Total Immersion? (Page 2)

Edited by MadMathemagician 2010-04-29 12:13 PM

Edited by MadMathemagician 2010-04-29 12:13 PM

This is the only site I visit that fosters multiple post.  Oo la, but it is frustrating.

Moderator, please delete the clones....


Edited by MadMathemagician 2010-04-29 12:11 PM

I never took the class but I did get the video and followed the drills. It made a huge improvement in my endurance. 6 months ago I hired a coach who watches me swim and jumps in the water and paces me on intervals. I have really improved my times. I don't feel like I have to unlearn TI nor did it ruin me for life. It was a stepping stone to get me better and with a coach I am improving more.

I have not attended a formal TI clinic, but I have had my stroke briefly analyzed by a very prominent TI instructor in FL at a triathlon AND I have read the TI book.

I swam as a kid on summer swim leagues and on a rather poorly coached HS swim team, so when I first started tri, I just got in the water and swam how my body remembered from all of those years ago.  I didn't start employing TI techniques until I began training for my first half ironman last year... and guess what?  I actually got slower.  Weird, I know... but true.  Right now my stroke is so messed up that it is mind boggling.  It seems that TI (all of the long gliding, lots of body rotation) doesn't work very well for me.  I do better with a higher turnover rate (approx. 21-22 arm strokes per 25 yd.) rather than forcing myself to hold 18 strokes per length.

At this point, I am actually desperate to go back to my old form which had me at a t-pace of 1:38-1:40.  Right now, I am somewhere around a 1:50 to 1:55 t-pace and completely stuck there with my stroke a total mess!  I kid you not!

ETA:  After reading the many responses in this thread, I'd have to agree with the camp that says TI is great for newbie swimmers who are trying to get used to water and perhaps not the best thing for the person who is slightly above average and looking to get faster. 

Edited by shellabree 2010-04-29 12:19 PM

Most comments seem to mirror my thoughts. TI's OK for beginners & those looking to finish the swim leg more comfortably or relaxed, but doesn't seem to help get folks into the Mid-Pack speed category.

I'm a bit surprised, actually. I expected a few responses from people telling how they went from 3:00/100yds to 1:20/100yds using TI. Not a one (so far). (ETA -- I see one just posted)

As a former competitive swimmer, I work on streamlining & body position during every practice, but as part of an overall aerobic and anaerobic series of sets. Strength & stamina are important parts of distance swimming & focusing too much on technique will keep you slow.

For some, that's OK - surviving the swim & getting to the bike is the primary goal. TI may be for you.

For others, finishing the swim in the top 50 or 25% is the goal - to get there, you have to put in the 'hard' yards. Go to swimming sites like USMS or the NTC workout website and find out what swimmers are doing to get faster - those are the types of things you need to work towards to improve your speed.

Whatever you choose - Good Luck!

Dan

Edited by oldntrin 2010-04-29 12:20 PM

 

For me this was the most helpful comment.

May I summarize. Working on your swimming is better than not working on it. Getting help is better than doing it yourself. People have found TI helpful, but also realized there much more to learn about swimming. If you want to go faster you have to get more help and work harder at developing strength and the many complex swimming skills. Individual coaching is the best way to go if you can afford it.

Did I miss anything?

 

Edited by E=H2O 2010-04-29 12:20 PM

As a coach, wouldn't it serve your athletes better to provide a variety of techniques and training options best suited to the individual as opposed to a one style fits all approach?

People like Dan (Docswim), who's is the BEST swimmer posting in this thread has shared his thoughts about pacing and swimming hard being very effective and I AGREE 100%. We need variability of training to improve. i think it's important to note that no one here saying TI is bad. What's bad can be being infexible in regards to its limitations or worse, ignoring them completey.

Edited by bryancd 2010-04-29 12:28 PM

My impression (only that, because my only knowledge of TI is from reading about it on this site) is that TI's focus is on efficiency, not raw speed.  Using the analogy of cars, you can either build it to drive 500 miles at 200 miles per hour at 5 miles/gallon, or you can set it up to drive those same 500 miles at 65 miles per hour at 40 miles per gallon.

It sounds like TI's focus seems to be on swimming with less effort for a given speed.  This is great for a beginner, because the efficiency of their stroke tends to be the limiting factor, not their fitness level.  The limitation comes into play once they've learned efficient technique, but they don't work hard enough to make the fitness gains necessary to be truly fast in the water.

