This post was previously published by Terry Laughlin on Aug. 7, 2015.

At the Beijing Olympics in 2008, Stany Kempompo Ngangola gained a measure of fame for swimming the 100-meter freestyle.

Not for his speed, but simply for surviving.

Stany was among a small group of athletes—mostly from small underdeveloped nations–who are invited to the Olympics in hopes that the exposure will encourage sports development in their homeland. These athletes are exempted from Olympic qualifying times.

Stany was selected for this honor a year in advance and given assistance with preparation by coaches from advanced swimming nations. Unfortunately the training he was given focused mostly on conditioning with little attention to technique.

Swimming in the first heat, Stany relied on youth and strength to get through his first 50-meter length, but hadn’t gone far on the second length before the commentators began to express concern—shared by everyone watching–about whether he could make it safely to the far wall.

Here’s a picture of Stany—looking very athletic—in the air.

And here is Stany in the water, struggling to complete 100 meters.

What’s remarkable about Stany is how utterly unremarkable he is. I estimate that 95 percent of the millions who watched his struggles on TV would fare no better if put in that position themselves. You see, swimming, as an aquatic skill, is an ‘alien’ activity for land-adapted humans. Do you recognize the swimmer below? 

John Lennon… Human Swimmer!

Energy Wasting Machines

That’s why we say that it’s critical to recognize that—as inheritors of millions of years of adapting to life on terra firma—it is simply human nature to be an ‘energy-wasting machine’ in the water.

This was confirmed by a study done by DARPA in 2005 while designing a swim foil for the Navy Seals. They found that dolphins convert 80 percent of energy into forward motion. The humans they studied (lap and fitness swimmers—people who thought they swam ‘okay’) were only 3 percent energy efficient.

This bring us to Swimming Principle #1: Always focus on saving energy before increasing fitness. 

To apply this principle, do the following:

• When developing technique, master Vessel-Shaping skills (Balance, Core Stability, Alignment, and Streamlining, before propulsion skills (pulling and kicking.) Vessel-Shaping skills take little energy to perform and provide significant payback in energy savings. Propulsion skills require much more energy and power to perform.

• Propulsion A: When you focus on your pull and kick, pay attention first to how you use the arms and legs to minimize drag, before focusing on how you apply pressure to the water.

 • Job One for your arms is to lengthen your bodyline, since that reduces wave drag.

 • Job One for your legs is to draft behind your upper body—not to churn the water into a froth.

• Propulsion B: Strive to replace forces generated by your muscles with ‘available’ forces from nature—gravity and buoyancy.

• Swim farther by learning to swim a shorter distance almost effortlessly—rather than pushing to add another length.

• Swim faster by learning to swim at your current speed as easily as possible. Faster times will then come as a matter of course.

• Indeed, for any swimming set, task, or challenge, always start out with the intention to find the easiest possible way to complete it—rather than testing your ability to push through fatigue or discomfort.

Learn energy-saving techniques with our downloadable Ultra-Efficient Freestyle Self-Coaching Toolkit. The drills and skills are illustrated in 15 short videos. Guidance on how to learn and practice each drill effectively is provided in the companion Workbook.

The post Swimming Principle #1: Always Save Energy Before You Spend It appeared first on Total Immersion.

The following guest post by TI Master Coach Gary Fahey was originally published on Mar. 16, 2014. 

A blog post discussing kick strategies landed in my inbox a couple of weeks ago, much of it advocating a six-beat kick (6BK) for all but the most skilled of swimmers.

While I disagree with this premise and the example presented through the .gif in that blog post, I agree with the writer that long distance and open water swimmers should use their legs primarily for stability rather than propulsion. The energy cost of propulsive kicking is simply unsustainable.

Total Immersion advocates for increasing speed through smarter choices rather than greater effort. Among the most fundamental of those choices is to improve core stabilization—which is a critical foundation for a mastering 2-Beat Kick (2BK) skill.

One adjustment, I suggest to my swimmers is to experiment with the depth of the extended arm.  When they do, they learn that a very shallow extension causes the legs to sink.  But so does reaching too deep.

Reaching too deep breaks the body line where arm and torso connect. Picture a see-saw plank with a collapsible hinge: applying pressure at one end would not exert any influence at the other end.  But when you open that hinge to establish a single, structurally sound plank, then adjustments at one end affect what happens at the other.

Sinking legs can be counter balanced by finding the optimal angle or depth at which to ‘spear’ your arm forward. Spearing 12 to 15 inches below the surface tends to shape the body into a balanced, stable and sleek line. Adding a moderate forward stretch (eliminating laxity) will bring tone to the core, strengthening the connection between front and rear.

In the blog post, the coach suggested the swimmer had improperly matched a 2-beat kick to his overall mechanics, which explains the dropped legs. His suggested fix was a 6BK.

This misdiagnoses the problem and offers an energy-wasting solution.

My view: By extending too deep, the swimmer breaks the connection from extended hand in front through legs at the rear. Like the plank with a broken-hinge, balancing forces in front cannot act upon the rear.

