By Naji Ali

For all my life I’ve lived near the ocean and loved watching others swim. I longed to be able to learn how to do it with grace, beauty and efficiency. Sadly, I never got the chance to learn to swim when I was younger mainly because I lived in Southern California and often when I expressed interest in it, my white — as well as black — friends would say “Blacks don’t swim. Go learn to play basketball.” I bought into this attitude, but still wanted to prove them wrong.

Very recently I decided that I was not only going to learn to swim, but would do it with efficiency and enjoyment. As luck would have it, one teacher I worked with briefly (who mainly worked with folks who were afraid of water) told me about TI. I did some research, found the site and liked what I saw.

Although the tuition for a workshop was a bit high for my budget, I felt it was important and signed up anyway. Boy, am I glad I did! Coaches Fiona Laughlin, Kim Dinell, Dave Cameron and Noel Olson really opened my eyes. I’ll admit that I was frustrated with the drills at first, but I told myself going in that if I felt that the method and coaches were sincere, then I’d keep at it. For four days a week, two hours a day, I practiced the drills: first fish, the on to skating, sweet spot, under-switch, zen switch, and finally whole stroke. I didn’t move on to another drill until the one prior was mastered. I constantly emailed Kim Dinell about problems frustrations, and questions.  She would always write back promptly with solutions and/or new drills to try.

As things began to progress, I decided to try swimming whole stroke with side breathing (a continuous problem that I had been working on).  As I woke up to get ready to go to my neighborhood pool, I felt a twinge of panic: would I remember my drills, head down, rotate from the core, wide tracks, spear the water rather than slap it, and the complicated two-beat kick?  I was concerned that my old friends were right, maybe blacks couldn’t swim. I knew it was a silly notion: I had seen the triumphs of folks like Cullen Jones and others, the famous coach Jim Ellis (the man the movie “PRIDE” was based on) and The Nile Swim Club in PA, but when it came to me, I wasn’t so sure.

So I went to the pool, took several deep breaths and told myself, “remember what you’ve practiced, don’t expect to be Michael Phelps, just be Naji and that’s fine.” I dropped my head down, pushed off from the wall and glided out, and then something wonderful happened: I was going along gracefully, no panic, no stopping. If I made a mistake with arm or head position, I could sense it and correct it immediately. Wow! For the first time I was at the other end of the pool looking back at my progress and smiling. All that I had been taught by Fiona, Dave, Noel, and Kim as well as the “Easy Freestyle” DVD was paying off. In fact, one of the lifeguards at the pool said, “you are swimming really long and gracefully, it’s really a pleasure to see that.” And he is also a TI fan!

I still run into a ton of mistakes, I have my good and bad days, but now I know what to do about them. Leslie Thomas, the TI coach in my area, is going to introduce me to open water in February and early next year I plan on beginning breaststroke drills followed by back and then butterfly. My ultimate goal is to become a TI coach and work with low-income African American and Latino youth.  I have realized my dream of swimming well and swimming safely, and I want to help others to do it, too.  

The post Total Swim – Dec 08 – Swim for Joy appeared first on Total Immersion.

By Jim Voce

In 2007 I joined an off-season triathlon group and was struggling to keep up with the rest of the class. I was stuck in the beginner’s lane, trying to comprehend what “drive with your hips” or “pretend your belly button is a camera taking pictures of each side of the pool” was all about. To put this in perspective, when I started last year I was out of breath after almost every warm-up and dead tired after every practice, even though I could bike for an hour and run 10-minute miles.  I joked about finding a triathlon with a 25 meter swim event.  I finally went to the internet to search for some help, and found Total Immersion. That is when my swimming life changed.  I purchased the Freestyle Drill Cards and Freestyle DVD and watched them over and over. Suddenly what my coach was saying started making sense.  I watched the DVD about a hundred times, making notes as if I were going to teach someone else and went into the pool. 

