This exchange dates to June 2006, but is worth reading anytime.

Conf: Freestyle
From: Michael Swift

Thoughts from an old beginner.

I’ve had a lifelong (I’m 68) desire to swim ‘easily ’, by which I mean beautifully and with sufficient ease that I could do it as a ‘meditation’. Unfortunately my swimming technique has always been hopeless, with legs seeming to belong to someone else, and a stroke count over 20 for 25 meters.

But I have never lost hope.

A couple of years ago while browsing in my local library, I did a search for ‘swimming’ and came up with an old copy of Total Immersion. I studied that book carefully and tried to project my understanding of its teachings to my solo swimming at the pool. This gave me a new technique, which I shall call ‘Total Frustration’.

However, on two mind-blowing occasions, I found myself swimming ‘down hill’ and with a reduction in stroke count and energy expended. Although I couldn’t understand how I was doing it, I knew that what I was looking for was possible. But then this mystical ability vanished as mysteriously as it arrived and I couldn’t even swim my usual horrible way, let alone the TI way!

After some agonizing I purchased the TI DVD, deciding to give it a last chance. I practiced the drills and basically got nowhere. I tried to imprint the video sessions into my mind and rerun them at the pool – without much success. I couldn’t knit the stroke elements together in one production. I couldn’t ‘feel it’.

So after some time and as a last resort, I stopped the lesson work altogether and tried to get the feeling of the ‘whole stroke’ instead. Yes I hear you! But there are at least two ways to learn a movement sequence:

1. Practice the individual elements and then try to roll them together smoothly.

Or

2. Visualize the ‘feeling’ of the whole event (gestalt) and let the individual bits look after themselves.

Well to some degree the latter method has worked for me, sufficiently so that I can now have some consideration of the elements that make it up! You might wonder whether this approach would work, but on good days I’ve actually started swimming ‘downhill’ again with stroke count of 11 to 13 for 25 yards. I hesitate to call myself a TI Swimmer, but I’m definitely getting somewhere.

Having gotten at least an inkling of the ‘feeling’ of the whole stroke. I am now able to appreciate how (for me at least) it actually comes together. And I doubt that body shape – mass – or size will make much difference. But for the record I’m 6 foot and weigh 142 lbs with “heavy” legs.

THE FEELING - THE GESTALT

The upper body / head, relaxes - actually ‘lays down’ – and is supported by the water. This results in lifting the lower body to the surface. The hands in this lower position immediately have catch. It feels so solid when it happens, that you might as well be pulling yourself past an anchored post! Why? I don’t know and don’t care, as long as it works! The overall feeling is one of ‘gliding down a slope’ rather than pushing ahead.

Along the way, I noticed that I would feel my best in the first one or two laps and then the stroke would decay. For a time I tolerated this, and then decided that I would leave the pool if I were not able to reestablish the gestalt within one lap of the noticed decay – stroke count and effort level being an immediate indicator. This worked, inasmuch as I am no longer ‘practicing mistakes.’ And on a bad day, if I only do two acceptable laps! It gives me more time in the spa.

From: Dallas Bob Wiskera

During a weekend workshop, we essentially have a captive audience for two days and lead them through all the drills, in the prescribed order, to reach the desired outcome. But private clients may not want to spend a full session or two laying the ground work. For them, I've moved along faster, progressing quickly to Skating, the first swimming critical skill. For those willing to do the homework and practice, the results are similar.

Very often on this board, we read from someone who has spent weeks and weeks, and becomes increasingly frustrated trying to perfect a very basic drill – often one of the nose-up positions. During a workshop, to diffuse anxiety, I remind the students they need not be perfect at a drill in order to progress to the next one. Better skill and precision will make the next one easier and contribute to better final outcome, but "perfection" comes after years of practice, if ever at all.

The shift in thinking about how to swim efficiently is starting to swell. I see coaches introducing elements of it. Each element, in and of itself, may make a significant impact on your body position and balance and therefore markedly improve you from you previous inefficient form. That's a good thing, as you and many others are discovering. But like a recipe, you may be baking a cake, which will taste better, beyond your imagination, once you've added all the ingredients.

You say that you're now, "revisiting" some drills with a new insight and I hope you share your discoveries. The drills, I think, will help you understand what the ingredients of the recipe are about. To continue the analogy, with follow-up students, the lesson usually consists of adding an ounce or two LESS of this and that, until the result is a lighter, tastier cake with fewer ingredients (less effort/more speed).

From: Terry Laughlin

Michael

Your goal of achieving a state of meditativeness in your swimming is one I could recommend to anyone for its purity and lack of ambiguity. What you refer to as the Gestalt, I've referred to as the Essence of swimming.

As the water is a place with recognized healing properties and a medium that allows us to achieve a level of weightlessness, flow and grace we can never experience on land, no matter what our more objectively measurable goals may be, our primary goal should be to experience that sense of "oneness" with the water.

In my teens and early 20s, my training goal each day was to test my capacity to endure discomfort and ignore fatigue. In my 50s, my training goal has been to experience flow. Since adopting that as my goal, everything else about my swimming – endurance, speed, tactical racing abilities – has improved markedly and I’ve had more “achievement” than I ever dreamed possible.

From time to time, I forget those lessons and focus too much on the physical side of my training. I get over-fatigued and feel more aches and pains in my middle-aged muscles. When I remain focused on the Gestalt, I swim better and feel better.

Swim well and be well.
Terry