If he ‘speared’ a few inches shallower (which would also direct more energy forward) he would increase structural integrity in his aquatic posture and bring his legs into balance.

Once he corrects his balance problem, the 2BK would not only be an appropriate match for his swimming style, he could likely scale back on his current degree of knee bend and further reduce drag. More stability = lower energy cost.

Compare the red lines in the still frame image at top (taken from the other writer’s post) to the  image from TI Coach Shinji Takeuchi’s top-ranked YouTube video.  Shinji extends to a shallower end point, which draws his body into a sleek line. His legs draft cleanly behind him and the energy cost of his 2BK approaches zero.

This illustrates a simple solution to sinking legs—one which results in kicking less, not more.

Besides this misdiagnosis, this blog post also drew a distinction between two styles of 2BK.  TI advocates the Shinji 2-beat kick  which connects the kick downbeat to the spearing arm.

The other writer advocates a style used by very high tempo swimmers like Brooke Bennett in this clip  in which the downbeat of the kick connects to the catch phase of the stroke.

The high tempo 2BK style is an extremely challenging configuration that can be done successfully by high-mileage, experienced swimmers, but is too exhausting and difficult for the vast majority.

The blog writer rejects the efficacy of the TI 2BK, which he calls a “kick-start” that compensates for what he calls “over-gliding.” I think the “kick-start” 2-beat kick is just fine for most purposes, certainly at tempos of 1 stroke per second and up.

There are legitimate pros and cons to selecting any kicking pattern, and not room here to discuss them all.  My primary goal is to show improvement-minded swimmers that they can opt for efficiency rather than effort.

If you want a more effective kick, you can achieve it through balance and stability—a choice that conserves energy rather than wastes it. Most swimmers already do far too much of the latter.

Editorial Note– For a step-by-step breakdown of the mechanics of the 2-beat kick, see this related post:

DEMO: Master the 2-Beat Kick– Connect Your Legs to the Power of Core Rotation for Maximal Speed and Efficiency

Gary Fahey has been a Total Immersion Certified Coach since 1998.  He teaches swimming full time through his Fort Lauderdale-based company, Stroke Doctor Swimming. In 25 years coaching competitive swimmers, he has qualified athletes up to the US Olympic Trials level. Contact Gary at gary@strokedocswim.com

The post Which Kick Is Best for YOU… 2-Beat or 6-Beat? appeared first on Total Immersion.

A version of this article by Terry Laughlin was previously published on ivillage.com in Dec. 2011.

Total Immersion teaches swimming as a practice—in the spirit of yoga and Tai Chi– rather than a workout. The first principle of swimming as a practice is to let go of the usual goal of “Getting to the Other End.” Your new goal is to Be Aware of Every Stroke.  Another word for mindful swimming is intentional swimming. It works best when you target a single, highly specific element in your stroke. The foundation skill of effortless and enjoyable swimming is Balance–or feeling “weightless” in the water. This series of three focal points are designed to improve Balance in the crawl stroke.

Hang Your Head

While stroking “hang” your head– release its weight –until it feels weightless. Neither hold it up, nor press it down; just let it go.  When you release it, concentrate on feeling that it’s cushioned by the water.  Finally, notice if you feel a new relaxation— and maybe freedom of movement —in neck and shoulders.

Float Your Arm Forward . . . Slowly

Next focus intently on the extending arm. Feel the same “cushion” supporting your arm as you extend. Watch for— and eliminate –bubbles in your stroke (looking down, not forward.) Finally, explore how slowly you can float your arm forward . . . and try to extend slightly farther than usual.

Calm Your Legs

Your weightless upper body should help your lower body feel lighter than usual. Take advantage by “calming” and relaxing your legs. Instead of churning them busily and noisily, let them “draft behind” your upper body, in a slipstream. Strive for the easiest, quietest, and most streamlined movement possible.

Practice Tips:

1.) Before practicing the three focal points, swim a few lengths as you usually do. Count your strokes and rate your effort from 1 (Effortless) to 5 (Exhausting).  Repeat this exercise after each focal point to measure how they affect your ease and efficiency.

2.) Practice each focal point by doing a series of learning/familiarizing repeats followed by a series of practicing/memorizing repeats.

• Learning/Familiarizing  Swim a series of short (4 to 6 strokes, or 10 yards or less) repeats. Push off the wall, swim a short distance. Catch your breath and return to where you started. These repeats serve two purposes: (i) to break the habit of feeling obliged to complete every length you start; and (ii) to form a new habit of keen and undistracted attention.  Do at least four of these, but continue as long as you feel yourself discovering new sensations or nuances.

• Practicing/Memorizing Once you feel familiar with the new intention and sensation, swim farther— perhaps one, not more than two, pool lengths. Rest for 3 to 5 cleansing breaths after each. Continue visualizing your modified stroke as you do. Continue swimming the longer repeats as long as they feel as good or better than the shorter ones. If they don’t feel as good, resume shorter repeats to better imprint the new habit. Before progressing to the next focal point, count strokes and rate your effort. How do they compare to your former way of swimming?