Fast forward to November 2008: I have competed in three sprint triathlons and swimming is now my strongest and favorite event.  My swim times have become progressively faster in each triathlon.  My favorite practice is straight freestyle in 300 meter intervals.   I like to alternate using a pull buoy where I can concentrate on strict form and minimal splashing.  A few weeks ago I tried to swim for distance after a 900 meter warm up; I was able to go 2600 meters straight without feeling winded or tired.  My shoulders were getting tired but I had run out of time before running out of energy.  My next workout was a week later and I wanted to see how far I could swim in one hour: the result was 3500 meters straight and I could have kept going! 

I now watch everyone swim with a diagnostic eye and notice a lot of inefficiency. I think one of the most important things I have done to reduce my own inefficiency is to extend my reach or “lengthen the vessel” and get the most out of the propulsion I generate with each stroke.  The subsequent gliding not only makes me faster but also uses so much less effort.  Going forward I hope to compete in an Olympic distance triathlon next season.  I can swim an Ironman distance, but in the absence of TI-like training for running and biking, I am now restricted by what used to be my strongest events!

Jim is a Communications Technician in Chicago, IL.  He currently swims 2-3 times a week in the off season to stay in shape and get ready for the next triathlon season (his second).  Jim has been married for 10 years to Lisa, who (along with his three children) supports his pastime by waking up in the wee hours to cheer him on from start to finish. 

The post Total Swim – Dec 08 – My Success Story appeared first on Total Immersion.

By Diane Riggs

I first learned about Total Immersion Swimming from Bill Lang, my husband’s friend from college. When he asked me to be a student for his teacher qualification video I was delighted. I learned water survival skills when I was a child living on the Long Island Sound thanks to our town’s free swimming lessons.  When I was a teenager I did synchronized swimming for a short time.  I was never a fast swimmer, but I loved it and kept swimming into adulthood.  A partial rotator cuff tear from a fall when I was 31 meant that I sometimes had to take a break from swimming.  

One of these breaks occurred from 2005-2007 after I fell from my bicycle right onto the injured shoulder.   The pain was excruciating and I could not move my arm more than a foot from my side.  After physical therapy and a year of weight training I felt strong enough to try swimming again in December 2007.  I found that my shoulders, back and core muscles were stronger and my balance was improved; I was no longer sway-backed in the water.  I started experimenting and took out a few books from the library to see how to improve my form in order to increase speed and endurance and prevent further injury.

In May I did my first sprint triathlon, swimming the quarter mile in 13 minutes with a total time of one hour and 57 minutes.  In July I did a second sprint triathlon, swimming for the first time in Lake Erie.  On the day of the race I became disoriented in the water and in minutes I was gasping for breath, almost unable to move my arms.  I managed to get to a lifeguard on a kayak and rested for a while, then swam and rested again.  He said that I was hyperventilating and coached me to breathe more calmly.  By resting with the lifeguard and swimming short distances, I managed to finish the swim.  Still wheezing from water in my lungs, I got on my bike and cycled the fourteen miles, then finished the triathlon with a run/walk for a total time of 2 hours and 26 minutes. I was stunned that I could have trouble swimming; this had never happened to me before!  So when Bill offered to teach me Total Immersion I was grateful for the help.  I had already signed up for a third triathlon at the same Lake Erie venue.

The first things that Bill taught me – floating on your stomach with your hands in the “pocket” and feeling the balance of the patient hand – reminded me of the dead man’s float I was taught as a child on the Long Island Sound.  The easy, relaxed way that each new movement was added was reassuring. I found it a little more difficult to find the sweet spot for breathing because I didn’t have enough time to practice it. When we started doing the underwater switching it seemed quite natural, but it is so different from swimming the crawl that it doesn’t trigger old habits.  I enjoyed feeling the balance shift as you switch hands.  But when Bill taught me the zipper and the “french manicure” this was more familiar.  A few times I felt the propulsion that you get when you switch hands, but at this point I could not put it all together.  I have never been able to breath on the left side, but suddenly I began to naturally breathe on the left side as well.  This showed me that if I work on the small pieces of the technique my swimming will become more flexible and consistent.  I also found it very useful to watch the video without any sound because it allowed the imitative side of my brain to absorb the movements.  In the three or four days that we had together I could not completely acquire what Bill was teaching me, but what I did learn really stayed with me.

