TI Question...heard this and doesn't sound right...

OK, I'll bite. Shari: the good news is that I believe you are doing exactly the right thing by looking at the video. As I'll discuss below, I think focusing on hand entry misses the main point, and it will be helpful to see the whole package of TI instruction. Also, using TI drills when you would otherwise do drills in a "traditional" program is an excellent idea, and you may find a few good nuggets that will benefit your whole team, even if you do not buy into the TI paradigm. Thanks for keeping an open mind about TI, and taking the time to get to the bottom of the issue with your swimmer. Now I understand why Emmett's postings to this discussion group have tailed-off recently. It gets tiresome responding to the same misconceptions over and over again. There are two key concepts to the TI approach to swimming. The first concept is that the most important skill for a swimmer to learn is to reduce drag. Being adapted to life on land, humans are very inefficient swimmers, and a dense medium like water (compared with, say, air) magnifies the resistance of non-streamlined positions. Therefore, a well considered swimming program would spend somewhat less time conditioning the body’s ability to do work, and more time finding and correcting sources of drag in the swimmers’ strokes. The second concept is that the muscles groups you use to move your arms and legs are relatively puny, compared to your core body muscles. If you can somehow harness your big abs, chest and back muscles into generating power for your stroke, you can go farther, faster, longer. With respect to the first concept, a number of the folks posting to this discussion group have criticized the “semi-catch-up” style of freestyle that TI recommends. (The term we use is “front quadrant swimming.” See Emmett Hines’ article at www.usms.org/.../circles.htm This is merely a matter of understanding another term for the same concept; there is nothing wrong with using “semi-catch-up.”) These folks claim that a “kayak” style would be better because it avoids a “dead zone” in your stroke when there is no force being applied backwards. They are trapped by their assumption that the key to swimming faster is always applying more force continuously from their arms. In fact observations by a number of coaches and studies have shown that stroke length (i.e. going one lap of the pool using fewer strokes) is far more closely related to faster swimming than stroke rate (i.e. how many arm pulls you can cram into a given time period). What’s going on? These elite swimmers (with the really low number of strokes they take per lap), whether they explicitly follow TI or not, have found a way to super-streamline themselves so they go much farther for one arm pull than the competition. This is where the front-quadrant concept fits in. As Emmett explains in his article, scientific studies have shown that all other factors being equal, a longer vessel moves through the water faster. If you break lose from your preconceptions of how to swim faster, you see that the criticism of front quadrant swimming is assuming away as not significant the data upon which it is based. Similarly, the suggestion that elite swimmers are making up for the alleged “dead zone” in their arm stroke by kicking harder suffers from the same myopia. We aren’t doing front quadrant swimming to generate more force pushing backward; we are doing it to reduce drag. There are several other aspects of TI swimming calculated to reduce drag that the critics dismiss because they believe it reduces the amount of force applied. The critics miss the point. The second concept relates to what we mean by “fish like swimming.” This refers to the fact that fish do not swim faster by beating their fins back and forth into a frenzy. They swim faster by generating a total body undulation from their core body trunk—the big muscle groups. This is contrasted with “human swimming” which focuses on kicking a pulling harder and faster with arms and legs—much smaller muscle groups compared to the core body muscles. The other set of adjustments TI seeks to make is to harness these large core body muscle groups to generate power in the stroke, rather like a pitcher or a batter in baseball rotating their hips and pushing off with their legs, and channeling that power through their arms. How do we do that in freestyle or backstroke? Rotate your body from side to side and use your arms like propeller blades. We do things in the TI paradigm that do not make sense to those who follow the “human swimming” paradigm, yet they continue to criticize our approach while ignoring or not understanding what it is trying to do, rather like a classical pianist complaining that a jazz pianist does play the music the right way. Bearing that in mind, you can see how I had a hard time answering your question about where your swimmer’s hand should enter the water. Bluntly, it is not terribly important whether it enters next to his ear (which sounds a little