This post was previously published by Terry Laughlin on Apr. 12, 2011. The forum post mentioned is archived.

Few swimmers really pay attention. Opening – or closing – your eyes can change everything.

John shared an exciting discovery about breathing on the TI Discussion Forum:

I’m a bit reluctant to admit it took me a year to come to this insight, but perhaps it will help others. I’ve always struggled to find the right head position for breathing. Sometimes I feel I need to nearly submerge my head to feel balanced, but in that position I feel I can’t get air. I had an ‘aha’ moment last week, when I finally noticed that I close my eyes while breathing.  I began to consciously keep my eyes focused through the breath and it has made a world of difference. Now I can see precisely how far to rotate, when to inhale and when to stop. With my eyes closed, I would turn my head too far, lose balance and then need to recover.

Now, as I rotate toward air, I see the tint of the water change, watch one goggle clear the surface, begin inhaling and close my mouth just as the water closes over it. Suddenly I feel as if I have far more time to breathe and I stay better aligned and balanced. With eyes closed, I didn’t know what I was missing. Too bad it took me a year to figure out. Doh!

John, congratulations, on your invaluable insight – which came over 30 years quicker than it did to me! I can precisely recall the day I had a similar discovery. I was swimming at Lake Minnewaska on Labor Day weekend around 2003. It was chilly – about 54 degrees – and raining steadily. My friend Dave Barra and I were the only two people swimming.

After we’d been swimming about 10 minutes, looking for diversion, I began “scanning” with my eyes as I rotated to breathe. First I noticed that the underside of the surface was dimpled by the rain and found that almost mesmerizing.  Then I kept my gaze keen as my eyes and mouth broke the surface. Like you, I immediately realized this helped me sharpen the timing of the breath and make small adjustments to head position. That has stayed with me ever since.

While your insight will be of value to many, I think you also make a larger point  — The Value of Being Observant.  Paying attention, and consequently noticing things that usually escape your attention is relatively rare among swimmers. This is a result of the common focus on yardage totals, repeat times, intervals, etc. Tuning out to get through it also results when workouts are tedious or lack a clear purpose beyond “getting the yards in.” The fact that it took me 30 years to notice what you noticed after one year is evidence of how pervasive inattention can be.

Be Observant is just another way of saying Swim Mindfully.

And here’s the flip side to your discovery of the value of keeping your eyes open. Have you ever noticed yourself closing your eyes when trying to intensify your focus, usually on a subtle or elusive aspect of technique?

After I began swimming more mindfully, I noticed that during moments of especially keen focus I would instinctively close my eyes. It’s well known that people who lose their sight become far more attuned to sound and feel. For the rest of us, taking away visual input has the effect of making your sense of feel a lot keener. In water — which is literally a sea of sensation — anything that sharpens kinesthetic awareness is invaluable. You can experiment with brief periods of swimming with your eyes closed (when it’s safe to do so) to heighten your sensitivity to sensory input and increase your awareness of the subtleties in your stroke, including how you breathe.

In a previous post on breathing, I also wrote that many people have found it much easier to breathe when they realized they could both inhale and exhale just enough air, and didn’t need to either fill or empty their lungs. The point is really to notice things you may have ignored before. 

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 Sharpen Your Breathing Skills: Open– Or Close– Your Eyes To Heighten Awareness 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.

                            Terry enjoying his “illness-free zone” during his bout with cancer 

Any regular readers of our late founder Terry Laughlin’s original blog will remember that even while living with Stage IV metastatic prostate cancer and its attendant complications– including a small stroke, along with chemotherapy and experimental treatment– he chose to use swimming as a vehicle for maintaining a vibrant sense of well-being, despite all the health challenges he faced on a daily basis. In the last two years of his life, he blogged regularly about his journey with cancer and how swimming was an integral part of feeling good and continuing to live a deeply fulfilling life. In addition to his naturally ebullient personality and intrinsic optimism, his choice to approach living with cancer in this way was inspired by one of his longtime students, Dr. Jeanne Safer. Here’s an excerpt from a July 2017 post– “How To Live A Full and Satisfying Life with Cancer”–in which he describes Jeanne’s lessons with him during her cancer treatment, and his own experience of the “illness-free zone” that swimming created:

In 2010-2011, I’d been privileged to witness a remarkable phenomenon when one of my students, Dr. Jeanne Safer, was diagnosed with breast cancer, and then– shortly after being declared cancer-free– received a diagnosis of leukemia, unrelated to the breast cancer. During two years in treatment, Jeanne rarely ever missed our weekly lesson. She would come to our Swim Studio directly from a treatment session. Though she walked in each time looking utterly drained, she would regain energy and vitality during our hour together. Jeanne referred to the pool as her “illness-free zone.”