Three weeks later I went back to Lake Erie for my third triathlon.  I had been practicing what Bill taught me, swimming at the lake.  The single most useful thing was the image of a ray of light going straight out through the top of my head like a headlight.  I found this instantly raised my whole body so that I was floating on the water rather than my legs sinking, and my breathing became more relaxed.  It was also psychologically reassuring in the relatively murkier water of the lake. So on the day of the race I felt confident.  I finished the triathlon in 1 hour and 56 minutes.  I am pleased with how the Total Immersion technique helped me recover my balance in the water.  I believe that practicing this technique will transform my swimming.

The post Total Swim – Dec 08 – Lessons from Bill – Part 2 appeared first on Total Immersion.

Coaching Careers: Follow your Passion with TI

The post Become a TI Coach – Contact Lobb appeared first on Total Immersion.

You must be a registered user to download these free PDF booklets from Total Immersion. If you are already registered, please login using the box to the right. If you would like to register, please click on any booklet below and you will be taken to the registration page.

<?php

$pdfs = array(

‘Perpetual Motion Freestyle in 10 Lessons – User Guide’ => ‘/images/pdfs/pmf-user-guide.pdf’, 

‘Outside the Box (excerpt)’ => ‘/images/pdfs/otb-excerpt-2.pdf’,

‘Easy Freestyle’ => ‘/images/pdfs/easy-freestyle-manual.pdf’,

‘Extraordinary Swimming for Every Body, Chapters 1-3′ => ‘/images/pdfs/extraordinary-chapter1-3.pdf’,

‘Happy Laps’ => ‘/images/pdfs/happylaps-book.pdf’,

‘Swimming That Changes Your Life Excerpt’ => ‘/images/pdfs/swimming-that-changes-your-life-excerpt.pdf’,

);

$user =& JFactory::getUser();

echo ‘<ul class=”free-pdfs”>';
foreach ($pdfs as $title => $url) {
if ($user->guest) {
echo ‘<li><a href=”component/user/login” title=”please login to access free content”>’ . $title . ‘</a></li>';
} else {
echo ‘<li><a href=”‘ . $url . ‘”>’ . $title . ‘</a></li>';
}
}
echo “</ul>”;
?>

The post Free Booklets from Total Immersion appeared first on Total Immersion.

Experience Open Water…… 

The post Triathlon / Open Water Camps appeared first on Total Immersion.

The Total Immersion Swim Studio features a warm-water Endless Pool outfitted with underwater video equipment and a flat screen monitor poolside for technique analysis and instant feedback, as well as underwater mirrors. 

TISS also offers instruction in our larger outdoor pool equipped with a Fast Lane current generator from June through September, where we can accommodate larger group lessons and deep water activities.

In the EP, you will learn and practice drills and have your stroke evaluated at a variety of speeds, while the coach stays close by to evaluate, support, and provide hands-on guidance. The EP has an underwater video recording system and mirrors so we can record your stroke, then play it back for immediate technique analysis and feedback.The water is kept at a comfortable 88-91 degrees F, allowing swimmers to focus on instruction without feeling cold. )

←  Back to Swim Studio Home

The post About The Facility appeared first on Total Immersion.

By Bill Lang

Diane was my seventh swimming student.  I’ve been lucky finding students through referrals and from people noticing my TI cap at the pool; however, I found Diane because she’s married to my friend David, who (not so luckily!) broke his leg in a recent cycling accident.  I visited them in Oberlin to commiserate with David after his accident, and Diane and I made a plan to work together during the trip; she was trying to improve her swimming for an upcoming triathlon in Lake Erie. We only had a few hours together, just enough to make a beginning.

