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

of the 100+ people that read this. Does my question make sense? I'd like to get some info before I see this guy again. Thanks!

Shari.....you are correct, of course, as is Ion. The reason no-one is responding seems to me to be a nervousness about being jumped if one says anything critical of TI. Never fear, I am here and willing to speak what little mind I have left. The problem, in my opinion, with learning swimming from a manual or a tape is that there is no feedback. Period. This allows all sorts of gremlins to slither into the learning process. I've had people interpreting what they thought they heard or read in TI and many other self-help learning aids. For example, a swimmer tells me they are going to "swim downhill". Try it sometime. Ridiculous. However, to the stereotypical heads-up Triathlete type, it FEELS like they are swimming downhill. Big difference. Second example: "look straight down at the bottom". When I do that (and my fellow Masters) forward motion is substantially and noticeably reduced. You must remember that TI (it appears) was created for the great unwashed multitudes and has some definite holes in it for serious competitors. As an aside, I noticed on the TI tape that the person doing the excellent job of demonstrating was not doing what the tape said to do !! It has taken me three weeks to stamp out some of the foolishness that my new team had created for themselves by mis-interpreting the TI drills. We're swimming much faster and smarter now, thank you very much ! Bottom line : I enjoyed the TI tape and found very little to disagree with. The problem lies with the beholder, not the teaching tool. Finally, DPS by self-definition requires a far-forward entry and maximum push past the hips. Over to you............... Bert

Your right! If you watch the fastest swimmers in the world (Popov, Klim, etc.) you will see that they reach as far as they can above the water. The main reason for this is, I think, that they keep the shoulders up high. Why? First because the shoulders make a huge resistance and secondly you can change the power from the recovering hand to the one propulsing below the surface much, much easier if you keep your shoulders high (=that means the hands as well). Visit the best web-sites in swimming: http://svl.ch - ike

Originally posted by ShariL ... One thing I know for sure is that the great swimmers of the world are not putting their hand in right by their head... ... Thanks again! No way: the great swimmers of the world are not putting their hand right by their head, stretch the hand underwater against resistent water, then when the arm is stretched start the catch and the pull. Goofy public swimmers do this, though. The great swimmers of the world want the arm stretched as quickly as possible, so they stretch the arm in the less resistent air, they hit the water with an almost stretched arm (I have seen some who do stretch the arm a little bit, not much, underwater) or with a fully stretched arm, then they start the catch and the pull. A description of the kayak style -missing from the T.I. book and mentioned by Gareth in his post-, is in 'Swimming Technique' from April/July 2003, where Cecil Colwin states in page 16: "At speed, however, when meeting a challenge, as in Thorpe's classic race with Grant Hackett in the 800 meter freestyle in Fukoaka 2001 (i.e.: Ian Thorpe (Aus.) at 7:39.16 and Grant Hackett (Aus.) at 7:40.34 swam then the two fastest 800 meter free in history), both swimmers switched to a rotary stroke..." and "...has been called a rotary stroke because the arms rotate continously at almost the same speed (i.e. the arms don't overlap, they are always at least 90 degrees apart, and often they are at 180 degrees opposition, as it is when one arm enters the water and the other arm exits). The rotary action is the main feature of the stroke, and it was brought to a high point of development by Alexander Popov,..."; Popov, the T.I. model, swims rotary, kayak style. Very dramatic rotary, kayak style, swimmers who "...are not putting their hand in right by their head..." because they swim with straight -not bent- and fully stretched arms above the water, are Michael Klim (Aus.) -who is second fastest man in history in 100 meter free at 48.18- and Inge de Bruijn (Ned.) -who is the fastest woman in history in 100 meter free at 53.77-. Long distance swimmer Grant Hackett (Aus.) -who has the world record in the 1500 meter free at 14:34.56-, bends his arms above the water, but he is not putting his hand right by his head, no way, because he is still stretching his arms above the water quite far from his head. Underwater, he is stretching a little bit the arm to full extension, than he starts the catch and the pull. To me, people who are "...putting their hand in right by their head..." are usually overzealous public swimmers, in an imaginary rush, just to swim the wrong ways.