Back to the car analogy, you can make a car as aerodynamically streamlined as possible, but if you don't put a powerful engine in it, it will never win races.

Front quadrant swimming has been used by some great swimmers, like Hacket & Popov.  Arm cycle styles vary among top swimmers, and front quadrant swimming is NOT unique to TI.

http://www.active.com/triathlon/Articles/Break-Down-Your-Freestyle-to-Boost-Efficiency.htm

I'm only about 18mo into seriously trying to improve my mediocre swim (~2:20-30/100 pace for 1mi) and freely admit to having used TI Easy Freestyle DVD to help.  Also consult other sources & have had lesson or 2 from non-TI coaches.  Still, I don't see where TI advocates glide & over-rotation when going for speed.  In Easy Freestyle DVD there are multiple comments about AVOIDING over-rotation during the stroke, and in the video chapter on speed there is Terry swimming faster & faster tempos with NO glide.  Not saying that TI is perfect (e.g. under-emphasis on catch/pull), but over-rotation & pronounced glide are in TI drills not the goal form at speed.

Thrashing around in the pool and trying learning to swim fast on your own will often lead to fustration, poor technique, possibly injury and looking for a "new improved stroke"

I'm not a fast swimmer, and I've been swimming most of my life with some decidedly bad habits.  Doing the TI drills (from the book and video) did help me become considerably more efficient and balanced.  It didn't make me appreciably faster, maybe 1:50/100yd to 1:40/100yd, but I feel like I do that distance using less energy.  So it was helpful.  I suspect that coaching and a lot of hard swimming would get me more speed though.

...and there you go.

I think the one bad comment about TI is "ruining the person for life because they have to unlearn bad habits learned in TI. I personally don't believe it, but if you read some earlier post or the countless other threads on TI it comes up every time. I agree 100% that individualized teaching will get you farther then  a "perfect one size fits all method"

I also agree with Docswim and have had the same experiences. I've read the TI and remember thinking that there were a lot of drills and a lot of things to think about. This isn't necessarily bad for the beginner because it really hammers home the point that balance and a streamlined position is crucial for efficient swimming and that swimming is a technical sport. However, once this point is mastered, I think some of the TI stuff can be stripped away to leave just the most important points. Yes, swimming is technical, but it ain't rocket science.

I found TI a great way to get back into the water after many years. The next step that helped me was an Aquatic Edge clinic with Karlyn Pipes-Neilsen. The styles are VERY different, with Karlyn's more suited to me, as I was sufferring shoulder problems while swimming TI style. While my TI style might have been incorrect, I did the weekend seminar and several lessons thereafter, so I don't think I was way off.

Karlyn's style employs:
1. Less roll and more reach - flatter shoulders
2. Wide tracking and an early high-elbow catch power pulse that ends well before the waist - closer to the chest-line, in fact
3. Early recovery with no emphasis on a high elbow recovery - a circular swing is fine
4. Longer entry reach with shallower depth

Check her website at www.aquaticedge.org and Google up some videos.

What makes you swim faster, longer without injury is what's right for you.

TI vs. non-TI will be argued until the end of time.

The one single thing that every fast swimmer has in common is yardage.  Lots and lots of yards.

Anyone who tries to tell you that you can get fast without putting in a ton of yards (a significant portion of which need to be "hard") is selling snake oil.  You can't drill your way to the front of the pack.

That's exactly what I've "unlearned" from TI - changing the arm stroke a bit and breathing as my arm comes out of the water.

Make no mistake - I absolutely credit TI with making my first IM swim successful. There is certainly no way I could from where I started to a 1:35 IM swim without TI. I did not just watch some videos, BTW. I dropped $400 on the TI weekend course, and I went to a TI based triathlon swim class three days a week taught be a certified TI instructor for 4 months before my IM.

Before I turned to TI, I was making little progress toward the endurance I needed. The local master's class (which I went to three days a week for 3 months) was all about other things, not endurance which was one day a week. I didn't give a squat about fly or backstroke. And "swim lots" by myself wasn't going to work either.

So the TI approach was right for me then, but I don't think it's right for me now. YMMV.

Thanks for posting that. Those 4 things are what seem to be working better for me now than TI.

And X2 on the what's right for you part.