This lesson is based entirely on whole-stroke practice. But most new swimmers experience find it much easier to learn Balance by mixing skill drills, like Superman Glide and Skate, with the short whole-stroke repeats described above. The next best thing to learning TI from a Certified Coach is to become your own best coach with the aid of our self-teaching tools.

Transform Your Stroke!

Learn guaranteed skill-builders with our downloadable Total Immersion Effortless Endurance Self Coaching Course! The drills and skills are illustrated in 15 short videos. Guidance on how to learn and practice each drill effectively, illustrated by clear pictures, are contained in the companion Workbook.

The post Your First TI Lesson Is Learning To Be “Weightless” in the Water appeared first on Total Immersion.

This post was originally published by Terry Laughlin on May 20, 2016.

There are two ways to try to swim faster. One way is what I call the “Limbs, Lungs, and Muscles” approach: Move your limbs as fast as you can. Put more muscle into your stroke. Hope that your fitness will outlast failing muscles and that you can “push through pain barriers” as coaches often say. For most, this approach is a path to failure and frustration.

Total Immersion teaches a second way— speed as a problem-solving exercise. The fact that you’re solving the most exacting problems in swimming can also transform this into a Mastery pursuit. The TI way to swim faster is based on three well-proven principles.  Although the success of these principles is widely-documented, I refer to them as the “secrets” of swimming faster because so few people take advantage of them.

1. Start with Stroke Length. The foundation for fast swimming is Stroke Length. For over 60 years, every authoritative study of factors that correlate with speed found that longer strokes matter most. This has proven true in all strokes and all ages—from 10 and under to 80 and up!

How far should you travel? For freestyle, from 55% to 65% or more of your height. We’ve converted that into Strokes Per Length (SPL), recorded on our Green Zone charts of height-indexed efficient stroke counts in any standard distance pool, available as a free download here.

When stroking at the lowest SPL for your height, your hand leaves the water– at the end of the stroke –pretty close to where it entered. In other words, most of your energy is converted into forward motion. When your stroke count is above the highest in your Green Zone, too much of your energy is moving water back.

Once you can swim your Green Zone counts with ease and consistency, strive to patiently increase the distance and/or speed at which you can maintain those counts. If you’ve been swimming at higher counts, try this simple exercise: Compare the speed of your arm moving back with the speed of your body moving forward. Slow your stroke until they match.

2. Train your Nervous–not Aerobic–System.

In 2005, just before I turned 55, I set several goals that were far more ambitious than any I’d contemplated before. I asked Jonty Skinner, Director of Performance Science for USA Swimming’s Olympic program, for training advice. Jonty said: “It’s neural conditioning, not aerobic conditioning, that wins races.”

Jonty meant that swimmers who trained to maintain a long stroke as they swam farther and faster would be much more successful those who simply focused on swimming longer or harder. Rather than train for the capacity to work harder, focus on creating and encoding the highest quality muscle memories—to make it easier to maintain longer strokes at faster rates. Not only will it require less oxygen to swim any pace, but cardiovascular conditioning still “happens.” Only it’s now specific to the stroke length and rate to which your nervous system is highly adapted— rather than to non-specific hard efforts.

3. Master the “Swimming Success Algorithm”

The term algorithm was coined in mathematics over 1000 years ago and has become widely familiar in the last 20 years due to its use in computer science. Its use in modern technology suggests something complicated, but it’s definition is pretty simple: An algorithm is “a process that solves a recurrent problem.”

A recurrent— indeed, nearly universal —problem in swimming is how to swim the fastest of which you are physically capable. The overwhelming majority of swimmers fall far short of their true potential (I was a prime example in high school and college) because they choose ineffective means to solve the problem— stroke faster and swim harder. This is what I did in high school and college. It led to frustration and a feeling that I lacked the “right stuff” to swim fast, whatever that might be.

Stroking faster isn’t so much a choice as a primal instinct, which is why so many do it. Fortunately there is a solution for this problem that is so foolproof– I call it the Algorithm for Swimming Success. It comes from 40 years of data collected by USA Swimming on their very best swimmers.

Since 1976, USA-Swimming has assigned staffers to sit in the stands and record the stroke count and stroke rate of every swimmer, in every heat, of every event at Olympic Trials— the most competitive meet in the US, and sometimes, the world. Every swimmer at this meet is hightly talented and supremely fit, but in each event only two competitors— of 60 to 70 entrants –will come away with the most precious prize of a slot on the Olympic Team.

USA Swimming collected this data to learn if there was some stroking or pacing pattern which maximizes a swimmer’s chances of being among the fortunate few.

After 40 years, the data shows most clearly that a rare and completely counter-intuitive skill is the key to success in swimming.  That skill is the ability to maintain Stroke Length while increasing Stroke Rate.