Sharil, I think understanding what TI tell the swimmers in their clinic would help. Your swimmer will have been told that reducing drag is of the greatest importance. TI wants the entry hand in the water early so as to lengthen the body line " longer vessels create less drag ". If your explanations mention drag reduction then he will be more receptive. Does his hand enter at too steep an angle, causing drag as the water pushes against the forearm as it moves into the water? It seems from your post that this is the case. TI says to "extend hand as if putting hand into a coat sleeve" if you use this metaphor but get him to enter a bit further forward then it may work. Another fault i see with a lot of TI swimmers is that they are told to reach as far forward as possible, " extend hand towards the end of the pool ". Many interperet this in this way: hand enters water near head and is then extended forward and moves up to near the surface as they are reaching as far forward as possible. The hand then has a long way to move to get into the catch and has created drag as it rises up to the surface. Again TI language says " not to reach directly down into the water on entry" this is good advice for most swimmers but may not be in this case. I feel that the biggest hole in TI instruction is in stroke timing. A half 'catch up' style is the goal. Popov is mentioned a lot but the kayak style of stroke timing that he swims is not mentioned at all. The correct timing to create continuos propulsion and transfer momentum from finishing hand to hand starting catch is not taught there. The average TI swimmer does not have the great kick which is needed to keep moving forward during the 'dead spot' that a 'half catch-up' stroke creates. Just because Thorpe can swim like that does not mean that the rest of us should swim that way. Your swimmer will have a lot of good info on drag reduction, but will judge you on how what you say checks with TI philosophy. You can't win unless you become a TI coach, all you need for this is to spend $2,000 on their courses and at least a $500 to $1,000 per year fee therafter, with more money ($300 to $500) for refresher courses every 2 years. I am not making this up, it is on their website. The TI discussion boards are always full of praise for TI, in the last 3 years I have not seen any critical posts there. So to sum up there is a lot of good stuff in TI but there are gaps and the unquestioning acceptance of their way or the highway needs to change. BTW there is not a single TI coach who has coached a swimmer into the world rankings.

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

Matt, man, that's how a big T.I. course is well summarized. Are you coming to New Jersey in August?

my 2 cents. As Bert states,..T.I. is great for some of the folks who need some serious stroke correction, in particular reducing drag. It's an excellent stepping stone for adults with no prior swimming experience. And the triathletes are the ones who always tend to swim with the head clean out of the water looking ahead for the giant day glow buoys. No wonder they get tired. But the question is...Do real swimmers actually race this way? And I think that the answer is no. The timing of the stroke doesn't lend itself to a rapid turnover, unless there's a motor boat like kick coming from the back end. And indeed Popov is absolutely not a front quadrant swimmer. He's just very "tall" in the water. And about your question. I would liken the hand entry near the head as 'putting on the brakes' so to speak. There's gotta be resistance when someone's actually pushing their hand under the water's surface before getting into a full extension for the catch. Analogy: It would be like having a runner skip through a hundred yards versus actually running with a clean stride. But if that's how your guy wants to swim, so be it. Hopefully it's not contageous. :cool:

This is very helpful - thank you!! I want to know what I'm talking about when I face this guy Tuesday. I am also relieved to know that I am not totally out of it when it comes to newer technique. I read much of the information on the TI website, and all the posts on this site (and yes, I noticed the walking on eggshells!). My impression is that TI has a great record of teaching newer swimmers (and by that I mean swimmers without a competitive swimming background) how to swim. They are also great marketers! The triathlete in my class told me he'd bring in his TI video. I am anxious to see it because it sounds like TI has good drills and I'd like to see how their swimmers look in the water (I assume they look good and would like to connect what they're teaching with what they're demonstrating). One thing I know for sure is that the great swimmers of the world are not putting their hand in right by their head...so if I watch the video maybe I can point that out to the guy. And also suggest he watch some Olympic footage. I don't want to disrespect his training...but it sounds like he is misinterpreting some of it. And it's a problem when he's telling other class members what he learned and not to listen to me -- giving them clearly wrong instruction -- because he "spent $500 on an intensive swimming course". (I was no Olympian, but a respectable 500 and 1650 freestyler and butterflyer that can blow this guy out of the water; former triathlete too but he doesn't know that.) I would love more input or any helpful lingo! ;) Thanks again!

From my experience on this board, people are formulating right now the most appropriate answer to their knowledge. They will post in a few hours, I guess. In my opinion, a short stroke above the water that stretches the arm underwater (this thiathlete' style) is fighting resistance from the water when stretching, and a short stroke stroke above the water that doesn't stretch the arm underwater is faulty because it doesn't reach far so it makes a small distance per stroke. Reaching the farthest in the non-resistent air before entering the resistent water, even by throwing the shoulder ahead and by rolling on one side of the body to elongate oneself (as recommended in the T.I. book, in page 52: "...making you 'taller' each time you turn sideways and 'shorter' as you turn back..."), is what I try to do. If you ask me for a better answer than this, including the use of the word 'fishlike' in the T.I. book which I kind of remember but not clearly, then I will have to research a little better than this.