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.
Former Member
Wow!!!
I have to admit some of this is over my head (LOL) but I tend to agree with Matt S on his point:
"THIS TIP IS NOT GENERAL ADVICE APPROPRIATE FOR ALL SWIMMERS! It is a specific stroke correction for people who have a specific problem, i.e. sinking hips. "
Anyway, I tried the hand entering just in front of the head last night at practice. It screwed up, and shortened, my stroke. But, I was trained as a competitve LD freestyler (500-1650Y/1500M) and tend to have an Australian-type freestyle (now I know I was ahead of my time - hee hee) since I was also a butterflyer.
I look forward to checking out the videos.
Keep the discussion coming - we're on the verge of a breakthrough here!! :)
Thorpe and Hackett are Australian and swim the crawl but have a bent arm recovery. Klim on the other hand keeps his arm straight throughout recovery as in butterfly. This is unorthodox but works for him, probably because of his butterfly background.
You are right about this:
Originally posted by Gareth Eckley
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As I understand it the main feature of " Australian crawl" is the pronounced shoulder shift forward during entry. The shoulder is held high and the catch is acheived by taking the time to get the hand and forearm at 90 degrees to the water surface, before initiating the pull. The pull is actually quite shallow. The upper arm remains high and almost parallell to the water surface during this.
This differs to " normal " freestyle where the shoulder is dropped during the entry phase and the shoulders roll more, leading to the pull being deeper in the water.
This is covered in Swimming technique magazine , july-sept article. " Thoughts on the crawl stroke" www.swiminfo.com/.../200007-01st_art.asp There is also an article in Swimming World magazine, January 2000, titled "the New Australian Crawl" that covers this in depth. the last article has a good photo sequence but is not available online.
The straight arm recovery is not an intrinsic or neccessary part of this swimming style, Thorpe and Hackett do not use it and they are certainly swimming "Australian Crawl".
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Maybe the article in the Swimming World magazine from January 2000, is the same article that I am reading right now from the Swim magazine of March/April 2000.
The article from the Swim magazine has eight pictures under the title 'Fairly Good Sequence Illustrating the "New Australian Crawl"'.
It says:
"The following photos, using former short course world champion Francisco Sanchez of Venezuela, are a fairly good approximation of the Australian stroke."
Captions under the eight pictures do emphasize what you are describing.
Picture number four (picture on the right, in the second row), does show a straight right arm, fully extended closely above the water, before entering the water to catch and pull.
However, the caption under this picture doesn't mention the straight arm, so what Swim magazine and you describe in 'Australian Crawl', that is the definition of 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'.
