Who do you trust for help?

Let's see.... I have moderate Scoliosis, joint problems in both ankles, horrible allergies, and our ever popular friend Plantar Facitiis. There were standard drills presented to me when I first learned to swim, but kickboards and pull buoys are supposedly bad for the back. Everyone thought my crawl sroke was long and wonderful but after a brief bout with swimmer's shoulder I learned to shorten it. You are all right in your comments. It depends upon what works for you as an individual. I may want to swim as fast as Peirsol or as smooth as Coughlin, but my anatomy is different. Plus, I'm getting old... :(

Sometimes I go old school with tips from *** Hannula (sp?), and Skip Kinney (he was good enough for Bal, Rogan, and Rouse). There are probably die-hard TI fans here, but I've never met a lifeguard or a competitive swimmer who ever had anything good to say. I tried Terry's DVD's and videos but couldn't get through any of them. No offense to anyone. To each his own. I just released my coach but never really quit the job myself. ;)

I just started swimming a couple of years ago to help recover from a ruptured Achilles tendon. For the first year, I followed the “conventional wisdom” of the experts, such as: • If you want to go faster, train longer and harder • Build up your shoulders with weights, paddles and pull buoy sets so you can pull harder • Use kickboard sets to build up your legs so you can kick harder I also got private coaching from a former competitive swimmer. She actually gave me some decent advice, such as reduce your stroke count, but couldn’t really tell me exactly how one goes about doing that. As a result, I did get bigger muscles and more fitness, but I made virtually no improvements in time for a year and injured my shoulder to boot. Then I discovered Total Immersion. It was a revelation to me. Most of the basic TI principles are endorsed by most experts, although a few are still somewhat controversial, such as the idea that quality of practice is much more important than quantity. But to me the really important thing about TI is that it teaches you to be your own coach. It gives you tools and techniques for analyzing your swimming and crafting your practices to improve the aspects you want to work on. One of the first and most important things TI taught me is that the key to swimming is minimizing water resistance, and that this cannot be done by becoming stronger and overpowering the water. You have to practice “fishlike” swimming. Notice that I use the TI terminology “practice” instead of the common swimming terminology “workout.” TI makes the point that effective swimming is much more a product of skill than of sheer brawn and fitness. To learn a skill, you have to be instructed in how to do it and you have to practice it. You practice piano, you practice dance, you practice tennis, but in swimming you have a workout. You have a piano instructor and a tennis pro to teach you, but in swimming you have a coach to craft a (grueling) workout for you. As long as swimming continues to take this approach, it is going to continue to have problems attracting new participants. I know that during that first year when I was doing endless mind-numbing sets of up and down the lane and constantly struggling to overcome fatigue, I came close to quitting several times. But TI has changed all that. I totally enjoy my practices now. My mind is just as actively engaged as my body, and I have cut my 1,600 meter time by 8 minutes in the last 6 months, while swimming on average about 2,000 meters per practice session three times a week. So to answer the original question, the only person I now trust for help is my new swimming instructor - me.

Originally posted by PeirsolFan Sometimes I go old school with tips from *** Hannula (sp?), and Skip Kinney (he was good enough for Bal, Rogan, and Rouse). There are probably die-hard TI fans here, but I've never met a lifeguard or a competitive swimmer who ever had anything good to say. I tried Terry's DVD's and videos but couldn't get through any of them. No offense to anyone. To each his own. I just released my coach but never really quit the job myself. ;) TI is very good for those learning the basics and intermediates. After two to five of swimming with competition in mind most people grow past the basics and need a versatile coach to assist them in finding their own way.

