Swimming Theories

as far as I know the idea of head down swimming did not come from TI. The idea behind it I believe is that if you arch your neck to look forward you will of necessity move your center of bouyancy backward. This causes many people to hve their hips drop slightly.which is less streamlined.My theory is you want to be as streamlined as possible as much as possible,except for the movements that are propulsive. Then the issue of propulsion gets into lift vs drag vs vortices vs we don't know. I think TI is great to learn to swim. Much better than what I was taught by the Red Cross 50 yr. ago,most of which I had to unlearn. If you learn the TI method I suspect you don't need to totally unlearn things,but you may need to tweak them to go faster. You are right that the best way to swim faster is to watch people who swim fast and try to swim like them. This was Doc Councilman's real genius. He tried to study what the best swimmers were doing and then fit the theory to the swimmers.

I count strokes all the time. Every length, every set. If I counted every stroke every length, I'd lose count of how many lengths I'd swum. I find it difficult to think about stroke count, pace, splitting, speed, survival and flying breaststroke kicks all at the same time. I wanna know what your stroke count was for those 67 x 50 fly!

For me, I just get bored with counting strokes, and do it every now and again. I also get very bored with all freestyle workouts, they make me crazy.:banana: The EVF thing is interesting. When first starting, I had a coach keep telling me I had no "catch", but not having swum before, I said great, how to I get it. Sounds like for good reason it has been hard for me to develop. That is my thing to work on constantly. Nadine also noticed it, only she said I was "slipping" on my right side. Since I don't have anyone to watch and tell me I am doing it wrong, I am probably doing it wrong, sigh.

