Total Immersion

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I got the book a few weeks ago and have read enough to get started. I think one of the most important concepts in the book is making sure your body is close to parallel to the top of the water. The book has you practice "pushing your buoy" and "swimming downhill" that basically encourages you to keep your head in the water and breath towards your side. By keeping your body parallel to the surface your legs aren't acting as drag to slow you down. The book goes into much greater detail about this and much more. After practicing the first few basic drills last night, I realized I was doing some of the same things, but I would lose my balance whenever I took a breath. (It does have drills to help with this also.)

The book encourages swimming efficiently first, then building speed.

Yeah clightle, it is an interesting concept. I love swimming and yet I find that even though I go to swim squad and thrash about, I still do the yards, but am not quite relaxed. I really think the total immersion theory might help. I read up a bit more on it, and they try and base their teaching on a mind body connection, kind of like tai chi or yoga and feeling relaxed in the water as well as trying to adopt the buoyant, parallel swimming method that you discussed. For some people that might seem a little hocus pocus I guess, but hey, I would rather feel strong and relaxed and not tired. I feel like I'm thrashing about and getting nowhere. I'm definately going to find out about the course and keep posted.

I have had a couple of friends go to the weekend camps for TI and had mixed results. One thought that it was the greatest thing that he had ever attended and the other thought that they had spent more time with the fast swimmers. I have read the book and I thought the book was interesting and helped me to understand more about the stroke.

Still Tri'n
Michael

Edited by Michael 2003-11-22 9:21 PM

You can get the main ideas of TI off the net for free.

It's basically ...

1. swim silently
2. kick consistenly but not overtly
3. trunk rotation, trunk rotation, trunk rotation (did I mention trunk rotation?) -- "fishlike swimming" (swimming on your sides)
4. less effort by decreasing drag ( body parallel to to the water)
5. decreasing stroke number per 50m

It's more about application and practice than it is knowledge.

Sure you can buy the book, read it twice, buy the video, etc. But that does nothing for you until you are practicing it in the pool. I'd go to the website, read through some of the newsletters, etc ... and try it to see if you are interested.

A buddy of mine had the book & video. I looked at it while visiting, basically the same stuff that's on the web.

Go to the site, download the video clips and swim like that. No kidding. Do it ... and do it.

Edited by TripleThreat 2003-11-25 8:08 PM

The TI discussion board is a treasure trove of useful information.

I would also recommend the book by Emmett Hines - "Fitness Swimming". It provides graded workouts, in 6 zones. If you work up to 2 red zone workouts per week, you will be kicking &^%$ in the water. It is geared towards serious fitness and masters swimmers, so is very useful for a triathlete.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0880116560/qid=107019...

Emmett also provides articles online at http://www.h2oustonswims.org/

There are also some interesting swimming articles at:

http://www.xtri.com/isection.asp?id=swi

The thing about TI is that you really have to spend the time and lots of it. I had to fall back and regroup already because I was rushing thru the first 6 drills. I am spending the next week or two on the balance drills until I cant sink if I wanted to- From there I will move on- hey I got till June 26 to prepsre for a 1.2 mile swim!!