Originally posted by tomhendersonfl INotice that I use the TI terminology “practice” instead of the common swimming terminology “workout.” TI makes the point that effective swimming is much more a product of skill than of sheer brawn and fitness. To learn a skill, you have to be instructed in how to do it and you have to practice it. You practice piano, you practice dance, you practice tennis, but in swimming you have a workout. You have a piano instructor and a tennis pro to teach you, but in swimming you have a coach to craft a (grueling) workout for you. As long as swimming continues to take this approach, it is going to continue to have problems attracting new participants. I know that during that first year when I was doing endless mind-numbing sets of up and down the lane and constantly struggling to overcome fatigue, I came close to quitting several times. Sounds like you haven't had a very good coach and have some misconceptions about swimming. Perhaps you had an age group (kids) coach work with you. There's a significant difference between coaching age groupers and elite USA swimmers, vs. masters, fitness and triathlon swimmers. Very different considerations with respect to individual physical abilities, depending on the age of the swimmer, cognitive and disciplinary capacity of an adult swimmer vs. a 10 year old age grouper, and different needs as far as recovery time. Our swim practices contain workouts that are 30-50% skill drills, and pretty much only the main set is the hard working fitness or endurance work. The rest is drills and drills and the coach watching you and giving you pointers. Doing drills properly is plenty of a workout in itself. Also unlike 20+ people per instructor, as in TI clinics, in our clinics you get a max of 6 people per instructor. As for coaching yourself, that has majopr limitations, unless one has superb visualization skills, and can see yourself in water and able to analyze where you need improvement. So far, I'm not aware of anyone having that ability.

Originally posted by Bob McAdams It's very unwise to comment on swim training with which you have no personal experience. What makes you think I have no personal experience with TI?

Connie, I agree with Bob that you have the right kind of coach. Actually, instructor would be a better term for what your coach does. But in my admittedly brief experience, you are in the minority. I think most swimmers still have coaches, not instructors. You are also correct that self-coaching is difficult. I try to overcome the visualization problem in a variety of ways, such as doing simple drills where I can limit my focus to one or two aspects of technique, and asking for help from lifeguards, other swimmers, and even spectators. I’ve found that most people are happy to watch you for a few seconds to give specific feedback on things you can’t see for yourself (e.g., am I keeping a neutral head position, how far in front of my head is my hand actually entering the water, am I rotating the same amount on both sides, is my elbow pointed at the ceiling during recovery, etc.). Anyone can answer questions like these. The next step for me is to begin using video to analyze my technique, so I am saving my pennies for a camcorder I can use both above and below the water. Once I have videos that I can send to experts for analysis, I expect to make a lot more progress. Self-coaching doesn’t mean that I only listen to myself, just that I only incorporate what makes sense to me. But back to the way I see swimming being taught, I am 56 years old and have always been very physically active. I studied martial arts seriously for 15 years when I was younger, and have at various times been heavily into baseball, tennis, racquetball, table tennis, volleyball, diving and trampoline. So although I am a novice at swimming, I have a lot of experience learning complex motor skills. In every other discipline I have studied the approach is always the same: Break complex movements down into a series of simple movements, imprint these simple movements in your muscle memory, and then slowly start to recombine the simple movements back into more complex movements. Don’t even try to do the complex movements (like whole stroke swimming) until you have mastered the simple movements, because you will just be imprinting bad habits, especially if you do it when you’re tired. And don’t think about building speed and endurance until you can do the movement perfectly in a slow, controlled manner. Swimming is the only skill activity I’ve seen where the general approach is different. Can you imagine a tennis pro saying to students, “Just get out there and play game after game. I’ll give you the occasional pointer and we’ll get you so fit you can outrun all your opponents. Just being fit won’t win many matches for you, but eventually your technique will come around. And spend some time watching the pros and try to emulate what they do.” That pro wouldn’t last very long because all the students except the rare few who are naturally gifted would get frustrated and/or injured and leave. I’ve done a fair bit of searching the Web for swimming related content. I have found lots of “tips” for improving technique, but so far, TI is the only organized swimming “system” I have come across that takes the same approach that I am accustomed to from the other skill sports I have studied. Since I am in the basic/intermediate category, I have found TI to be, as you said in your post, very good for that level. I can’t speak for real competitive swimmers, but I will point out that TI is not at all dogmatic, except at the level of basic principles (e.g., being balanced and streamlined). I have found TI to be very much on board with the idea that each person needs to develop an individual style that is complementary to their unique physiology. TI just says that you need a certain basic foundation of skills before you start to do that. Would I like to find a great swimming teacher who would work with me in person and teach me in a systematic way, the way I was taught martial arts and tennis? Sure, I would. It would make things a lot easier for me. But they seem to be pretty rare.