Donna, The "Science of Swimming" by Dr. James Councilman, in my opinion, is the best book on the theories and physics of swimming. If you haven't read it, please do. I know that there seem to be some factual commonalities in regards to swimming fast and few coaches would dispute them. First, the most important component of swimming is propulsion, the pull, the kick, and then the streamlining that accentuates both. As a coach for over thirty years, I've found that an Early Vertical Forearm (EVF) position is the most difficult but one of the most important fundamentals differentiating every swimmer from beginner to World Record holder. The EVF has been often called the "catch". The speed of a swimmer can be directly associated with a combination of many things but an EVF, in my opinion, is the most crucial. Think of the most streamlined swimmer, with a great kick but an ineffective EVF. If seeing is believing then please look at the following underwater videos of the best swimmers in the world an tell yourself what you see as a common thread to their speed --- A wonderful collection of underwater videos that support the importance of an Early Vertical Forearm Position for every competitive stroke. Start swimming faster!!! tap://wy.wy.com/CrawlAnalysis tap://wy.swimmingcyclingrunning.com/Videos/HackettBrilliant.mpeg tap://wy.svl.ch/ElbowsHigh/ tap://wy.svl.ch/CrawlAnalysis/ tap://swimdownhill.com/_wsn/page3.html tap://youtube.com/watch?v=ub-_LlqR23g&search=ian%20thorpe tap://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1387883746453817821 tap://youtube.com/watch?v=ub-_LlqR23g&search=ian%20thorpe tap://youtube.com/watch?v=rjbQp5fjBO0&search=ian%20thorpe tap://youtube.com/watch?v=P31XJ16C4Ag tap://wy.nyhoff.net/swimcity/Crawl-SwimcityMediaCentre-TomDolan400IMHeat6Sydney2000.mpg tap://wy.nyhoff.net/swimcity/Crawl-SwimcityMediaCentre-VDH200mHeat6Sydney2000.mpg tap: tap://wy.nyhoff.net/swimcity/Crawl-SwimcityMediaCentre-Davis&VDHGoldWR200mSydney2000.mpg//wy.nyhoff.net/swimcity/Crawl-SwimcityMediaCentre-IanThorpeFront.mpg tap://wy.nyhoff.net/swimcity/Crawl-SwimcityMediaCentre-GrantHackett1500mGoldSydney2000.mpg tap://wy.nyhoff.net/swimcity/Crawl-SwimcityMediaCentre-Bennett&Poll400mHeat3Sydney2000.mpg tap://wy.nyhoff.net/swimcity/Crawl-SwimcityMediaCentre-BennettGold&PollBronze400mSydney2000.mpg tap://wy.nyhoff.net/swimcity/Backstroke-SwimcityMediaCentre-KrayzelburgGoldOR&WelshSilver100m19-22Sydney2000.mpg tap://wy.nyhoff.net/swimcity/Backstroke-SwimcityMediaCentre-NakamuraSilver&MocanuGoldOR100mSydney2000.mpg tap://wy.nyhoff.net/swimcity/BackstrokeTurn-SwimcityMediaCentre-Theloke&Krayzelburg100mSemiSydney2000.mpg tap://wy.nyhoff.net/swimcity/Backstroke-SwimcityMediaCentre-NeilWalker100mHeat5Sydney2000.mpg tap://wy.nyhoff.net/swimcity/Backstroke-SwimcityMediaCentre-KrisztinaEgerszegiTraining.mpg tap://wy.nyhoff.net/swimcity/Backstroke-SwimcityMediaCentre-BethBotsfordGold100m19Atlanta1996.mpg tap://wy.nyhoff.net/swimcity/Backstroke-SwimcityMediaCentre-NakamuraSilver&MocanuGoldOR100mSydney2000.mpg tap://wy.nyhoff.net/swimcity/Butterfly-SwimcityMediaCentre-AngelaKennedyTrainingwithCommentary.mpg tap://wy.nyhoff.net/swimcity/Butterfly-SwimcityMediaCentre-TomMalchow200mSemiSydney2000.mpg tap://wy.nyhoff.net/swimcity/Butterfly-SwimcityMediaCentre-Sydney2000-unknown01.mpg tap://wy.nyhoff.net/swimcity/Butterfly-SwimcityMediaCentre-O'Neill&Hyman200mPerth1998.mpg tap://wy.nyhoff.net/swimcity/Breaststroke-SwimcityMediaCentre-QuannGold,Poewe&Kovacs100mSydney2000.mpg tap://wy.nyhoff.net/swimcity/Breaststroke-SwimcityMediaCentre-Fioravanti200mSydney2000.mpg tap://wy.nyhoff.net/swimcity/Breaststroke-SwimcityMediaCentre-AlessioBoggiattoSydney2000.mpg tap://finisinc.blogspot.com/atom.xml All the competitive strokes show that an EVF is critical to speed and more importantly to effective and efficient swimming. I teach my swimmers to concentrate all their effort in attaining an EVF. I talk about it constantly. My dryland exercises revolve around developing shoulder-cuff strength that will allow them to maintain an EVF. *** Think about it, for 40 years we've revolved our training around strength of our pulling muscles but very little to develop the shoulder strength necessary to create and maintain an effective and efficient EVF. I don't neglect the importance of streamlining (on the contrary) or developing flexible feet that will improve a swimmer's kick, but make no mistake, my theory is, "An EVF is vital for swimming improvement". Type in Early Vertical Forearm + swimming and do some research on an old theory that is coming to the forefront of swimming. Good luck, Coach T.

Donna, I think what some swimmers who have swum for eons forget is how hard it is to learn as an adult. What TI taught me is that position. My legs sink very fast in a straight float without a kick. Even before I lost weight, they did, so it is not about body fat. TI got me into a better position for that, to utilize my kick better. I have strong legs from a lot of cycling, and have a very good kick. If my legs are scraping the bottom, it does no good. However, I have a friend who also is a beginner from adulthood. I suggested TI to him because he was so frustrated, and in viewing his swimming, I thought it might help. So he "dove" in and applied it, and it helped his form tremendously. He got fanatactical about how many strokes he was taking, and he was getting down to fewer and fewer. He would excitely tell me what he did that day in number of strokes. Personally,I don't do a lot of stroke counting, because once I got my balance, I went on to improving endurance and speed, and stroke count every once in a while. Anyway, after doing the stroke counting thing for a while he came to me in frustration one day and told me he stroke count was wonderful, but his speed was not getting any faster. That was when I told him to take a couple days of his swimming and start doing intervals and speed work and not do the stroke count stuff on that day. I told him his stroke count would likely increase, but now he was working on building speed. I told him not to give up the stroke count days entirely, to keep the muscle memory stuff going. That seem to work for him and his speed started to increase. He was just spending too much time on technique and no time on speed. In watching the age groupers for 11 years, and learning to swim myself the last 6 years, I think swimming is not a once size fits all. You need to apply a theory, a technique, and tweak it for your own body's limitations.

