ARTICLES, TIPS, TRAINING & GENERAL ADVICE

Total Immersion Swimming-Part 2

by Brad Hefta-Gaub, August 28, 2008

Let me start by saying I am not writing this article to replicate the material in the Total Immersion literature. I love this program as it has made me a much better swimmer. Please consider this only a review/case study of the technique that I offer as a happy customer.

If the information I have presented here sounds interesting to you, please go buy one of the Total Immersion books, or sign up for one of the many courses that Total Immersion offers around the country.

In an earlier article I discussed how I discovered Total Immersion. In this article, I will to describe in a little more detail the basic principals of Total Immersion and give a brief overview of the techniques. Again, for more details, please buy one of the TI books.

The “Total Immersion - Triathlon Swimming: Made Easy” book is divided into 5 parts, with a total of 22 chapters, and 221 pages. It is written as a very practical and easy to read handbook.

Part 1 - “Why Swimming Frustrates You and How You Can Achieve Fulfillment” (Chapters 1-3)

This portion of the book is essentially an extended introduction that describes the basic techniques. As I described yesterday, TI is based on the concept that there is a form and technique for swimming that allows you to be efficient and effortless in the water. Since the TI approach is designed around teaching you this new efficient technique, Part 1 of the book essentially sells the idea that efficiency is far more important that fitness or strength (or even stamina) when it comes to long distance (anything over 200 meters) swimming. Although Chapter 3 has a brief section describing the 5 fundamental steps to TI swimming, there is very little functional descriptions in this section of the book.

But since I know that many of you are interested in getting to these functional breakthroughs, here is a quick description of the 5-Step Swimming Solution from Chapter 3:

1. Learn balance. Balance - the feeling that you are effortlessly supported by the water and free to devote all of your efforts to efficient propulsion… In the TI program, mastery of balance is the non-negotiable first step… When you learn balance first, you not only stop fighting the water and wasting energy, you also learn comfort and ease…
2. Unlearn Struggle; learn harmony. Being able to relax and enjoy the support of the water is just the starting point… At every step you have the opportunity to eliminate struggle and let fluency replace it as a habit…
3. Learn to roll effortlessly. …You’ll learn to tap effortless power when your rhythms and movements originate in your core body, not in your arms and legs…
4. Learn to pierce the water. …Slippery swimmers need far less power… to swim at any speed…
5. Learn fluent, coordinated propelling movements. …In the TI approach, arm stroking is among the last things (taught)… swim with your body, not your arms and legs.

You notice in all of these “steps” and throughout the TI process, there is a massive emphasis placed on balance in the water. One of the things I noticed as I first started practicing the skills, is that when I got frustrated, I could always just float on my back. When I think back to my childhood, and swimming at a very early age, the idea that I was “safe” in the water came from this sense very early on that if I wanted to, at any time, I could “just float”.

In stepping through the TI approach, what I came to realize is that before TI, whenever I started to swim a “crawl” stroke, I would abandon this sense of safety and comfort that I naturally had. I would begin to get that sinking feeling and start to struggle. The more uncomfortable I felt, the more I fought the water.

With the early drills in TI though, and throughout the “philosophy” of TI there is an emphasis on always going back to that “safe” feeling. In fact the idea of a “sweet spot” is taught as one of the earliest drills. Even now as swimming the TI technique for over a year, I always am aware of myself in that “sweet spot” as I progress through my stroke. If I’m out in the open water with a wave crashing over my head (like my Sand Man Tri in Santa Cruz this summer) I don’t stress, I remember that I can sit in my sweet spot, gather my composer and start again when I am comfortable.

Part 2 - “The Smart Swimming Solution” (Chapters 3-9)

This is where the book gets deeper into the theory of TI. It doesn’t yet contain drills or functional descriptions of the techniques, that is saved for Part 3 of the book. But it does go into significant detail about how your body acts as a vessel in the water, what the implications (often negative) of various positions and default actions you might do are, and what you can do to counteract the forces that water places on you as you swim.

I’ll admit, I’m the kind of guy that likes to know why things work the way they do. I am also deeply fascinated by tools. So this level of detail (although it’s only 50 pages) is great for me. I couldn’t put it down. Here are some important topics covered in this section that covers the “why” behind the TI techniques:

• Stroke Length - How far you move in the water for each stroke is a significant contributor to efficient swimming. Consider this: Velocity = Stroke Length x Stroke Rate. And more importantly, if you can go further on each stroke then fewer strokes are required to go the same distance (obvious right?)… well, each stroke is what takes energy, fuel, effort. So if you take fewer strokes to go .5 miles you will be that much more ready to hit T1 refreshed not exhausted.When I took my TI workshop weekend, every single person in the class improved their stoke length by 25% or more in only 2 days of practicing TI drills. And more than half of the class was accomplished Triathletes who had completed several triathlons over the course of the last couple years.
• Balance - Balance is more than just being comfortable. It is about being horizontal, it is about being slippery, it is about slipping through the smallest possible hole in the water. Remember water is 800 times more dense than air. Think about how my wind resistance you have when you cycle or run… now multiply that by 800 times. You want to avoid this as much as possible, and being balanced makes you horizontal, which makes you avoid as much of that water density as possible.
  

  
  Tens years of teaching have shown us that every swimmer who has not consciously worked on balance has room to improve on it. Even Olympic swimmers have told me they could feel their hips become lighter and higher after practicing simple balance drills.

• Swim Taller - Basic physics tells us that longer vessels have less drag in the water. This is why racing yachts are long and narrow. The more that you can do to lengthen your body as you swim. The less drag on your vessel and the less effort you will require with each stroke. In fact this simple fact is what actually gives you an advantage when another swimmer is drafting off of you. Two swimmers swimming end to end will almost appear as a single long swimmer with respect to drag.At 5′4″ and 37 years old, I’m not expecting to get any taller. But if I can keep my body long, my arms in front of me as long as possible to increase my vessel length as I glide through the water, I will immediately get an increase in stroke length, simply due to the reduction in drag.
• Avoid Drag - No amount of fitness, no amount of power will eliminate drag and the resistance that that 800 times more dense than air material is blocking you with. So you have to outsmart the drag. Do everything you can to avoid drag. Using TI techniques you find that you can swim faster (further in less time) with less effort if you focus on eliminating drag.
  

  Even Ian Thorpe… who swim(s) as efficiently as a human can… use - at best - 10 percent of their energy for propulsion. More than 90 percent is consumed by wave making and other inefficiencies.

• Learning not use your hands - What? Yep, I thought it sounded strange too. But basically with TI you learn to stop using your hands to try to force the water around… instead you stop using your hands completely for almost all of the initial drills. In fact, they have these things called “fist gloves” that you can get and wear, that will force your hands in to fists, so you can’t try to use them to grab the water. Only after you can comfortably swim several laps with fist gloves are you encouraged to learn how to correctly (more efficiently) use your hands.

If you are interested in learning some great drills read Total Immersion Swimming Part 3. I’ll provide a brief description of the drills that will teach you these techniques. For the best instruction, I strongly recommend buying the books.

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