Originally posted by Conniekat8 Also unlike 20+ people per instructor, as in TI clinics, in our clinics you get a max of 6 people per instructor. As for coaching yourself, that has majopr limitations, unless one has superb visualization skills, and can see yourself in water and able to analyze where you need improvement. So far, I'm not aware of anyone having that ability. It's very unwise to comment on swim training with which you have no personal experience. If you had ever attended a TI workshop, you'd know that the workshops never operate with "20+ people per instructor." At TI training, you will see 6 or fewer people per instructor. I've never seen a stroke clinic at my Y, either for kids or for adults, that had a swimmer/instructor ratio anywhere near that low. If your clinics have that kind of ratio, you're lucky. I'm not sure where you think Tom has "misconceptions about swimming." His statement that "effective swimming is much more a product of skill than of sheer brawn and fitness" is right on the money. I've had a chance to talk to a couple of Olympic medalists about swimming, and was impressed by the fact that both of them seem to be constantly thinking about flawless execution of their stroke every time they swim. If you're a kid on a kids' swim team, and have 4 or 5 or 6 practices per week with one or two coaches present, it may be adequate to rely on your coaches' feedback (if they're good coaches) to improve your stroke technique. But my impression is that few masters swimmers have this luxury. The masters team at my Y, for example, has one 1 1/2-hour and one 2-hour practice per week, but I wouldn't bet much on your success as a swimmer if those are the only times you hit the pool all week. And, if you swim more than that, you're going to have to, as Tom says, "be your own coach." This doesn't mean (and I don't think Tom meant to say) that you don't need periodic feedback from someone who can watch you and identify things you're doing wrong. But it does mean that you're not going to be getting that kind of feedback most of the time, and therefore it is not likely to be adequate to operate with a typical kids' mentality of relying entirely on live feedback from a coach. Instead, you're going to need to develop a sensory awareness of what your body is doing in the water, and you're going to need to learn what good swimming technique and bad swimming technique feel like so that you can strive for the former and avoid the latter. But there's no level of swimming where it makes sense to churn out mindless yardage (or meterage :D ). If a 3-time Olympic gold medalist still pays attention to her technique every time she swims, it stands to reason that the rest of us need to do the same (though she may be straining out gnats while we strain out camels). And ignoring technique can be dangerous, regardless of your age! Just last month, I coached a 12-year-old girl who was recovering from shoulder surgery for problems brought on by her participation in competitive swimming. She said that her swim team just did long workouts, with very little said about technique. I've even heard of a 9-year-old boy having shoulder problems from competitive swimming. Our swim practices contain workouts that are 30-50% skill drills, and pretty much only the main set is the hard working fitness or endurance work. The rest is drills and drills and the coach watching you and giving you pointers. Doing drills properly is plenty of a workout in itself. Well said! It sounds like you're swimming with a well-coached team! Bob

Originally posted by tomhendersonfl Self-coaching doesn’t mean that I only listen to myself, just that I only incorporate what makes sense to me. That's a great quote and it's going into my swimming journal. :)

Originally posted by Conniekat8 What makes you think I have no personal experience with TI? What I said you have no personal experience with is TI training. No TI training - whether it is a weekend workshop, a camp, or private coaching by a TI-certified coach - ever has "20+ people per instructor," and if you had ever attended any, you would have known that. What made your statement particularly irksome is that what you falsely claimed about TI training unfortunately is the norm for some non-TI training. Your clinics may have no more than 6 swimmers per instructor, but that has not been true of most of the non-TI clinics I've attended. Bob