TI isn't one style fits all...there are principals and each individual is going to be able to apply them differently based on their body type, flexibility, previous injuries. A flatter roll, a shallower reach and wider arm swing are all within the applications of TI and are frequently the types of changes I'm making to someone's stroke who has learned from the video.

Why stop swimming when your form breaks down during a hard interval? Because you've found your breaking point where the sacrifice of stroke length may outweigh the increased turnover. This is really really really easy to measure. Count your strokes, multiply by your stroke rate, add however many seconds for your pushoff = speed. Are your harder intervals really faster or just harder? And can you swim the same speed at a lower stroke rate with a more liesurely stroke? You'd be shocked to see what pearls you can uncover if you deconstruct speed just a little bit more than just intervals and rest periods. yes, as you swim faster, your stroke count will go up, but then why not work on optimizing your stroke count for that speed by examing your technique instead of just throwing up your arms and saying, "Oh well, I'm swimming faster and my form is supposed to break down..."

As I said on a previous thread regarding stroke counts and stroke rate...you can ignore the empirical values if you like, but it's a bit like owning a power meter for your bike and only looking at your average speed. There's a whole lot more you can in the pool than just swim hard.

I am currently swimming faster in my 25s, 50s, 100s, 250s and IMs then I've ever swum in my adult life and it's a result of my TI studies and application of smart training principals when trying to improve speed.

In January prior to my TI weekend clinic, my fastest 100 all out was a 1:43. Since then, with patient practice of holding my form over both easy yards, as well as training with a tempo trainer to increase my stroke rate, my fastest 100 is now a 1:30. I'd been stuck in the 1:40s for over 5 years prior to that. Today, I swam my fastest IM ever in my adult life at 1:40.

So it may not be teh 3:00/100 to 1:20/100 that a previous poster was hoping for, but it's a significant improvement and I anticipate additional increases in speed with time.

Edited by AdventureBear 2010-04-29 2:40 PM

X2 for Karlyn. I bought her freestyle DVD about two years ago and it has made a huge difference in my swimming. I actually try to copy her stroke exactly as it seems to really work for me. The high elbow catch has done wonders for me. IMO, her style takes the good points from TI and distills them into 4 simple rules leaving out the unnecessary stuff (like the high elbow recovery which is wasted energy, IMO).

Will it work for you? I don't know. If you're not comfortable in the water then perhaps TI is the place to start. There's a reason they teach you to add, subtract, multiply, and divide before teaching you calculus.

Nice to see that Karlyn has her own Web site. I don't recall she had one when I bought the DVD (or she did and I didn't know about it).

This debate is very timely for me: this is my 3rd season doing triathlons.  My history is bike racing in the 80's as a junior, and doing 10k's for fun 15 years ago.

I was never a swimmer:  2 years ago this time, I couldn't swim 1 lap.  TI got me through my sprint tris in 2008 and 2009, and my first OLY a few weeks ago.

Having said that, I know I am a SLOW swimmer.  My fastest pace was over 750m in a sprint last fall at 2:11 / 100 yds (32/36 in my AG).  In contrast, in that same sprint I was 16/36 in both the bike and run.

One thing that hasn't been discussed is that TI says their technique saves your legs for the bike and run.   In all my tris I have consistently been passing other bikers and runners (which satisfies my hunter instinct :-), with very few passing me, so maybe it validates their argument?

I've thought about switching technique, but for now I'm increasing my time in the water using a Tempo Trainer while looking into either coach or Masters at my pool. 

My concern about changing technique is that I will lose leg strength on the bike and run.

Comments appreciated.

What rate are you using with the tempo trainer and can you post a sample set?

Feel free to post a video and i'm sure you'll get lots of feedback.

Hi AdventureBear,

I've gotta figure out doing video.

As for TT settings, these are from various practices over the last six weeks (SPL count for one length of 27.5 yds in a 55-yd./lap pool):

TT=1.40, SPL 20-23 (SPL 20 was my personal best last week, at a lap time of 1:14 (also a PB))
TT=1.35, SPL 22-25
TT=1.30, SPL 23-26
TT=1.25, SPL 25-27
TT=1.20, SPL 25-28
TT=1.15, SPL 26-30

(Note: I pushoff for 3 beeps before I start counting strokes, 2 beeps between touching wall and pushing off, can't do flip turns)