I am relatively new to swimming, having taken up the sport after 28 of years of distance running. (I injured a knee in a fall and it was no longer standing up to the pounding.) I swim with a local masters group and have made a fair amount of progress since starting three years ago and have come to appreciate the value of working on all four strokes. I also discovered the joys of open water swimming. In addition to our local open water race in Casco Bay, I did my first Chesapeake Bay swim (the 4.4 miler) last summer. I look forward to doing it again.
As a new swimmer, I have looked for resources to learn as much as possible about stroke technique. A couple of friends who are triathletes recommended TI. I bought a copy of the book when I first started swimming. I have to admit to being a bit turned off by the approach taken by the authors as it seemed a bit heavy on hype. I was also a put off by the concentration on drilling instead of faster swimming and training. (The curse of the runner's mindset!) With a little more experience, I now recognize many of the TI drills in the workouts put together by our coach. I have begun incorporating more drills into my daily workouts as I recognize that my greatest gains will come from honing my technique.
That being said, I have a copy of the Swim Smooth DVD which I find very useful. Many of the drills are similar to TI. I have shared it with a few swimmers from our group and the feedback is positive. I am not sure that it is better than TI as the focus on drills and balance is very similar. I do find the drills to be very useful and I like the focus on training rather than drilling alone.
I have also been exposed to some of the Go Swim videos through our group and find them to be useful as well. In general, I like being able to see the drills and strokes being performed by good swimmers as I find it hard to visualize many of them without a visual reference.
I am relatively new to swimming, having taken up the sport after 28 of years of distance running. (I injured a knee in a fall and it was no longer standing up to the pounding.) I swim with a local masters group and have made a fair amount of progress since starting three years ago and have come to appreciate the value of working on all four strokes. I also discovered the joys of open water swimming. In addition to our local open water race in Casco Bay, I did my first Chesapeake Bay swim (the 4.4 miler) last summer. I look forward to doing it again.
As a new swimmer, I have looked for resources to learn as much as possible about stroke technique. A couple of friends who are triathletes recommended TI. I bought a copy of the book when I first started swimming. I have to admit to being a bit turned off by the approach taken by the authors as it seemed a bit heavy on hype. I was also a put off by the concentration on drilling instead of faster swimming and training. (The curse of the runner's mindset!) With a little more experience, I now recognize many of the TI drills in the workouts put together by our coach. I have begun incorporating more drills into my daily workouts as I recognize that my greatest gains will come from honing my technique.
That being said, I have a copy of the Swim Smooth DVD which I find very useful. Many of the drills are similar to TI. I have shared it with a few swimmers from our group and the feedback is positive. I am not sure that it is better than TI as the focus on drills and balance is very similar. I do find the drills to be very useful and I like the focus on training rather than drilling alone.
I have also been exposed to some of the Go Swim videos through our group and find them to be useful as well. In general, I like being able to see the drills and strokes being performed by good swimmers as I find it hard to visualize many of them without a visual reference.