We started on a gorgeous Friday in August in the outdoor part of the Oberlin municipal pool. It was early morning and a few people were doing mild water aerobics under the broad Ohio skies.  We’re on camera: David has volunteered to video our lessons from his wheelchair. Diane was obviously comfortable in the water, lifted her head somewhat to breathe, had fairly short, quick strokes, and a fast, not very propulsive kick. Her recovery looked different on each side – probably the result of an injury to her rotator some years ago.  This may have contributed to the considerable side-to-side movement I observed.

We got started with introduction to balance.   All of my students thus far have been pleasant to work with, but Diane was a joy: calm, attentive, and fun.  When we got to skating (or streamlining) she immediately started over-rotating to the stacked-shoulders position, especially when right-side streamlined.  I have noted this tendency in other students when I first get them away from the flat-down position.  It really works to emphasize using the abs to stay “just enough” rotated – it’s easy to feel the abs working – and, of course, adjusting the rotation hands-on until it’s right.  Diane was hardly moving forward at all in Fish or skating, and we worked on her kick for a while.  (I am finding that non-propulsive kicks are also not uncommon; I don’t like to spend a lot of time on kicking, but it’s no fun doing the drills if you don’t go anywhere, and even slight improvements in kicking make a big difference.)

We spent some time on “active streamlining,” or underswitch; Diane had some trouble coordinating that, and we agreed to go over it again later.

For our second session, the pool was full of kids, all sizes, having a wonderful time.  We did some prepping on the grass for what the zipper drills feel like, and got into the water when the kids are having their 15-minute break.  Diane’s underswitch was a little better but still needed more practice.  We worked on the zipper drills a lot: learning the timing and learning to take time were very important to her progress.  The kids cannon-balled back into the pool – we dealt with that for a while and then called it a day.

Our last session, two days later, was in the blessedly calm, quiet, newly-reopened indoor pool. After reviewing skating, we worked on all of the transitions to whole-stroke, and then breathing.  Diane hadn’t had time to practice much, and I was sure to emphasize what she should work on going forward: head-spine alignment and the patient hand, above all.  I think that the more years you’ve been swimming, the harder it is to switch to “front-quadrant” and wait for the stroking hand to catch up.  Diane still lifted her head to breathe somewhat, losing balance and grip, so I went through all of Terry’s breathing fundamentals, one by one: laser beam (which she remembers, intriguingly, as “a beam of light”), staying long, and looking back over her shoulder as she took a breath. Diane will benefit from lots of skating and underswitch practice, patient zipper drills, and – in whole stroke – focusing on a precise return to streamlining. She will also focus on breathing calmly and patiently and minimizing her kick, which will be easier as her balance improves. Diane has made a great start, and has a long way to go – like most of us!

The post Total Swim – Oct 08 – Lessons from Bill – Lang appeared first on Total Immersion.

Over the past three years, 10 year old Violet Chazkell has taken approximately 100 TI swim lessons. She is one of the most seasoned TI youth swimmers anywhere, and currently takes lessons twice a week with Coach Cari Laughlin at the New Paltz Swim Studio.

Miss. Chazkell tells us that she learned to swim when she was five years old and that she started taking lessons because she loved swimming so much. Her mother, Michelle Chazkell, explained that when Violet was about 6 months old she brought her to the beach for the first time. Michelle was holding Violet and when the Ocean came into view Violet had an outburst of happiness; she started laughing and bouncing and swinging her arms and legs. Michelle had never seen Violet react this way to anything before, and sensed that Violet had a very deep connection to the water.

Violet was kind enough to write a bit about her experiences with Total Immersion over the years:

My first lesson at Total Immersion was so fun! I learned so much new stuff. I’ve learned about all four strokes as well as other things like how to do flip-turns and body dolphin, which is part of butterfly.

The most fun part about taking swimming lessons is learning new stuff and different ways of doing things. I think one of the things I’d like to do with what I’ve learned is maybe become a swim teacher or be in races.

