Weekend Freestyle Workshops

[vconroy]

I recently attended a weekend workshop with Cathy Adams at the Springfield JCC, in Springfield MA. My swimming background includes swimming on a swim team for 2 years as a child, and generally loving being in the water since I can remember. I grew frustrated with my swim team experience because I wanted to swim smoother but my coach always wanted me to "swim harder". Twenty five years later I am delighted to find support for the way I've always wanted to swim!

I'd like to share some of my thoughts with others who may be considering taking a weekend TI workshop.

1. The video camera feedback and process of learning to analyze body position at various points of the stroke was probably the most valuable takeaway for me. In the beginning, I didn't have a clue if something was right or wrong without someone else telling me. After analyzing each video carefully with Cathy, I now feel confident that I can better find errors in my own freestyle stroke as well as when I watch others swim. To me this knowledge was worth more than the price of the workshop. It is gold!

2. I recommend reviewing one of the Total Immersion freestyle videos before attending a weekend workshop. If at all possible, work through some of the drills. There will be a lot of new information to process over a short period of time. I always learn better when I know a little bit about what I'm getting into first, so I ran through about 1/2 the Perpetual Motion Freestyle DVD drills before the weekend workshop. I think that by keeping the novel information to a minimum, I was less overwhelmed than I could have been, and walked away feeling that I got to most out of my weekend.

3. Be prepared to be an intellectual sponge but don't expect to be completely transformed in one weekend. There is no way to go from flailing to perfectly streamlined in a single weekend. What you will most likely do is gain a lot of insight, which you can't quite put into practice...YET! This can be frustrating if your expectations are too high. If you are anything like me, it will take a lot of practice after the weekend workshop to make your body do what your mind knows it wants to, especially if you have a lot of muscle memories to deprogram as I do from my swim team experience. It's been about 2 weeks since the workshop and every day I get better and better in some small way. Expect rewards in small increments through daily practice, and not big breakthroughs in one day or one weekend.

4. Trust your instructor and trust the process. When Cathy first pushed my head into the correct position, I thought "NO WAY!!!" It felt SO awkward to me that I thought it must be wrong...like maybe I was the exception to the rule of low head position! My resistance was immense, and my stubborn head kept popping right back up to where it always had been in the past (swimming with eyebrows along surface, and kicking really hard to maintain forward motion in this position). The individual pieces of the TI technique may at times seem VERY counter intuitive, but when you put it all together and get a glimpse of how effortlessly you can glide through the water--How sweet it is!

I hope this information is helpful to anyone considering a weekend workshop.

Thanks for reading :)

Victoria