TI Question...heard this and doesn't sound right...
Former Member
I am teaching a stroke clinic class at the YMCA. My background is USS competitive swimming (ages 8-18) and some age-group coaching. One of my students, a triathlon trainer, has been to Total Immersion. Because of his TI training, he is doubtful of any stroke correction I am giving him. Basically he has the typical problems of a short stroke...entering too close to the head and not pulling thru.
The TI triathlete is telling me that the TI "Fish" style swimming technique says the hand should enter the water just in front of the head, then reach forward. In my opinion, he needs to lengthen his stroke, rotating and reaching as far forward as possible, entering out front (not by the head). I am thinking he is mixing up some TI drill with proper freestyle SWIMMING technique. He at least agreed with me when we talked distance per stroke (and started believing I know something about swimming)...but I don't see how you can maximize DPS with hand entry by the head.
Can someone shed light on this for me? What is this "Fish" swimming in a couple sentences? And where does TI say the hand entry should be?
Thank you!!
P.S. I'm new here and enjoying reading...I swim masters and hope to compete in butterfly someday...I'm waiting it out until I get a bit older so can face the competition. My butterfly has held out better than my other strokes (used to be a long distance freestyler too).
P.P.S. I did a search on TI and read some of the posts but they didn't quite get to my specific question above.
Parents
Former Member
I did recognize earlier in this thread that Hackett swims with V-shape arms, as shown in videos.
Maybe the straight arm in the 'Australian Crawl' is a soft feature, because the quote that I bring up as being the caption for the figure 4 in the article, alludes to a straight arm by stating "...full reach forward with the recovering arm.", but doesn't spell 'straight arm'.
The caption under figure 1, figure showing a straight arm traveling in the air, doesn't spell 'straight arm' either.
So the 'Australian Crawl' must be allowing for variations on this soft characteristic.
The other characteristics of the 'Australian Crawl', namely shoulder shifting forward and shoulder high, upper arm parallel to the water, forearm and hands perpendicular to the water when starting to pull, these are clearly spelled in describing the 'Australian Crawl'.
It is like if these characteristics are the hard features defining the 'Australian Crawl'.
I did recognize earlier in this thread that Hackett swims with V-shape arms, as shown in videos.
Maybe the straight arm in the 'Australian Crawl' is a soft feature, because the quote that I bring up as being the caption for the figure 4 in the article, alludes to a straight arm by stating "...full reach forward with the recovering arm.", but doesn't spell 'straight arm'.
The caption under figure 1, figure showing a straight arm traveling in the air, doesn't spell 'straight arm' either.
So the 'Australian Crawl' must be allowing for variations on this soft characteristic.
The other characteristics of the 'Australian Crawl', namely shoulder shifting forward and shoulder high, upper arm parallel to the water, forearm and hands perpendicular to the water when starting to pull, these are clearly spelled in describing the 'Australian Crawl'.
It is like if these characteristics are the hard features defining the 'Australian Crawl'.
