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.

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.

                                  “The Sunhawk III”

Streamlined T.I. stroke                       Streamlined Solar Car designed by Mike Otis’s students

Our daughter Katie’s journey into the world of sports began as a small, skinny 4 year old. We first hit the soccer field with a general feeling of anxiety, not having any idea what to expect. Well, this journey was short lived, as Katie had more interest watching everything except the ball! Next up: Softball. Let’s just say that the dandelions got more attention… In her defense, she got hit in the face with the ball within the first 5 minutes, from a hard-throwing young rising star. She did stick it out for a few seasons, but in the end, so much for ball sports.

As a kid, I was much like my daughter– not real great at ball sports, but I had always taken well to the water. So in looking for sports that didn’t involve a ball, we were naturally drawn to swimming. Why not “like father, like daughter?” At first, we just wanted her to learn to swim– as everyone should. Learning to swim didn’t come without its own challenges: either the water was too cold or she was afraid to put her head under. To our relief, however, something finally clicked, and after a few lessons, she started to take to the water like a fish.

Of course, we needed to run with this new-found skill set and get her involved with other kids with similar interests– so we entered the world of competitive swimming! Summer rec league, to start… and what a start! Right out of the gate, first race, she won her heat, and that was all it took– you could see she was filled with pride! As we became more involved with swimming, it became apparent to us that proper technique would be critical as Katie progressed further into the sport. There is really no reason to commit hundreds– or thousands– of hours of training your mind and muscles to work a certain way, only to find out later that your form is inefficient. It would be much harder to correct these stroke inefficiencies later on, so why not learn the right methods from the start? Enter the Total Immersion Swim Studio!

So, just how did we get involved with the Total Immersion Swim Studio? At about the same time Katie was getting into swimming, I was fully involved as the faculty advisor for our university’s international solar car program and racing team. Just like with Katie and swimming, we were late to the game and had to play catch up. A lot of the technologies could be bought – solar array, electric motor, electronics, and batteries; but what made the real difference is how you handled the inefficiencies. Every little loss of efficiency mattered – aerodynamic drag, rolling resistance, weight and balance. Being an engineer who uses research as one of the most valuable tools, I hit the books and quickly found an e-book by Terry Laughlin:  “Swim Ultra-efficient Freestyle! The Fishlike Techniques From Total Immersion.” [Kindle version HERE]  I became immersed in the book and couldn’t put it down. Everything made total sense to me, as the approach taken to learning to swim efficiently was very similar to the design of an efficient solar car! One thing that stood out was the importance of your body’s hydrodynamics in the water and how it relates to nature – exactly the same approach to the aerodynamic design of the solar car’s body. The whole idea of efficiency and how it relates to swimming was well thought out and addressed in Terry’s book.

But the best was yet to come! When I first picked up the book, I didn’t realize that the Total Immersion Swim Studio (TISS) was located less than ten miles from where we live. People travel from all over the world to be trained here– what a find! So we reached out to the TISS and set up a meeting. We were greeted at the door by “Miss Alice,” Terry’s wife, and felt an immediate connection. Her enthusiasm was infectious and we couldn’t wait to get started!  Miss Alice taught Katie early on how important it was to be an efficient swimmer. She introduced the same techniques that were taught to the adults in T.I. instruction, but at a level that Katie could understand–  some teaching drills which stood out were: “Shark fin / Swordfish” [Skating/Switch drills] for her freestyle, and “Show me your shoulders” [emphasizing core rotation] for backstroke.

After a few successful years of summer rec swimming, Katie asked to join our local year round competitive age group swim team, and about that same time she was introduced to “Miss Betsy,” Alice and Terry’s youngest daughter.  They had immediate chemistry as “coach to student” and “friend to friend” – which they still enjoy to this day! Katie is currently working on stroke refinement techniques and hopes to one day swim competitively in college and maybe help out at the Swim Studio!

The big takeaways we get from this adventure of watching our daughter progress through the world of swimming are:

• She has found something that she is successful at, which makes her proud!
• She has had great coaches along the way– summer rec, year-round age group, and at the Total Immersion Swim Studio!
• She, and we, have made many great friends!
• She has become a very elegant and efficient swimmer, able to effortlessly swim more than a mile, non-stop, when she was just 10 years old.
• At the pool you can always spot the swimmers that have had TI training.
• More than anything, we just love to watch her swim!

 About her own perspective as a swim student learning with Total Immersion, Katie writes:

 The Total Immersion Swim Studio has improved my swimming by an incredible amount. I remember when I first started swimming competitively on a summer recreation team when I was an 8 year old– I was pretty new to swimming, so I had terrible technique.  My dad noticed that I was really interested in swimming, so he decided to research it more. He eventually stumbled across a book written by Terry Laughlin and was intrigued. He bought the book, looked over some of the technique tips, and decided that we should start going to Total Immersion.  The coaches– Alice and Betsy Laughlin–were so nice to me and showed me lots of new ways to improve my swimming.  By the next year on the summer rec team, I had already improved so much because of what Total Immersion had taught me, so my parents decided to sign me up for a year-round swimming club.  During my experiences at Total Immersion, I learned so much about stroke technique and muscle memory and I would definitely recommend going to TI since I’ve greatly benefited from my time there.

(T.I. swimmer Katie Otis, father Mike Otis, mother Lisa Otis)

Katie Otis, a longtime swim student at the Total Immersion Swim Studio in New Paltz, NY, is a 7th grader whose favorite subjects are math and reading. Her favorite sport is swimming and her favorite stroke is butterfly. Her favorite pastime when not in school or swimming is hanging out with friends. Katie’s father, Mike Otis, is an engineering professor at SUNY New Paltz and swim dad, and his favorite pastime when not working or at the pool is traveling with the family and enjoying outdoor sports. Katie’s mother, Lisa Otis, is a 4th grade special ed teacher and her favorite pastime when not working or at the pool is doing fun things with the family.

The post Guest Post: What’s The Link Between Efficient Swimming & Efficient Solar Car Design? appeared first on Total Immersion.