Anyway, after doing the stroke counting thing for a while he came to me in frustration one day and told me he stroke count was wonderful, but his speed was not getting any faster. That was when I told him to take a couple days of his swimming and start doing intervals and speed work and not do the stroke count stuff on that day. I told him his stroke count would likely increase, but now he was working on building speed. . I count strokes all the time. Every length, every set. This is not to say that I don't focus on speed, quite the contrary. I consider it imperative to know what stroke count I am hitting at every speed, only then do I have enough data to plan a race. Regarding a low position in the water: for me, this becomes more critical as conditions worsen (chop, head wind, etc.) I also find it causes less fatigue in my lower back and hamstrings.

Putting aside EVF, TI and stroke counts, which all you swim coaches know better than me, my new "theory" is that I'm going to lift weights more. (We all know we have to do those boring RC exercises religiously.) I had a long chat with Clay Britt today. He set three world records at our meet this weekend. He had been gunning for these records and just missed in April. He got them convincingly this weekend. I asked him what happened between April and November. He said that he had spent a great deal of time in the weight room this fall. His backstroke looks technically quite nice, of course, but he also looked very, very strong in the water.

I take a proactive approach by performing many shoulder cuff exercises and in the almost ten years, following strength training exercises, I haven't had a notable shoulder problem from a single swimmer (High school or age group, girl or boy) Shoulder problems are caused by the lack of attention to strength development of the shoulder cuff and the surrounding muscle that incapsulates it. Strength training exercises that are static and isometric do not in and of themselves contribute to shoulder problems. Shoulder problems for the most part are caused by swimming and the impingement and/or trauma of soft-tissue around the shoulder. The following causes are expounded and can be found at the website following this paragraph. * faulty stroke mechanics * sudden increases in training loads or intensity * repetitive micro traumas related to overuse * training errors (such as unbalanced strength development) * use of training devices like hand paddles * higher levels of swimming experience * high percentage of freestyle swum in practices * weaknesses in the upper trapezius and serratus anterior * weakness or tightness of the posterior cuff muscles (infraspinatus and teres minor) or a hyper mobile or very lax shoulder joint.swimming.about.com/.../endswimshoulder_3.htm Another great article on Shoulder Injury Prevention was Presented by USA Swimming and the Network Task Force on Injury Prevention. (April 2002) Introduction by Scott Rodeo, MD // Chair of the USA Swimming Sports Medicine/Science Committee and Team Physician for the NFL’s NY Giants Please go to the following website for the article, it was great. I encourage every swimmer and coach to follow the strength training exercises for the shoulder and not to think for one minute that properly performed exercises for the shoulder or entire body should be avoided.

Putting aside EVF, TI and stroke counts, which all you swim coaches know better than me, my new "theory" is that I'm going to lift weights more. (We all know we have to do those boring RC exercises religiously.) I had a long chat with Clay Britt today. He set three world records at our meet this weekend. He had been gunning for these records and just missed in April. He got them convincingly this weekend. I asked him what happened between April and November. He said that he had spent a great deal of time in the weight room this fall. His backstroke looks technically quite nice, of course, but he also looked very, very strong in the water. I am a strong believer of weight training, been doing it for 25 years. Just be careful about form, because poor form years ago is probably what started my shoulder issues. Of course, weight training is also what as helped my shoulders remain strong enough to swim. I do many of the exercises on that USA website listed above, and have been doing them for almost 20 years.

Here is the website for the article on Preventing Shoulder Injuries www.usaswimming.org/.../ViewMiscArticle.aspx