bizarre to me) or farther out in front. Is his head down and is he leaning on his chest so his hips float without using a big kick? Is he rolling his hips from side to side? Is he waiting for his hand to pass his ear before he initiates the arm pull and the roll to the other side? (Maybe this last point is where he got things a little garbled in his understanding.) I have studied the TI video and applied it to both my swimming and the kids I coach on our youth league team. If they say anything specific about where your hand enters the water, I can’t recall it, and I can assure you it’s not all that important. Lastly, there is one big whopper I have to deal with. “There is not a single TI coach who has coached a swimmer into the world rankings.” Equine eschatology! I would call to your attention Adrienne Binder of the Santa Barbara Swim Club, currently ranked 6th in the world in the 1500m (www.fina.org/wranklcm_wF1500.html), who has used TI training methods for the past 8 years (www.totalimmersion.net/mag-apr03-2-fast.html). What makes this assertion even more absurd, at least in this forum, is that I personally posted to these discussion groups not even a month ago a link to the article about Adrienne’s training methods, and her exploits in the 1650. But, this brings to light the “heads I win, tails you lose” standards some of the critics apply to TI. On the one hand, they claim that it is nothing new, it’s just solid stroke mechanics repackaged into a marketing rip-off. (This usually precedes a one-sentence statement about how important mechanics are, followed by a 15-page thesis on the workouts of champions that focuses on yardage, speed and intervals. How exactly are people who are not naturally gifted with great stroke mechanics supposed to acquire them, I wonder? But, I digress…) On the other hand, when we try to point out the importance of stroke length, or body roll, and use currently ranked international swimmers who do this well as examples (like Popov), the response is but they don’t do TI, followed by a dissertation on how their extreme condition regime is the REAL reason they are so good. Blah, blah, blah. You’re seeing what you want to see. Of course, you are perfectly entitled to swim any way you chose, and you clearly can get faster by beating your brains out each and every workout. But, don’t try to jive me about how much better your method is, and how I should drop this TI nonsense and get to work like everyone else. Bottom line: TI does work. You may not care for it, but it does work. Matt

OK, I'll bite. Shari: the good news is that I believe you are doing exactly the right thing by looking at the video. As I'll discuss below, I think focusing on hand entry misses the main point, and it will be helpful to see the whole package of TI instruction. Also, using TI drills when you would otherwise do drills in a "traditional" program is an excellent idea, and you may find a few good nuggets that will benefit your whole team, even if you do not buy into the TI paradigm. Thanks for keeping an open mind about TI, and taking the time to get to the bottom of the issue with your swimmer. Now I understand why Emmett's postings to this discussion group have tailed-off recently. It gets tiresome responding to the same misconceptions over and over again. There are two key concepts to the TI approach to swimming. The first concept is that the most important skill for a swimmer to learn is to reduce drag. Being adapted to life on land, humans are very inefficient swimmers, and a dense medium like water (compared with, say, air) magnifies the resistance of non-streamlined positions. Therefore, a well considered swimming program would spend somewhat less time conditioning the body’s ability to do work, and more time finding and correcting sources of drag in the swimmers’ strokes. The second concept is that the muscles groups you use to move your arms and legs are relatively puny, compared to your core body muscles. If you can somehow harness your big abs, chest and back muscles into generating power for your stroke, you can go farther, faster, longer. With respect to the first concept, a number of the folks posting to this discussion group have criticized the “semi-catch-up” style of freestyle that TI recommends. (The term we use is “front quadrant swimming.” See Emmett Hines’ article at www.usms.org/.../circles.htm This is merely a matter of understanding another term for the same concept; there is nothing wrong with using “semi-catch-up.”) These folks claim that a “kayak” style would be better because it avoids a “dead zone” in your stroke when there is no force being applied backwards. They are trapped by their assumption that the key to swimming faster is always applying more force continuously from their arms. In fact observations by a number of coaches and studies have shown that stroke length (i.e. going one lap of the pool using fewer strokes) is far more closely related to faster swimming than stroke rate (i.e. how many arm pulls you can cram into a