Swim Like This - My Total Immersion Clinic Videos (Page 3)

Let me try and address some of your points...

"I honestly don't see these things as being mutually exclusive."
Not 100% on which point you are referring to but I am assuming my "you have good balance but you are swimming uphill" coment. TI refers to swimming uphill or downhill based on pressing your "T" or buoy. They suggest that if you press your buoy you elevate your hips enough so that you feel you are swimming downhill. These are visual ques to help you adjust your body position as the only downhill swimming is in a waterfall or the rapids. Ideally you want to be prone or horizontal on the water, but the "downhill" comment actually tends to put peoples hips ABOVE their shoulders, and in your last film, there are times you
fall into that category. So if the uphill/downhill comments are to help you with body position, then I would argue that you can't have good body position AND be swimming uphill.

"I disagree that you can have an effective pull if you don't already have good balance not only front to back but also rotationally."
Lets step away from TI for a second. There are two ways to move yourself through the water. Pulling or kicking. There's no other body function that will move your forward.
(I'll leave out the fart jokes for now). Adding in balance and rotation are important and will certainly help your pull, but not the end all for a good pull. Great example would be Janet Evans. She is flat in the water, doesn't rotate a whole lot and has a windmill recovery (to an earlier point on this thread). Not something anyone would teach, yet her pull was so effective that it took the super swimsuits to break her records from circa1988. Here's a link to her swim. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71CN4yNMgtY

Notice the angle of her elbow/how deep she pulls. (also notice her hand entry. windmill but her hand enters the water so that her hand doesn't collect air/bubbles.).

"If you try to focus on the pull as your number one step in your swimming stroke, you rob yourself of the opportunity to fine tune other body adjustments".
I look at it in the opposite order. Moving through the water is 1st, as that helps your body position. Once someone has a decent pull it's easy for me to get them to rotate better.Getting someone with a good rotation but horrible pull is rare, but a much harder task to fix. If I can barely hit a golf ball, then learning to put a nice backspin on that ball is not important as learning a good swing...or would you go to a cycling clinic and spend 4 days on balance before you pedal the bike? the mere act of pedaling makes balance on a bike 100 times easier.

"The TI clinic helped my make some big realizatoins that are going to be beneficial however I end up incorporating them into my stroke. So I would hope that people would not simply write off TI because of the perception that it's only for "beginners". "
This is why TI is so popular. They use key words that people can key off of right away, so people find it easy to make some adjustments that make swimming easier and get the AHA moment right away, which is great. The problem, like I mentioned before, is that they write the same prescription whether you need it or not. Why couldn't they have spent a day on the pull with everyone? Not sure, but if I took a guess, I'd say it's harder to teach and really hard to create the AHA moment. I don't suggest that people write it off as TI can be a great resource. but it's
appeal will be mostly with beginners as I and others have suggested. Why? Well, like I mentioned, Nobody in the experienced swimming world endorses it and, well, use me as an example. Look at my stroke. There's a few flaws in it, but do you think I would improve my stroke much if I went to the clinic? Probably not.

I'm not trying to take the wind out of your sails here, instead I hope that you and anyone else reading this (at this point in my rambling I'm thinking no one!) will go to TI or whatever clinic, but step back away from all the catch phrases in swimming (including my own)and just break it down to the basics. There
are dozens of things to think about and about 5 that are key. Get the basics down pat and most of the other problems correct themselves.

I will go read your website...after I get another beer.

Hope I didn't kill this thread with my novel...

I just saw this post finally and found it the tips VERY helpful!  Thank you.

Love the opposing views on this thread.  I was at a swim clinic (w/ Olympic swim coach) recently and 2 issues are still bothering me -

• Hand entry - I always thought I'm supposed to enter around where the head is and then extend the hand in the water, but coach says entending the hand in the water creates more drag than if you enter the hand later, thus hand is in the air (which has less resistance) for a longer time.  It seems both AdventureBear and tifry are proposing earlier hand entry?
• Head position - Everyone says you're supposed to look down, not fwd, and this seems to be a consensus.  Yet when I look at AdventureBear's vs tifry's, esp above water videos, AdventureBear's head is almost submersed while half of tifry's head is above water.  I've noticed I actually swim much faster and can find the bow wave for breathing much easier when I look fwd, rather than down.  I've noticed all the fast swimmers look like they're skimming the surface of the water, almost like hydroplaning.  Is it possible when you look fwd, less of you head is in the water, which creates less resistance?  Perhaps one needs to assess whether the drag created by the head submersed in the water is more / less than the drag created by possible sinking hips, and this is not the same for everyone?

Love to hear everybody's thoughts, opposing or otherwise.

I would say both these have a middle range where you will find most good swimmers.

On the hand entry, I've always tried to enter at a distance and angle forward of my head that allows my arm to be in the "around the barrel" position to start my pull without having a conspicuous pause. I think this usually end up being a hands length or so forward of your head for most people. Closer to your head and you end up doing sort of a reverse pull where you slow yourself down at that point each stroke. Longer than that and you end up sort of "petting" the water each stroke and pulling a ton of air in with your hand.

For head position, this ties into overall body position. In my video, I think my head position is too high (i.e., looking too forward). I'm probably doing this because I'm trying to get into that hydroplaning position you mention, but I'm not strong enough yet to do that without expending more energy that I can maintain for a tri distance swim. The problem with having your head too high is that it makes your hips sink, which I'm sure is why the TI method encourages you to have your head down. It looks to me like many of the TI practicioners take this advice a bit too far, but that's just me.

Does that help at all?