I experienced the same thing during 18 uninterrupted months of treatments that were often harsher in their effects than the disease. Though I often felt tired or ill, a stunning transformation would occur while taking yoga class or practicing swimming. Especially while in the pool or lake, I would feel vibrant health.

I’d felt a passion for swimming since adopting a kaizen (continuous improvement) ethos in the early 1990s. Now my gratitude for the ability to swim with flow and grace became boundless. I would feel a magical connection to the water with every stroke. I also brought to swimming the habit I’d learned from yoga and qigong, visualizing healing energy flowing through my body with every stroke.

Since my mid-50s, when I’d reached my (age-adjusted) lifetime performance peak, I’d learned to embrace my physical self—with its gradually diminishing capabilities and increasing limitations through my late 50s and early 60s. That process became dramatically concentrated after my diagnosis and the onset of treatment. It seemed as if I experienced 10 or more years of loss of speed and lessening of endurance in just over a year.

Yet my sense of purpose and the pleasure I took from swimming became, if anything, greater. Even as I proceeded to set new “lifetime slowest” marks in my favorite races and repeat times on almost a monthly basis, I never became complacent about trying to eke out the best performance of which I was capable.

• In March 2016, I swam 1650 yards (equivalent of 1500 scm) two minutes slower than I’d ever swum it before, yet in an Adirondack Masters 60-64 record time of 23:10. I described it in this blog as the most satisfying race of my life, because of the absolutely unwavering concentration it demanded.
• In November, despite training just 3000 to 4000 yards per week, I completed two 10K swims on consecutive days in the Red Sea with Total Immersion Israel. Though I tired after 8K on the first, I finished the second with abundant energy. I told those who swam with me that it was the best day of my life.
• In December, I swam 1650 in a time of 26:57, nearly four minutes slower than previously, yet good enough for an Adirondack 65-69 record and equally satisfying because the time was possible only because of several energy-saving adjustments I’d refined as my endurance and strength went south.

Since April, I’ve been in a clinical trial of an experimental treatment from Germany that, at the moment, seems to be working. I’ve had less pain, fewer days feeling ill, and more energy than in many months. I have no time for anxiety, anger over my situation, nor fear of the future. I’m far too preoccupied with taking pleasure from a glorious season of open water swimming, yoga classes, and my work, creating new TI content. In fact, I’ve been more productive, engaged in—and excited by—writing and video production the past year than at any time in the almost 30 years since I started TI. Life is good!

                           Terry and Jeanne during a lesson at the TI Swim Studio in New Paltz

While Terry did not ultimately survive his bout with cancer, it’s remarkable to recognize that his post above was written just 3 months before he died– his sense of self and zest for life remained intact throughout his cancer journey, and swimming gave him the priceless gift of continuing to live with purpose, passion, and joy until the very end of his life. What more could one ask for? (Except more time– but who doesn’t want that?) Over the years, Terry heard innumerable stories from TI swimmers (particularly in response to his cancer blogs right here)– and many just self-taught, through his books and videos– who had also experienced tremendous healing from swimming in the midst of cancer and other serious illnesses. In the spirit of honoring the feeling of well-being that swimming brought Terry, we’d like to share a letter and interview query from his student Jeanne Safer, a psychotherapist and noted author– and Terry’s inspiration to swim through cancer–  inviting TI swimmers who have experienced healing through swimming with cancer to share their stories as she begins work on a new book about preserving identity through cancer. Any readers interested in sharing their story with Jeanne can send replies directly to her email, which she has included below. Thanks… and Happy Laps!

                                                       TI Swimmer Dr. Jeanne Safer 

Dear Fellow TI enthusiasts,

Anyone who has had the privilege of knowing Terry, whether through his writing, his videos, or in person, knows how he felt about being in the water. For him, swimming was a source of delight, transcendence, and, ultimately, emotional healing—an almost ecstatic experience of being supported and free at the same time. I had the enormous honor of being his student for 15 years, almost from the time the Swim Studio first opened in New Paltz (his daughter Carrie was my first coach, and it was she who helped me overcome my phobia of bilateral breathing, to my eternal gratitude, before I began working with her father). I remember early in our relationship, Terry told me about a friend of his with breast cancer and lymphedema, a painful swelling of the arm after mastectomy. She was a passionate open-water swimmer and he mentioned that he had invited her to come and swim in his pool any time she liked, so she could “experience the healing power of the water.”

Little did I know at the time of that conversation that I was destined to experience that healing power myself. I began swimming with Terry at age 57, and was diagnosed with breast cancer at 63 and acute promyelocytic leukemia at 64; it was my extraordinary good fortune that both were curable.