Why counter-intuitive? Well, what does everyone do naturally when trying to swim faster? Work harder and stroke faster— while ignoring Stroke Length! No wonder this virtually always leads to failure and frustration: They have it exactly backwards!

With this information, you can ensure that your efforts to swim faster will have a vastly greater chance of success. To do this, plan sets which:

1. Reveal your current ability to maintain one stroke count (say 18 SPL), while increasing Tempo.
2. Make a tiny increase in tempo (as little as a hundredth of a second) and count strokes. If your SPL holds, increase tempo and count strokes again.
3. Continue until your SPL increases.

When your SPL increases, you’ve discovered your current level of Conscious Incompetence at this combination of SPL and Tempo. Work at this level until you can easily and consistently swim this Tempo+SPL combo. Then raise tempo again until you find the tempo at which it’s a struggle to maintain your SPL.

Learn to swim with greater ease and speed in your “Green Zone” with our downloadable Ultra-Efficient Freestyle Complete Self-Coaching Toolkit.

Want to master the Swimming Success Algorithm? A Tempo Trainer is the essential tool. 

The post The Algorithm of Speed: 3 Proven Principles for Swimming Faster appeared first on Total Immersion.

“Before Terry Laughlin, it was just a matter of getting in the water and getting it done. When I was in BUD/S training, my instructors taught us the way they learned it from their instructors. Now, that’s all changed; technique is everything. If they can master these techniques in the water, we can dramatically get their swim times down. The staff here at BUD/S can be a very skeptical bunch. We tend to resist anything from the outside. But when our personal swim times came down using Laughlin’s methods, well, we knew this was good information. We try to do as much teaching as possible here in Indoc—help them improve their technique. For some of them, this training will make the difference between making it to graduation or washing out. We’ve been able to cut swim drops by twenty-five percent– this stuff really works.” — Navy SEAL Instructor Tim King in Dick Couch’s “The Warrior Elite: The Forging of SEAL Class 228″

It’s a little-known fact about Total Immersion–  it’s not even listed in founder Terry Laughlin’s bio — that our methodology was adopted as part of official Navy SEAL swim curriculum after Terry trained their instructors in the late 90’s and re-designed the way the combat stroke was taught, in order to be more efficient. And it’s also true that even 30 years after T.I.’s founding, there are still many detractors in the competitive swim world who remain skeptical of our methods and prefer to stick with “traditional” training methods (i.e. just kick harder, pull harder), claiming that “T.I. doesn’t work for fast swimming.” Or T.I. is “only for beginners.” Or “better suited for triathletes.” Certainly, no one can argue that the U.S. military isn’t also deeply bound by tradition and the most rigorous training in the world– even more so than the world of competitive swimming– and yet, the Navy has recognized the value of changing their swim training with a method that is effective and proven. To reiterate Instructor King’s point: This stuff really works. The SEALs wouldn’t use it if it didn’t. The U.S. Navy completely changed the way they taught combat sidestroke based on our sound principles of efficient technique– and T.I. ‘s influence is embedded in the updated stroke training that the SEALs have taught for the last 20 years. Navy SEALs need to swim fast and efficiently under grueling conditions not to win a race, but because it’s their job. Speed matters to them– not to make a PR, or win a medal, or even break a world record. Speed is a matter of life and death. 

During the same era that Terry was training SEAL instructors to teach swimming differently, he was also coaching sprinters at West Point, who achieved extraordinary success at the Patriot Leagues. Terry’s group of sprinters included Joe Novak (Army West Point 1995-99) , the only three-time winner of the Patriot League Swimmer of the Meet award, who captured the honor in consecutive seasons from 1997-99. Novak also helped Army West Point capture the Patriot League title in his first three seasons from 1996-98, and was named to the first-team All-League squad three times. Novak earned a spot on the Patriot League All-Decade Team. He won the 50 free, 100 free and 100 fly in each of his seasons as Swimmer of the Meet. Joe has attributed much of his success in swimming to training with Terry using T.I. methods.

                                                            Terry coaching in 2016

So there’s ample evidence that:

1) T.I. technique is effective for long distances, when efficiency and speed matter tremendously.

2) T.I. technique also produces fast times for highly competitive and accomplished swimmers– yes, even sprinters.

Another interesting fact: if you click on Wikipedia’s entry for combat sidestroke, you’ll clearly see the foundational technique principles of T.I. highlighted– Balance, Length, Rotation. 

At this point, some of you may be wondering… “Well, I’m not a SEAL, nor am I aspiring to that– why the heck should I care about the combat sidestroke??” And it’s a reasonable question, given that most T.I. swimmers are primarily interested in improving their freestyle. But here’s why it matters:

1) The combat sidestroke is a hybrid of sidestroke, freestyle, and breaststroke and demonstrates that the principles of biomechanical and hydrodynamic speed and efficiency are universal to swimming any stroke well. Technique matters, whether it’s freestyle or the combat stroke. 

