I too had pretty bad dependency! but I wouldn't have got where I am in my swimming without using them.

I had a pretty frustrating time trying to get through a two day workshop with a really weak kick. Following that I used fins a lot to get through the drills, but found this was holding back the development of good balance. I got over this by 1. cutting my fins down leaving only a few inches beyond my toes, giving me just enough propulsion to drill. 2. Doing a lot of superman glide, fish and skaing without fins, using the wall for push off and then stopping and standing up before pushing off again when I lost momentum

[quote=rgiven;5594] 1. cutting my fins down leaving only a few inches beyond my toes, giving me just enough propulsion to drill.

This is a good point. What a number of people have done is say, start with a relatively short model of fin and then cut off about an inch at a time whenever they have felt they mastered the drills using that length of fin. Ending up as rgiven has said.

Using Fins
 

Spot on Rad. I think the key thing for many people, like myself, is to remain in a comfort zone, then we can make progress. If it means using fins, so be it, no problem. They will eventually come off. Neat to hear that your stroke/core strength got to the point that you did not need fins any longer.

breathing forum is the most popular
 

I am 70 years old and do spinning and other cardio excercises.I have the ti book, cd freestyle and o2 inh2o. The breathing in whole strokes is more daunting than I had any reason to suspect. Indeed if you don`t have the balance the proper alignment and you aren`t breathing right its over. To complicatev matters I have to wear a nose clip. How challenged will I be to get this and incorporate lap swiming??
Ramsey

I am into the 7th session with Easy Freestyle and I just swam 2 laps(20m lap) freestyle continuously for the first time, though I couldn't sustain the form in the end. Till now I would struggle to reach the other end. Thank you for sharing this and I hope I could get a kilometer soon!

Ramsey/others,
Interesting about the nose clip interfering with proper breathing. After a year of intense practice/drills, I feel like I have finally mastered TI. I now look forward to swimming. The only missing part is being able to swim beyond 100 meters without stopping because I'm out of breath. I breathe relaxed and every 3rd stroke. I now suspect, because of this thread, that my nose clip is to blame. Based on others experience, its seems that I need to breathe out nose and mouth to completely empty the lungs. I will start tomorrow without the nose clip and see if there is improvement.
Thanks,
Steve

I use a nose clip and have no trouble breathing. I can even breathe out through the nose, although I'm sure it would be easier without the clip. It is of course also possible to breathe out through the mouth only. I think the secret is to relax and breathe out slowly but steadily.

As a lifetime breaststroker breathing out under water has never been a problem, but as a recent convert to freestyle, thanks to TI, I still struggle to breathe on the 'wrong' side. I think the answer is lots of underswitch and one-arm freestyle, both of which have other benefits as well, I believe.

I would suggest lots of 25m and 50m repeats concentrating on relaxed breathing, and of course some of the head bobbing practices mentioned elsewhere would do no harm.

I agree with you completely rgiven! As a learning 50+ year old I needed some propulsion to overcome so many other frustrations associated with learning to "enjoy the journey"! Over the past summer I managed to complete a number of pool lengths without the fins ~ but they weren't pretty trips! I had plateaued and now have regressed a bit. Rather than trimming my fins ( Aquasphere Zip fins) I go to where I can just touch the bottom and swim the resulting 12 or 13 meters without the fins in the shallower area. I did this Friday for about 30 minutes continuously without the fins. When I put the fins back on there were a few moments when the fins felt strange and almost had to be re-learned (almost !!!). I don't completely trust myself in the deep water without the fins. With them I'm quite comfortable diving to the bottom (about 12 feet below) head first. Or staying in the deep area all day. Silly isn't it! I know my fin-less kick is worthless and not my friend! ( But with the 2BK we are not really looking for propulsion anyway.) However as the number of times the 13 M length was covered "better" control I did gain. Sometimes this was done with turning without stopping or touching the bottom ~ just to get the feel of swimming 25 M without fins. Maybe as a mental booster too. So ~~ what I'm suggesting is more of the cold turkey method. Swim where there are no concerns other than the kick. Swim with your arms and forget the feet. Just let them follow behind. I expect that in a time shorter than you think, you will be using fins just for fun; and the dreaded fin dependency will be a distant memory. This is starting to help me. If I were in a pool with a max depth of 6 feet I'm sure I would do better. (But touching the bottom 12 feet away is fun too!) Like everything else ... we have to learn this skill ~ no body is going to give it to us!

And like you say.. lots of gliding practice with SG to regain or develop some form of balance that the fins make us lazy in striving for. There's no replacement for hours of practice with a solid effort.
Mike

Just a quick note to thank all who have contributed to this thread. I started lessons 6 weeks ago (before that I couldn't even float) and struggled really badly with relaxing in the water and breathing. I turned to good ole google for more info, stumbled across this blog post, and then this forum, yay! All the posts here have helped me understand what feel to capture when swimming, and I got the TI book a couple of weeks ago (I was lucky to get the last copy in the store!). By using Nicodermus's drill, and repeating to myself 'relax, relax' as I practice my breaststroke, I discovered that my breathing magically sorted itself out. And the Darth Vader tip really helped me keep my nose and lungs water-free. :-) So now I am trying to learn freestyle.. and hopefully will progress to other strokes in the future. I feel like I am addicted to swimming now, I can't wait for my next pool session! Having learnt martial arts in the past makes me really appreciate the TI drills and kaizen spirit of the TI approach.

So, once again, thank you all! :-)

Time for a re-fresher?
 

Just thought that maybe there are some people here that hadn't seen Nicodemus' post of August 2009 ........ and it is well worth bouncing to the front again.

A note to Eric ... the Bedford pool has warmed up. Sat / Sun; noon to 1:30 best times.

Mike