I definitely want to keep on swimming at Total Immersion. I’ve had a great time doing it and I think anyone else would, too!

Violet predicts that she will continue swimming throughout her life, especially because of her fondness for open water.  “I like swimming in the ocean with my dad,” she says “because if there is a big wave he can help me get over it.” In the pool, Violet enjoys swimming with her friends and racing her brothers. “It’s fun to race because I always beat them,” she says.  Congratulations to Violet Chazkell; we wish her a lifetime of happy laps!

 Comment on this Article • Back to Current Issue

The post Total Swim – Oct 08 – Violet Chazkell appeared first on Total Immersion.

 Terry recently received the following inquiry about the upcoming Total Immersion Four-Stroke Kaizen Camp:

Terry,
Having enjoyed the freestyle workshop in San Francisco immensely, I’m considering attendance at the Kaizen 4-Stroke Camp in Coral Springs this November, but wanted to learn if I’m ready to benefit at this time. Since the workshop, my freestyle has improved a lot, but I’m not a particularly fast swimmer. I swim about 2:00 per 100 yards, while taking 15-16 strokes per 25-yards. My breaststroke is in good shape, but my backstroke is rather slow (about 3:00 per 100 yards) and I’ve only just begun the first couple of drills for butterfly, but haven’t mastered the whole stroke yet. Am I ready to attend the Kaizen Camp now, or should I wait for next year when I’m better and faster?  Thanks.
- Hadar

Hadar,
I appreciate your keen interest in TI and applaud your desire to pursue continuous improvement (Kaizen) and become a “complete” swimmer. I’m glad you asked this question because others may wish similar clarification.

At the Kaizen Camp, we’ll teach a 4-stroke program I’ve been refining for two years. My goal in tweaking our curriculum has been twofold:
1) To provide more unity in the TI learning process. This is accomplished by having one foremost focus: minimizing  energy cost by teaching the most hydrodynamic position for each stroke and organizing the rest of the stroke – pulling, kicking and breathing – around returning easily to that position.  
2) To simplify and accelerate the learning process so any student – even if inexperienced – could learn the rudiments of Butterfly, Backstroke and Breaststroke in four steps or less. The fact that our primary goal for each stroke is “active streamlining” makes this possible, as streamlining skills rely on much simpler coordination than locomotion skills do.

An encouraging aspect of working on the “Different” strokes is that they can all be learned faster and easier than freestyle. The alternating movements of freestyle, combined with side breathing in rhythm with core-body rotation, are actually the most exacting skills in all of swimming. By comparison, the skills of Butterfly and Breaststroke are much easier to learn, because both sides of the body move simultaneously (i.e. right and left arm and right and left leg do the same thing at the same time). And though Backstroke involves alternating arm/leg movements, there’s no need to rotate to breathe; this hugely simplifies the learning process compared to freestyle. So be encouraged that you can master a “fundamentally-efficient” whole stroke (i.e. one you can swim with minimal effort and maximum enjoyment) much faster in these strokes than may have been your experience with freestyle.

While our focus will not be to produce Phelps-like speed, the skills we teach are modeled on techniques that are effective enough to have helped make Phelps the best swimmer in the world and are easy enough that anyone can learn them. However, we won’t ignore speed entirely; we’ll use some of our afternoon pool sessions to clarify and teach how speed is a relatively straightforward “math problem.” In freestyle, you’ve achieved a good Stroke Length, with your SPL of 15 to 16. You’ll translate your existing efficiency into higher speed by learning to complete those efficient strokes at incrementally higher Stroke Rates. We’ll show you how to use the Tempo Trainer to make that happen.

Happy laps,
Terry

PS: Anyone registering for the Kaizen Camp on or before October 31 will receive a free Tempo Trainer as a bonus!

The post Total Swim – Oct 08 – Kaizen Camp Q&A appeared first on Total Immersion.