2) The combat sidestroke offers an excellent adaptive stroke option for swimmers who are limited in mobility or range of movement, either from age, injury, or disability. Freestyle is notoriously the most technically challenging stroke to master, particularly because of bilateral breathing and complex, asynchronous timing of the arms (and the 2-beat kick, for non-sprinters). Some might argue this point– however, fly and breast have a front-facing breath and stable head position, as well as a stroke where both arms move synchronously with the same timing. (Breaststroke is the first stroke many beginners learn, simply because it’s easier to breathe.) The combat sidestroke incorporates an easier style of breathing and stroking, making it an ideal option for swimmers who are looking for an adaptive swim stroke. [See DEMO of the stroke at the bottom of this post.]

Wikipedia’s entry for “combat sidestroke” reads:

Combat sidestroke or CSS is a variation of the side stroke that was developed by and taught to the United States Navy SEALs.

The combat sidestroke is a relaxing and very efficient swim stroke that is an updated version of the traditional sidestroke. The CSS is a mix of sidestroke, front crawl, and breaststroke. The combat side stroke allows the swimmer to swim more efficiently and reduce the body’s profile in the water in order to be less likely to be seen during combat operations if surface swimming is required. The concept of CSS has been that it can be used with or without wearing swim fins (flippers), the only difference being that when wearing swim fins the swimmer’s legs will always be kicking in the regular flutter kick motion without the scissor kick. This stroke is one of the strokes that can be used for prospective SEAL candidates in the SEAL physical screening test (PST), which includes a 500-yard swim in 12 minutes 30 seconds to determine if the candidate is suitable to go to the Basic Underwater Demolitions/SEAL school.

The entry even mentions a term Terry used in the early years of T.I. (and in his popular first book in ’96) to describe poor balance: “swimming uphill.” While Wikipedia has no citation for the influence of T.I. methodology on the combat stroke, we fortunately have a documented account of Terry’s primary role in revolutionizing SEAL swim training in the book, “The Warrior Elite: The Forging of SEAL Class 228″, by NY Times bestselling author and former Navy SEAL Platoon Commander Dick Couch. It is this book which features commentary from SEAL Instructor Tim King on the effectiveness of T.I. methods. The book’s description reads:

“‘The Warrior Elite’ takes you into the toughest, longest, and most relentless military training in the world. What does it take to become a Navy SEAL? What makes talented, intelligent young men volunteer for physical punishment, cold water, and days without sleep? In ‘The Warrior Elite,’ former Navy SEAL Dick Couch documents the process that transforms young men into warriors. SEAL training is the distillation of the human spirit, a tradition-bound ordeal that seeks to find men with character, courage, and the burning desire to win at all costs, men who would rather die than quit.”

The article below is a brief excerpt from Chapter 1 of “The Warrior Elite,” which details Terry’s influence on SEAL swim training. Enjoy… and Happy Laps!

The teaching begins in the pool. “You have to be good in the water,” Instructor Tim King tells Class 228. Like Reno, King is a short, powerful man. And like many enlisted SEALs, he has a college degree; Tim King’s is in criminal justice. “This is what separates us from all other special operations forces. For them, water is an obstacle; for us, it’s sanctuary.” I noted many changes at BUD/S [Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL Training] since Class 45 graduated, but the most dramatic are in the swimming curriculum. In the past, it was simply a matter of showing the trainees a basic stroke and making them swim laps; kick, stroke, and glide. Now it’s all about technique. The instructors begin with teaching buoyancy control and body position in the water. The basic stroke is a modified sidestroke that the trainees will later adapt to the use of fins. Much of what is taught is taken from the work of Terry Laughlin and his “Total Immersion” training technique. Laughlin is a noted civilian instructor who developed innovative long-distance swimming techniques for competitive and recreational swimmers. A few in Class 228 were competition swimmers before coming to BUD/S, but most are not. All will learn the Laughlin method. According to Laughlin, it’s all about swimming more like a fish and less like a human. The instructors say it’s like swimming downhill. It has to do with making one’s body physically longer in the water and reducing drag.

The post Swim Like a SEAL: How T.I. Revolutionized Navy SEAL Swim Training appeared first on Total Immersion.

The following post is adapted from a 2006 article written by Terry Laughlin.

Richard Quick, the six-time U.S. Olympic team coach who directed 12 teams to NCAA titles, once said while giving a butterfly stroke clinic: “Don’t hide your breathing mistakes by not breathing; fix them instead.” That’s good advice, not only for butterfly, but for freestyle as well.

About 30 years ago, “hypoxic training” came into vogue. The idea was that by restricting breathing frequency—breathing every five, seven or nine freestyle strokes—swimmers might simulate the effects of high-altitude training at sea level.

Researchers long ago debunked the idea that breath-holding produces any physiological adaptation, but “hypoxic” sets are still popular, in part to help swimmers adjust to the discomfort produced when you reduce breathing frequency.

One reason for making that adjustment is the very real concern that in a sprint race, breathing can slow a swimmer down. If each breath might cost you slightly in stroke efficiency, the less of them you take, the faster you might go.

