Well, I know some of you are big fans of Ti appoach. I would like to read more on it. The library will not vcover the books that deal with backstroke, or breaststroke or butterfly, so I read some articles from time to time on it. Matt S use it for a summer team for kids and uses it himself and others might use some of it.
Parents
Former Member
My experience with shoulder pain was exactly the opposite of what some here have reported.
I went to a freestyle stroke clinic at my local YMCA in the spring of 1998, and began experiencing shoulder pain a couple of months later which eventually forced me to take a few weeks off from swimming. I eventually settled on a modified stroke in which I didn't do everything I had been taught in the stroke clinic, avoiding the movements that caused the worst pain. But I was still experiencing a little bit of pain.
Because of this, I was apprehensive when I went to a TI freestyle workshop in February of 1999, since I was afraid they were going to ask me to do something that would aggravate the shoulder pain again. But this didn't happen. In fact, during the weeks following the workshop, the slight pain I had been experiencing gradually went away.
The freestyle stroke techniques that are in use today take you very close to the movements that can cause shoulder impingement, so if you are not trained properly, it is easy to go over the edge into shoulder pain. But, for me at least, the TI training sequence guarded against this.
If the stroke you have been using is significantly different from the stroke that TI teaches, you should expect that it will be awhile before you are able to incorporate TI stroke techniques effectively at race speeds. You are engraining a whole new set of muscle memories, and may be training a somewhat different set of muscles than you've been accustomed to using. For me, it took a couple of years (but keep in mind that the stroke technique I started with was pretty crappy).
Bob
My experience with shoulder pain was exactly the opposite of what some here have reported.
I went to a freestyle stroke clinic at my local YMCA in the spring of 1998, and began experiencing shoulder pain a couple of months later which eventually forced me to take a few weeks off from swimming. I eventually settled on a modified stroke in which I didn't do everything I had been taught in the stroke clinic, avoiding the movements that caused the worst pain. But I was still experiencing a little bit of pain.
Because of this, I was apprehensive when I went to a TI freestyle workshop in February of 1999, since I was afraid they were going to ask me to do something that would aggravate the shoulder pain again. But this didn't happen. In fact, during the weeks following the workshop, the slight pain I had been experiencing gradually went away.
The freestyle stroke techniques that are in use today take you very close to the movements that can cause shoulder impingement, so if you are not trained properly, it is easy to go over the edge into shoulder pain. But, for me at least, the TI training sequence guarded against this.
If the stroke you have been using is significantly different from the stroke that TI teaches, you should expect that it will be awhile before you are able to incorporate TI stroke techniques effectively at race speeds. You are engraining a whole new set of muscle memories, and may be training a somewhat different set of muscles than you've been accustomed to using. For me, it took a couple of years (but keep in mind that the stroke technique I started with was pretty crappy).
Bob
