Update on me - 4 months into swimming

So you've found a focal point that was effective for you. Mindfulness and use of focal points is a skill, similar to, say, the skill of keeping your head more neutral while breathing in Fly or ***. It's usually best to begin with a single focal point, and one that's fairly accessible. As the effects of that focused practice shift toward habit (i.e. moving from short-term working memory to long-term memory in your neuromuscular system) you free up brain cycles, which you can then apply to some other focal point - which may be a more subtle or elusive sensation. If you start by trying to do several at once -- including some which require finer discrimination on position and effort -- you indeed are likely to experience "overthinking." If there's a "TI" way of thinking about -- and practicing -- your kick, it would be to be curious about how it works, how it interacts with the rest of your stroke and to focus more on how you might better calibrate kicking effort and tune it to your whole stroke -- rather than a set of rigid "diktats" about the kicking technique you should use. The effect of the focal point you used was to make your kick more compact. The benefits of a lower-amplitude kick include: 1) less likely to cause drag 2) lower-amplitude movements require less power 3) it can also be a "backing-in" path to controlling over-rotation. That's less a result of great power and more of reduced drag and better-integrated propelling movements. If you watch those sections again, would I be mistaken in saying that the impressive propulsion you observed follows a stroking movement in which nothing particularly dramatic happens? Would it be accurate to describe the propelling movements as characterized more by economy than astonishing power? If you regularly review vivid "mental videos" of movements you have observed that leave a positive impression -- whether on video or from another swimmer -- that can materially help your own swimming because the act of thinking about that image will activate brain patterns similar to those you hope to use in your own swim skills. Dont get me wrong, Terry. I would not have bought your book and your 4-strokes DVD if I thought TI was a bunch of garbage. =) As a dancer, I really respect the TI philosophy. It really clicked with me. That said, after gaining some swimming experience, I've realized that TI is probably best for an intermediate swimmer rather than a beginner swimmer. I'm not sure if it was your intent to market 4-strokes to a beginner... maybe it wasn't. I'm perfectly happy with the DVD and I intend to master all of the drills -- once I'm truly ready for them. =) I want to be a graceful and efficient swimmer. I suppose I teach dancing the same way -- I try to give people too much theory before even teaching them what the steps are. I want people's dancing to be fluid and graceful from day 1. It's the equivalent of your "don't practice struggle" advice... but in this case, it would be "don't practice choppy movement". But it's not possible. You have to let people look like idiots for a while and THEN you can show them some technique and theory. Intellectually, I understood everything I heard in the TI videos the first time through. But I didn't _really_ understand ANY of it until I had been in the pool for 20 or 30 hours. Then I started to have "ah ha" moments and went back to particular drills with a new understanding of what they were all about.

So you've found a focal point that was effective for you. Mindfulness and use of focal points is a skill, similar to, say, the skill of keeping your head more neutral while breathing in Fly or ***. It's usually best to begin with a single focal point, and one that's fairly accessible. As the effects of that focused practice shift toward habit (i.e. moving from short-term working memory to long-term memory in your neuromuscular system) you free up brain cycles, which you can then apply to some other focal point - which may be a more subtle or elusive sensation. If you start by trying to do several at once -- including some which require finer discrimination on position and effort -- you indeed are likely to experience "overthinking." If there's a "TI" way of thinking about -- and practicing -- your kick, it would be to be curious about how it works, how it interacts with the rest of your stroke and to focus more on how you might better calibrate kicking effort and tune it to your whole stroke -- rather than a set of rigid "diktats" about the kicking technique you should use. The effect of the focal point you used was to make your kick more compact. The benefits of a lower-amplitude kick include: 1) less likely to cause drag 2) lower-amplitude movements require less power 3) it can also be a "backing-in" path to controlling over-rotation. That's less a result of great power and more of reduced drag and better-integrated propelling movements. If you watch those sections again, would I be mistaken in saying that the impressive propulsion you observed follows a stroking movement in which nothing particularly dramatic happens? Would it be accurate to describe the propelling movements as characterized more by economy than astonishing power? If you regularly review vivid "mental videos" of movements you have observed that leave a positive impression -- whether on video or from another swimmer -- that can materially help your own swimming because the act of thinking about that image will activate brain patterns similar to those you hope to use in your own swim skills. Dont get me wrong, Terry. I would not have bought your book and your 4-strokes DVD if I thought TI was a bunch of garbage. =) As a dancer, I really respect the TI philosophy. It really clicked with me. That said, after gaining some swimming experience, I've realized that TI is probably best for an intermediate swimmer rather than a beginner swimmer. I'm not sure if it was your intent to market 4-strokes to a beginner... maybe it wasn't. I'm perfectly happy with the DVD and I intend to master all of the drills -- once I'm truly ready for them. =) I want to be a graceful and efficient swimmer. I suppose I teach dancing the same way -- I try to give people too much theory before even teaching them what the steps are. I want people's dancing to be fluid and graceful from day 1. It's the equivalent of your "don't practice struggle" advice... but in this case, it would be "don't practice choppy movement". But it's not possible. You have to let people look like idiots for a while and THEN you can show them some technique and theory. Intellectually, I understood everything I heard in the TI videos the first time through. But I didn't _really_ understand ANY of it until I had been in the pool for 20 or 30 hours. Then I started to have "ah ha" moments and went back to particular drills with a new understanding of what they were all about.