Holding your breath—perhaps breathing only twice or less—in a 50-yard freestyle undoubtedly helps your speed, particularly because that race is short enough that your muscles mainly consume oxygen already in your bloodstream.

But when racing for, say, 45 seconds to over a minute, you need to get fresh oxygen to your muscles. Because of this, holding your breath could restrict your ability to finish such races strongly. The ideal would be to be able to breathe as often as you want, without sacrificing any speed.

The key to maximizing both air and speed is to breathe as seamlessly as possible. Let’s start with the mechanics of getting air into your lungs:

• Inhale through your mouth; exhale through your mouth 70 percent and nose 30 percent. Are these figures exact? No, just keep enough air pressure coming from your nose to keep the water out, especially as you roll to the surface and then return face-down.

• Never hold your breath—even if you’ll swim three to five strokes between breaths. To avoid an uncomfortable build-up of CO2, begin exhaling as soon as you finish inhaling—just exhale in a more steady, controlled way if you’ll take more strokes before your next breath. You’ll need to manage your release of air with slow bubbles to sustain you comfortably until your next inhale.

• As you roll to air, exhale the final 20 percent of air more forcefully than the first 80 percent. This should make the inhale which follows almost effortless by creating a vacuum in your lungs. It also helps clear the water away from your mouth for the next breath. Also, the force of your exhale should be proportionate to your effort. The next time you swim a descending set, experiment with consciously adding some force to your exhale as you go faster.

Breathe Efficiently

The second key to breathing with high frequency and high efficiency lies in how you roll to the side to take that breath. Poor breathing mechanics can increase drag and reduce the effectiveness of your stroke, during the breath. Here are several ways to remain efficient while breathing:

• Roll your whole body to the air. Rather than breathing with a head turn—which is awkward and can cause muscle tension—think of rolling your body to the air, as if you were going to breathe with your belly button. This will also help encourage core-body rotation, which is the source of your stroking power.

• Stay balanced as you roll to the air. Lifting your head as you breathe will cause your hips and legs to sink, increasing drag and slowing you down. Consciously keep the crown of your head and forehead pressed to the surface as you roll to breathe.

• Stay aligned as you roll to the air. Picture a line that runs from your toes, along your spine and out the top of your head as a laser beam. Keep that laser cutting straight ahead through the water as you breathe—or think of slicing through the water like an arrow through the air, at all times but especially while breathing.

• Stay tall as you roll to the air. Many swimmers lose the front end of their stroke on each breath. During each breath, focus on keeping the opposite hand stretched forward—with fingertips angled down to hold an “armful of water”—for just a moment longer during the breath. This timing will help connect that armstroke to the powerful rotation of your body in the other direction following the breath.

• Drive the top hip down. After breathing, focus on driving that hip (i.e. the right hip after a right side breath and vice versa) down strongly. That will help you get all the power out of the extra rotation that occurs when you roll to breathe. If you do all of the above right, you can make each breath an asset to your stroke, not an interruption.

To learn more in-depth detail about the breathing mechanics of efficient swimming, check out our video “O2 in H2O: A Self Help Course on Breathing in Swimming”– available as a digital download or on dvd.
Nothing is more essential to a swimmer than air. Yet, few swimmers truly understand how to breathe efficiently…not just to get air, but to integrate breathing seamlessly with the stroke. Breathing is sometimes viewed as a liability or inconvenience, but when you do it right, breathing can actually make your stroke better. This video shows you how, using water bowl exercises, shallow water exercises, skills in drills, and whole stroke breathing skills. Detailed studies with focal points for practice cover these three major strokes: Freestyle, Breaststroke, and Butterfly.

The post Freestyle Breathing 101: Master the Mechanics appeared first on Total Immersion.

An exclusive excerpt in an ongoing series of material from Terry’s forthcoming final book, Total Immersion: Swimming That Changes Your Life    

Over the last year, this blog has released several excerpts from the unpublished draft of Terry’s final book, of which he was nearing completion when he passed away in October 2017.  It is currently being edited– for anticipated release sometime in 2019– and this week’s post is another exclusive excerpt from his book. This post is adapted from an early chapter of the book, entitled “How To Swim Efficiently.” In this piece, Terry details the origin and evolution of T.I. techniques; their foundations in the laws of physics, fluid dynamics, and biomechanics; the characteristics of an efficient swim stroke; the T.I. “Pyramid of Skills”; and how our approach has been refined over 30 years and thousands of swimmers. Terry also discusses the ease and grace that is typical of the T.I. stroke, noting the popularity (9+ million views) of a YouTube video of TI Japan Founder and Master Coach Shinji Takeuchi demonstrating T.I. freestyle. If you’ve never seen this remarkable video, we’ve embedded it– and another brief video demo by Terry of the “Elements of Effective Swimming”– within this article as vivid illustration of impeccable technique.  Enjoy… and Happy Laps!

How To Swim Efficiently

Five-time Olympic running coach Bobby McGee refers to running as “primal” – something we do well by nature. ChiRunning founder Danny Dreyer talks of helping runners rediscover the instinctively relaxed and efficient way they ran as children.