A large part of those cures, in addition to radiation and Tamoxifen for the breast cancer and a year of intravenous arsenic for the leukemia, was my weekly lessons with Terry throughout both illnesses. The physical and emotional delight and the challenges of working on my freestyle and breaststroke the entire time kept me going. I used to come directly from the hospital after chemotherapy to my lessons and always emerged enlivened, as well as enlightened, afterwards. I christened the water my “illness-free zone,” where I was an athlete rather than a patient. I even had a port installed in order to be able to swim, at the recommendation of a TI coach who was an emergency room physician, despite my doctor’s reluctance. It was the smartest thing I’ve ever done.

I’ve just gotten a contract to write a book I’ve longed to write since those experiences (this will be my eighth book); the working title is Crazy Once A Day: Preserving Identity Through Cancer. In my own life, I have found that swimming—and particularly TI swimming—is a potent way to maintain and enhance identity through the physical and mental trauma of cancer and its aftermath. I would love to hear from and interview other TI swimmers who have discovered “the healing power of the water” through their own experiences of cancer. I want their stories to inspire other cancer patients and survivors to unleash this remarkable force in their lives. If you want to tell your story and inspire others in the process, email me at jsaferphd@gmail.com. I look forward to hearing from you!

Jeanne Safer, PhD is a psychotherapist who has been in private practice for over forty-five years, and the author of seven acclaimed and thought-provoking books on neglected psychological issues—the “Taboo Topics” that everybody thinks about but nobody talks about publicly. Her special areas of expertise include siblings with difficult or dysfunctional brothers and sisters, women making choices about motherhood or who have chosen not to have children, adults struggling about whether to forgive people who have betrayed them, and those coping with the death of a parent. She lectures on these and other unusual and compelling topics.

Dr. Safer’s books include I Love You, But I Hate Your Politics (June 2019); The Golden Condom; Cain’s Legacy: Liberating Siblings from a Lifetime of Rage, Shame, Secrecy and Regret; The Normal One: Life with a Difficult or Damaged Sibling, Beyond Motherhood: Choosing a Life without Children; Forgiving and Not Forgiving: Why Sometimes It’s Better NOT to Forgive; and Death Benefits: How Losing a Parent Changes an Adult’s Life—For the Better. Both The Normal One and Beyond Motherhood were Books for a Better Life Finalists for the year’s best self-improvement books.

Dr. Safer has appeared on television (MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Fox News “Kennedy,” C-SPAN, CNN, The Today Show, Good Morning America, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, and CBS World News Tonight), as a psychological expert on The Montel Williams Show, and on radio (NPR’s Talk of the Nation and The Diane Rehm Show). She has contributed articles to The New York Times, The New York Times Book Review, O: The Oprah Magazine, More Magazine, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and many other publications.

Dr Safer lives in New York City with her husband, historian and political journalist Richard Brookhiser.

RELATED POSTS: 

Terry Laughlin As a Mentor In and Out of the Water– 1/3/18  

Swim for Health and Vitality: Finding Bright Spots Everywhere– 4/13/17

Zero-Cancer Swimming: The Physical Becomes Metaphysical– 8/5/16

“You Can Change Profoundly At Any Age!”– 5/13/16

VIDEO: How Deep Can Swimming’s Impact Be? [WATCH JEANNE’S INTERVIEW BELOW]

The post READER SUBMISSIONS: Has Swimming Helped You Create an “Illness-Free Zone” During Cancer Treatment? appeared first on Total Immersion.

This post was originally published by Terry Laughlin on May 9, 2011 and is a follow-up companion piece to an Apr. 2011 post from Terry that we published two weeks ago.

In my previous post, Stalled Progress? It’s Not a Plateau– It’s a Crossroads, I described the plateau encountered by most people soon after they begin swimming as the place where you can learn lessons and gain insights that will determine your ultimate level of accomplishment and satisfaction as a swimmer. The greatest danger is to assume you’ve gone as far as you’re capable of.

It happened to me 40 years ago, and it took me another 30 years to discover the way out. I started swimming competitively as a 10th grader and never quite escaped the literal slow lane of my relatively undistinguished high school team. I swam the longest event – 400-yard freestyle at the time – and while I wasn’t winning races, at least my times were improving.

When I began college swimming (in late 1968), the stakes and the training increased sharply. Over the next two years my time for the 1650-yard freestyle improved by almost 3 minutes. But in my third year, it improved by only 4 seconds. Going into my final season I resolved to work harder than ever, prevailing on our coach to offer double workouts twice a week. Even so, that year my 1650 time was 20 seconds slower and I fell out of the top 6 at our conference meet. I concluded I’d reached the limits of my ability and ‘retirement’ from competitive swimming came as a relief.