given time period). What’s going on? These elite swimmers (with the really low number of strokes they take per lap), whether they explicitly follow TI or not, have found a way to super-streamline themselves so they go much farther for one arm pull than the competition. This is where the front-quadrant concept fits in. As Emmett explains in his article, scientific studies have shown that all other factors being equal, a longer vessel moves through the water faster. If you break lose from your preconceptions of how to swim faster, you see that the criticism of front quadrant swimming is assuming away as not significant the data upon which it is based. Similarly, the suggestion that elite swimmers are making up for the alleged “dead zone” in their arm stroke by kicking harder suffers from the same myopia. We aren’t doing front quadrant swimming to generate more force pushing backward; we are doing it to reduce drag. There are several other aspects of TI swimming calculated to reduce drag that the critics dismiss because they believe it reduces the amount of force applied. The critics miss the point. The second concept relates to what we mean by “fish like swimming.” This refers to the fact that fish do not swim faster by beating their fins back and forth into a frenzy. They swim faster by generating a total body undulation from their core body trunk—the big muscle groups. This is contrasted with “human swimming” which focuses on kicking a pulling harder and faster with arms and legs—much smaller muscle groups compared to the core body muscles. The other set of adjustments TI seeks to make is to harness these large core body muscle groups to generate power in the stroke, rather like a pitcher or a batter in baseball rotating their hips and pushing off with their legs, and channeling that power through their arms. How do we do that in freestyle or backstroke? Rotate your body from side to side and use your arms like propeller blades. We do things in the TI paradigm that do not make sense to those who follow the “human swimming” paradigm, yet they continue to criticize our approach while ignoring or not understanding what it is trying to do, rather like a classical pianist complaining that a jazz pianist does play the music the right way. Bearing that in mind, you can see how I had a hard time answering your question about where your swimmer’s hand should enter the water. Bluntly, it is not terribly important whether it enters next to his ear (which sounds a little bizarre to me) or farther out in front. Is his head down and is he leaning on his chest so his hips float without using a big kick? Is he rolling his hips from side to side? Is he waiting for his hand to pass his ear before he initiates the arm pull and the roll to the other side? (Maybe this last point is where he got things a little garbled in his understanding.) I have studied the TI video and applied it to both my swimming and the kids I coach on our youth league team. If they say anything specific about where your hand enters the water, I can’t recall it, and I can assure you it’s not all that important. Lastly, there is one big whopper I have to deal with. “There is not a single TI coach who has coached a swimmer into the world rankings.” Equine eschatology! I would call to your attention Adrienne Binder of the Santa Barbara Swim Club, currently ranked 6th in the world in the 1500m (www.fina.org/wranklcm_wF1500.html), who has used TI training methods for the past 8 years (www.totalimmersion.net/mag-apr03-2-fast.html). What makes this assertion even more absurd, at least in this forum, is that I personally posted to these discussion groups not even a month ago a link to the article about Adrienne’s training methods, and her exploits in the 1650. But, this brings to light the “heads I win, tails you lose” standards some of the critics apply to TI. On the one hand, they claim that it is nothing new, it’s just solid stroke mechanics repackaged into a marketing rip-off. (This usually precedes a one-sentence statement about how important mechanics are, followed by a 15-page thesis on the workouts of champions that focuses on yardage, speed and intervals. How exactly are people who are not naturally gifted with great stroke mechanics supposed to acquire them, I wonder? But, I digress…) On the other hand, when we try to point out the importance of stroke length, or body roll, and use currently ranked international swimmers who do this well as examples (like Popov), the response is but they don’t do TI, followed by a dissertation on how their extreme condition regime is the REAL reason they are so good. Blah, blah, blah. You’re seeing what you want to see. Of course, you are perfectly entitled to swim any way you chose, and you clearly can get faster by beating your brains out each and every workout. But, don’t try to jive me about how much better your method is, and how I should drop this TI nonsense and get to work like everyone else. Bottom line: TI does work. You may not care for it, but it does work. Matt