Swimming is precisely the opposite: As you read in the last chapter, in the water we become energy-wasting machines. To develop a high-efficiency stroke, you must make a conscious choice to eliminate energy waste—and renew that choice every time you swim. You’ll need patience and persistence to resist a return to old habits so that new ones can take root.

This chapter details the origin and evolution of TI techniques; their foundations in the laws of physics, fluid dynamics, and biomechanics; and how they were refined over 30 years and thousands of swimmers.

While the efficiency principles described here apply to all strokes, this book focuses primarily on freestyle.

Seeking Grace

When you’re at the pool, what kind of swimming catches your eye? A swimmer going fast, or one who swims with consummate ease and grace?

On YouTube, the most popular swim video [embedded below] is T.I. Coach Shinji Takeuchi’s “Most Graceful Freestyle,” which has been viewed more than 9 million times since it was posted in 2008. In second place, with some 5 million views, is a video of Michael Phelps which was posted a year earlier. 

Why are so many more people interested in watching an unheralded, middle-aged man than the most decorated swimmer ever? Could it be because grace is a much rarer quality in swimming than speed? And yet—as Shinji, and thousands of other TI swimmers, have shown—grace is attainable, while Phelps’s kind of speed is available only to those with youth, strength, and special talents?

You’ll see countless references to efficiency in these pages. Think of grace as a warmer word for efficiency—and one that’s more accessible. While few of us feel qualified to assess a swimmer’s efficiency, we know it when we see it because all of us feel comfortable recognizing graceful movement vs. ragged or ugly movement.

With human’s baseline efficiency at just 3 percent in swimming, there are nearly limitless opportunities to improve it—with the result of swimming any distance with far more ease and enjoyment, while taking far fewer strokes.

Saving energy will take you almost effortlessly from first strokes, to first comfortable lap, to first mile, and even to a faster mile. When you swim your first continuous mile—and feel energized upon finishing— your stroke is likely to display these characteristics:

Balanced: You feel well-supported by the water—even weightless. This is the characteristic that enables those that follow.

Long: You travel more than the length of your body on each stroke cycle (right plus left arm). When you do, your hand will exit the water, at the conclusion of each stroke, about where it entered.

“Slippery”: You fully extend your bodyline on each stroke, and minimize bubbles, noise, and splash in your stroke.

Integrated: You take each stroke with your whole body—limbs, head and torso–working in seamless coordination, not disconnected parts.

Relaxed: You appear relaxed—never strained–even while swimming at a brisk pace.

And finally, you always feel great while swimming—and better after swimming than before.

A Groundbreaking Way to Learn Efficiency

Prior to 1990, I spent nearly two decades coaching club and college swimmers in their teens and early 20s. My highest-performing swimmers-–especially those who won national championships or achieved world rankings—had the best-looking strokes. That motivated me to prod all my athletes to swim with the best form possible at all times.

In maintaining high technique standards for my athletes, I had the luxury of coaching a group of just 15 to 25 swimmers six days a week. And finally, these swimmers were all from the rarefied group “inside the bubble” who—seemingly from birth—were very much at home in the water.

In the early 1990s, I faced a challenge for which all these years of experience had left me unprepared. At each T.I. weekend workshop, some 20 or more inexperienced and mostly self-coached swimmers showed up seeking instruction. We had just two days to prepare these new swimmers to successfully coach themselves.

This required an entirely new way of teaching swimming technique—a process that:

1) Could be standardized for many swimmers

2) Would quickly solve significant challenges

3) Be simple enough to follow on their own

Using Bill Boomer’s insights as a starting point, T.I. workshops became a laboratory for refining an all-new approach to improving technique.

The Pyramid of Skills 

Learning three skills—in a particular order—has proven to be virtually a sure thing in learning to be efficient. It helps to view these skills as a pyramid.

Balance provides the body control and mental calm essential to learning every skill that follows. Learning Balance replaces the sinking sensation with a comforting sense of feeling ‘weightless’. You accomplish this by working with—instead of fighting—gravity.

Streamline skills come next because water is 880 times denser than air. Why waste energy trying to overpower water resistance when you can reduce it quickly and with relative ease?  You accomplish this by shaping your vessel to slip through a smaller ‘hole’ in the water—and by using your limbs as much for minimizing drag as for creating propulsion.

Propulsion skills follow the others because they require a stable body, a high level of coordination, and keen self-perception. Yet you can learn them with striking ease after establishing Balance and Streamline skills. You accomplish this by originating power and rhythm in the core and by propelling with your whole body, not your arms and legs.

Besides offering a proven way to become efficient, this sequence of skill acquisition offers these advantages:

Immediate Energy Savings

As energy-wasting machines, we must consider the energy cost of every aspect of swimming—starting with our learning process.

