. Studies from the 1984 US Olympic Swimming Trials and the 1988 Olympics: "Over and over, what they found was that long event or short, the fastest swimmers took the fewest strokes."
You accused the program as trying to be a short cut for physical training. If you are concerned about speed, then reread pg 26: "We now know that while conditioning matters, it doesn't matter nearly as much as we've been told. In fact, the world's top researchers estimate that champion swimmers owe about 70 percent of their great performance to perfect stroke mechanics and only around 30 percent to their fitness..."
You also state that TI discredits kicking with a board, pulling with paddles, and dryland training.
For kicking with a board, yeah he doesn't like them. But are boards *necessary* to get a good (or better) kicking workout? On pg 197, he suggests using fins instead of boards for the kicking sets. (Myself, I like boards, because they stretch out my lats.)
On pg 199, Laughlin seems fine with paddles: "... you can get a fine (aerobic workout) wearing buoys and paddles." "...Add paddles to your hands and a tube around your ankles to the buoy between your legs. That will both increase the resistance and add some muscle to your pull." (versus using a pull buoy alone)
He also seems to support dryland training. The only caveat was on pg 220. "(In the early stages of a swimming-strength-training program that you may be starting, use) your own body for resistance - bodyweight exercises."
pg 222
"Eventually, of course, your muscles will need more than bodyweight to continue growing stronger... begin mixing in... free weights or machines in equal amounts."
Look, if TI doesn't work for everyone, fine. If you are concerned that TI has passed from "groundbreaking new idea" to "established dogma stiffling further innovation" (my quotes), then there are better ways of saying that. But from the tone of some of your messages, it sounds like you have a vendetta against Laughlin. If you reread Emmett's messages, his concern is that people take a single idea from TI (such as reducing SR during inital practices), misapply it, and think that the entire TI program is garbage. From the misinterpretations and misinformation that you have posted, it would seem that you fall into this category.
I disagree with almost everything Ion has said.
:rolleyes:
First off, you mentioned pg 47, where the book talks about keeping the hand in front longer. YOU used the word "pause", which I think it wrong. The hand is in front doing two things: active streamlining (while the other arm is pulling), and "catching" the water (to get a powerful stroke). If all you are doing is letting your hand hang in front, no wonder you did not see any improvement.
You accused Laughlin of excessive marketing. He is being a cheerleader at times, which is needed for people new to swimming. I think it deliberately sabotages its own marketing. The book describes what they are teaching in the classes. The purpose of the book is to give the swimmer the skills to be their own coach. After reading the book, I have yet to attend a class, and don't plan to.
You mentioned how TI didn't work for you. Besides the fact that a single swim is hardly going to tell you anything, if your friends noticed that much of a SR change, then I would say you weren't doing it right. The goal is not to minimize SR, it is to keep a long SL as you pick up your SR.
pg 30: "As you begin to approach the upper limits of how quickly you can move your arms, you can usually speed them up even more only by decreasing your stroke length... Increase one and decrease the other by the same amount and your product - velocity - doesn't budge."
pg 33: "First, you have to learn how to position your body so it moves as far as it possibly can with each stroke (SL); then you have to get fit enough to take those strokes at a high rate (SR)... They always make their most dramatic improvements when they give up a bit of their SR in order to gain a lot of SL."
Reducing your SR is *NOT* the same as TI. Laughlin states this quite clearly on pg. 107: "It's possible to get too carried away with this business of eliminating strokes when you're down to such a triumphantly tiny number of strokes that you're taking forever to get to the other end."
You mention Anthony Ervin, I'll mention Popov. You talked about the hundreds of people in this thread; I doubt that there are even twenty people posting in this thread, and the views have been varied. You have failed to address pg 31. Studies from the 1984 US Olympic Swimming Trials and the 1988 Olympics: "Over and over, what they found was that long event or short, the fastest swimmers took the fewest strokes."
You accused the program as trying to be a short cut for physical training. If you are concerned about speed, then reread pg 26: "We now know that while conditioning matters, it doesn't matter nearly as much as we've been told. In fact, the world's top researchers estimate that champion swimmers owe about 70 percent of their great performance to perfect stroke mechanics and only around 30 percent to their fitness..."
You also state that TI discredits kicking with a board, pulling with paddles, and dryland training.
For kicking with a board, yeah he doesn't like them. But are boards *necessary* to get a good (or better) kicking workout? On pg 197, he suggests using fins instead of boards for the kicking sets. (Myself, I like boards, because they stretch out my lats.)
On pg 199, Laughlin seems fine with paddles: "... you can get a fine (aerobic workout) wearing buoys and paddles." "...Add paddles to your hands and a tube around your ankles to the buoy between your legs. That will both increase the resistance and add some muscle to your pull." (versus using a pull buoy alone)
He also seems to support dryland training. The only caveat was on pg 220. "(In the early stages of a swimming-strength-training program that you may be starting, use) your own body for resistance - bodyweight exercises."
pg 222
"Eventually, of course, your muscles will need more than bodyweight to continue growing stronger... begin mixing in... free weights or machines in equal amounts."
Look, if TI doesn't work for everyone, fine. If you are concerned that TI has passed from "groundbreaking new idea" to "established dogma stiffling further innovation" (my quotes), then there are better ways of saying that. But from the tone of some of your messages, it sounds like you have a vendetta against Laughlin. If you reread Emmett's messages, his concern is that people take a single idea from TI (such as reducing SR during inital practices), misapply it, and think that the entire TI program is garbage. From the misinterpretations and misinformation that you have posted, it would seem that you fall into this category.
