Ti again

I have just received my copy of "Swim Technique", one of the best mags anywhere. In this, Cecil Colwin has an article on Michael Phelps analysing his head position in Freestyle. The photos show the head held low with the eyes looking straight down to the bottom of the pool. The water line is at the middle of the head (crown) throughout the stroke. This, Colwin contends, helps Michael to have a lot of his upper body above the water, which is an advantage. The head position is exactly the same as promoted by Total immersion, which has been criticised by many competitive swimmers and coaches as being too low. This is the same Cecil Colwin who a few months ago in his latest book " Breakthroughs in Swimming" says the " the eyes must look forward to see the hands enter the water in Freestyle. This is an absolute fundamental". This of course means holding the head up high, which is how we were all taught in the past. He is now contradicting himself, which is very interesting. So is Michael Phelps swimming the T.I way ?

After reading Gareth's entry, I'm beginning to believe that perhaps I'm swimming a partial TI stroke. Front quadrant i do, as well as look mostly down, and glide, but I do not enter my hand by my goggle or reach out and extend my shoulder/hand to the wall. At first I did eveything TI recommended, then my shoulders starting hurting. So, i've modified it, but kept the thinks in the stoke that were working. Has anyone else done this? Jerrycat :D

My memory of that big Ti discussion of a few months ago, was that having the "hand entering close to the goggle" was a corrective drill that was suggested for a certain swimmer. I know from coaching that sometimes you have to give an exaggerated drill to correct a major fault. Perhaps this swimmer had a straight arm recovery and slapped the hand into the water at full stretch. If you asked this person to enter the hand next to the ear then he would probably enter half way between his goggle and full extension, exactly where you want the hand entry to be. I know that Ti wants the hand in the water to extend the body length and hence reduce drag but they are very clear on how to do the hand entry. "That is to recover with a high elbow, hand hanging down vertically, fingers almost brushing the water and after the elbow passes the ear to smoothly extend the hand into the water as if putting it into a coat sleeve. The hand is to enter with as little splash as possible and the whole arm enters the same hole "opened up" by the hand, then the body rotates onto the shoulder and into catch." I asked Terry Laughlin to clarify some points for me. I was concerned that many Ti swimmers in trying to reach forward as far as they can actually extend the hand into the water and then scoop it up to the surface again. Then they have to move the hand down a long way into the catch. This action would cause their body to lift up, causing increased drag. He confirmed that after hand entry the hand should continue moving forward and DOWN, maintaining a high elbow, into the catch position 9 to 12 " below the surface. Anyway, that is a lot to write so i will go now.

Jerrycat, I've developed shoulder pain with the TI stuff -- there is so much to keep in mind, primarily when I'm thinking "reach long yet look at the bottom of the pool". In my case at this stage of training, such a focus seems to cause an exaggerated twist to breathe on one side and excessive cross-over. My remedy swim thoughts are "don't cross over" and "don't twist the head so much". I now have a couple ways of doing freestyle -- what I think of as the TI way and the non-TI way (looking forward and observing hand entry) hopefully something more efficient and comfortable will evolve. JuneO

I learned technique just 2 years ago, through a combination of: an age group coach, Richard Quick/Skip Kinney tapes, and the TI method (book and tapes). What I found is that I had to identify and implement what worked for me from each of those sources. Having said that, I will admit to being a staunch advocate of the TI methods. I went through a period of having shoulder pain, and I swim mainly backstroke and freestyle. Someone suggested that I may be overpulling and using my shoulders to rotate. So, I went back to the balance drills and really focused on shifting my weight using my hips and rib cage *together* in both free and back, and wow, what a difference that made. I can honestly say that having fixed that one element in my technique has made a big improvement, not only in the shoulder pain, but in the strokes, overall. (I should also add the caveat that I have not yet figured out how to translate that to a faster speed since I completely fuddle the races I enter.) Cheers!

Rez, Could you clarify the term "fuddle?" I have a couple of thoughts: 1) You may be trying to be a sprinter, when your real talent lies in the distance events. Sprinting requires a lot of fine technical adjustments with much less margin of error for a mediocre start or turn. Distance events, on the other hand, reward swimmers who have learned to minimize drag and use an efficient style such as the TI method. I have been doing and coaching TI methods for about 2.5 years. What I noticed as I really got the technique down is that my cruising speed (i.e. the fastest speed I can maintain indefinitely) seemed to be quicker than swimmers of comparable ability. In short, as they were conditioning their aerobic systems to be able to swim middle and distance sets faster than their cruising speed, I was using technique instead to keep up with them. They would have a better 200 or 400, but I can reel them in on an open water swim. Maybe the same for you? 2) Learning how to race is a bit of a different animal after you have worked on TI drills. I know I completely gooned a 200 and a 500 in one meet. Then I figured out how to take the exaggerated glide out of my stroke that is good to practice, but bad for racing. I guess that is a long winded way of saying you should keep entering races; you will figure it out with experience. Good luck, Matt

I am a huge proponent of TI. The thing about TI is that you have to learn your own tempo. The best way I have figured out timing is through fist gloves. They really make you focus on your balance and kicking. The trick is to speed up the stroke while keeping your form. It takes a while though to develope muscles that you haven't used. When I first started, I was a lot slower, but the more I stuck with it because I realized that the techniques potential would pay off with better balance and strength. I also had a bit of shoulder trouble at first, but I also had reconstructive shoulder surgery a couple of years ago. I still had some shoulder impingement, but after a couple of months of light training I have strengthened my shoulder to the point that it doesn't hurt even when I push myself. Hook'em Blue

Well, I'm a breaststroker and the *** events are the sprints and the sprint-endurance 200. So, I have to do sprints whether I like it or not. Anyway, because of my youth swimming the sprints are better-the 50 and 100 than the 200. Terry is also talking about people that didn't always come from youthful swimming background and didn't develop the ability to be faster in the sprints. I notice some adult women in my age group in breaststroke that I beat in a 50 meter than can cream me in a 200 meter *** because they took up the sport as an adult and learn to swim the endurance event better and didn't have the youthful speed. This is also what Terry is taking about swimmers that didn't do 50's in relays as kids or 100's sprint event like I did a lot in age group or summer league or high school and community college. As for freestyle, the only event I swam was the 200 meter and because of my youthful experiance I came from 4 seconds behind and beat the person in my heat by 1 second because of swim stategy.

I have noticed a few people complaining about developing shoulder pain when adopting Ti. There is a good article on: www.zoomers.net go to the article on distance per stroke. Basically, the type of stroke that has maximum reach, maximum length of stroke and a slow tempo can cause a lot more stress on the shoulders. If you already have great flexibility then you can 'shrug' your shoulder forward into the catch, maintain a very high elbow and have a great DPS. That is actually how i swim, folowing the "australian crawl" principles. Howqever a lot of the adopters of Ti are coming from running or tri backgrounds and do not have the great flexibility of people with a swim background. I coach a number of these atheletes and they just cannot get their limbs into these positions without shoulder impingement. For these swimmers they should not reach for maximum extension, and they need a higher stroke rate to reduce the force loading on the arm during the stroke. Reaching the hand down on entry to 1 foot under the water is essential to avoid pushing down on the water to get into the catch position. If you don't have the range of motion of an "Elite swimmer" then you should not try to force your limbs into the same technique of the elite swimmer.

Gareth- Could you explain a little what "Australian Crawl" principles you follow/teach besides the shoulder shrug catch and high elbow that you refer to?