Balance skills focus on relaxing, floating, and extending. These require virtually no energy and lead to immediate, significant energy savings. As well, balance is the key to swimming at the equivalent of a runner’s easy “conversational” pace. You could well be swimming farther after 10 to 20 hours of balance practice than following months of endurance training.

Streamlining skills—lengthening and aligning the body– require only slightly more energy than those for Balance. And, because drag–and the power needed to overcome it–increases exponentially as you swim faster, minimizing drag will make your energy savings exponential.

Propulsion actions—those that move you forward—indeed have a greater energy cost than those we use to balance and streamline. We reduce that by using natural forces—primarily gravity and buoyancy—before generating force with our muscles; and by propelling with the whole body, rather than fatigue-prone arms and legs.

Put the Odds in Your Favor

The Balance→Streamline→Propulsion pyramid increases your odds of success in two ways:

• Avoid Failure Points.  One of Tim Ferriss’s key strategies for meta-learning is to avoid common “failure points” at the start. For newer swimmers, the two aspects of swimming most likely to defeat you before you’ve barely begun are kicking and breathing. T.I. technique is explicitly designed to minimize reliance on kicking. And we introduce breathing only when you have the body control and comfort in the water to handle it with aplomb. 

• A Glimpse of Success In The Power of Habit, Charles Duhigg writes that, to replace an undesired habit with an improved one, experiencing a “small win” early provides motivation to persist through challenges you encounter later.  The T.I. learning sequence starts with Balance skills, which reveal how it feels to glide weightlessly and effortlessly. For adult novices, that experience is liberating– even thrilling—and comes as a ray of hope for those who had felt hopeless before.

In the next chapter, let’s move straightaway to learning complete details of the three essential aspects of T.I. Swimming: Balance, Streamlining, and Core Powered Propulsion.

Glad you enjoyed this sneak peak of Terry’s final book– you can learn all the skills of efficient freestyle with the Total Immersion Effortless Endurance Self Coaching Course!

The post How To Swim Efficiently: An Excerpt from Terry’s Final Book appeared first on Total Immersion.

A still from “Cheetahs on the Edge: Groundbreaking Footage of the World’s Fastest Runner”

The key elements of the T.I. approach– balance, streamlining, and propulsion– are based upon the physics of how bodies move through water, a combination of the principles of hydrodynamics and the principles of biomechanics. It’s interesting, then, to see how these key elements of movement science that we emphasize in swimming efficiently can be observed in parallel examples in other areas of life, be it in other sports or in nature. Inspired by the incredible slow-motion footage of cheetahs captured by photographer Greg Wilson in his award-winning video (video embedded below), this December 2012 blog from Terry Laughlin is an insightful analysis of what humans can learn from the world’s fastest runners about cultivating efficient speed– and how there are analogous connections between the natural speed of cheetahs and the consciously-cultivated speed of T.I. swimming. Enjoy this rare footage… and Happy Laps!

Cheetahs on the Edge–Director’s Cut from Gregory Wilson on Vimeo

Technique Tips from the World’s Fastest Runner

Balance and Stability

The cheetah’s head is amazingly stable.
The cheetah’s head-spine line is always moving in the direction of travel

Streamlining 

The cheetah achieves full extension of its bodyline in every stride.
The cheetah uses a compact, relaxed “recovery” (bringing fore paws forward close to the body).

Propulsion

The cheetah runs with its whole body, not its limbs.
The cheetah places its fore paw with striking care — even delicacy. The equivalent in T.I. Swimming is relaxed hands, patient catch, and “gathering moonbeams” (taking care in initiating pressure).

The Lesson

The cheetah sacrifices none of these qualities at its highest speeds and stride rates. In fact it seems to do them most exquisitely when it is moving at maximum speed. It reaches its Maximum Stride Length when it’s also at Maximum Speed — which is, of course, the secret to being the fastest runner on the planet. As we know, human swimmers do exactly the opposite when striving to swim fast. We sacrifice Stroke Length as we increase Stroke Rate– sometimes quite radically. Alain Bernard, while anchoring France’s 4×100 relay in Beijing, being a high profile example; Usain Bolt, in contrast, ran as the cheetah does, achieving his Max Stride Length at max speed. Cheetahs run fast by nature. We must swim fast mindfully.

Additional info about “Cheetahs on the Edge” from director Greg Wilson:

-Winner of the 2013 National Magazine Awards for best Multimedia piece of the year-

Cheetahs are the fastest runners on the planet. Combining the resources of National Geographic Magazine and the Cincinnati Zoo, and drawing on the skills of an incredible crew, we documented these amazing cats in a way that’s never been done before.

Using a Phantom camera filming at 1200 frames per second while zooming beside a sprinting cheetah, the team captured every nuance of the cat’s movement as it reached top speeds of 60+ miles per hour. The extraordinary footage that follows is a compilation of multiple runs by five cheetahs during three days of filming.

For more information about cheetah conservation, visit causeanuproar.com/Director, DP, Producer – Greg Wilson

The post VIDEO: Swimming Lessons From The World’s Fastest Runner appeared first on Total Immersion.