A quarter-century later, looking for lessons about skill-acquisition to pass on to “adult-onset” swimmers, I read several books about martial arts. The most influential was Mastery, the Keys to Success and Long Term Fulfillment by George Leonard. Leonard was a student of Zen who became an Aikido sensei despite beginning study at the advanced age of 47. Leonard writes that fulfillment comes not from achieving a goal but from choosing a challenge that requires your full devotion — which is precisely how I experience improvement-oriented swimming.

Value the Process
Those who decide to pursue Mastery most often do so as a result of encountering that initially frustrating first plateau. Where others may give up and pursue something else or simply accept ‘this is as good as it’s going to get,’ a fortunate few learn to Love the Plateau. After all, as Leonard writes, “If our life is a good one . . . most of it will be spent on the plateau.”  Therefore we should learn “to value, to enjoy, even to love . . . the long stretch of diligent effort with no seeming progress.”

Loving the plateau doesn’t infer complacency. Rather, it means coming to value the process over the product. In the previous article, I quoted a TI Discussion Forum post from “SG” who had improved in a matter of months from swimming two laps to three miles, then over a few more months improved his time for one mile from 40 to 33 minutes. When his progress stalled he experienced his first frustration — and a measure of doubt over whether he could swim any faster. When doubt intrudes, improvement — and commitment — become doubly hard.

As I responded to SG, if he were to improve to 32, 31 or 30 minutes, the thrill of accomplishment might last for 15 seconds after touching the wall and seeing the magic digits on the pace clock – and then be followed by 15 or more hours of practice before seeing another drop. 

The key to maximizing the body-mind-spirit benefits of swimming lies in applying the following five insights to those hours:

• Passionate Curiosity  “I have no special talents; I am only passionately curious.”– Albert Einstein    Are there aspects of swimming you take for granted, do by rote, or simply because you’ve seen someone else doing it? Do you know the  specific benefit of every technique or training method you practice?

• Pursue Improvement  Make it your goal to improve your swimming – not just to show up, check off an item on your to-do list, or complete a certain yardage total – every time you enter the water. If your goal is to get in 3000 yards, that’s all you’re guaranteed to accomplish. If you make it your goal to spend an hour purposefully focused on improvement, your chances of that get a quantum boost.

• Be Specific  The human brain dislikes generalities and thrives on specifics. So when you set an improvement goal, make it explicit. Is it your head position while breathing . . . seeing fewer bubbles in your stroke . . . imprinting a Mail Slot entry . . . or to keep your SPL below 17 in a set of 200s?

• Measure  “What gets measured gets improved,” goes the saying. When you set out to improve something how will you know you’re going in the right direction? Set up feedback loops to keep you on track.

• Trust  When your improvement curve flattens, it’s critical to understand that when you practice with specific, measurable improvement goals change at the cellular level (i.e. neurons in your brain and nervous system) – while not perceptible – is ongoing. At intervals that incremental change consolidates to produce a thrilling forward leap. Between those leaps, the pleasure of total immersion in practice is its own reward.

Take Your Swimming to the Next Level!

Learn the Habits of Mastery and develop expert-level skills with Total Immersion’s 2.0 Freestyle Mastery Complete Self-Coaching Course. Do you love learning, practicing, and swimming the TI Way? Are you excited about attaining personal mastery in the most efficient and exacting skills available in freestyle? Have you mastered the TI Foundations in prior videos or the Effortless Endurance (formerly Ultra Efficient Freestyle) Self-Coaching Course? If yes, the 2.0 Freestyle Mastery Course is for you.

The post “Love the Plateau” (If You Wish to Break Through!) and 5 Traits of the Mastery Mindset appeared first on Total Immersion.

This post was originally published by Terry Laughlin on Mar. 20, 2012.

Since January [in 2012] I’ve been teaching an Effortless Endurance class series at the Greenwich (CT) YMCA — a series of four 90-minute sessions on Saturday afternoons. Every fourth week we begin another series. I’ve benefited personally from repeatedly leading new students through the TI foundational skills, in being reminded of the common challenges facing adults learning to swim in mid-life.

Learning to control your body in the water is is a big one. Learning to control your mind is even bigger. Inez, a participant in the current series, emailed me to report feeling overwhelmed when she went to the pool yesterday to practice the skills we worked on two days earlier in the second session, during which we focused on a Rag Doll recovery, Mail Slot entry and using the extended arm to Separate Molecules. That’s a lot of thinking and coordination.

I wrote back that– when learning a skill as complex and counter-intuitive as swimming– feeling overwhelmed is normal. I felt it as well, back in 1990, when I first realized my stroke needed a complete makeover after 25 years of swimming the traditional way. I discovered then that I needed to learn a new way to think before I could learn a new way to swim.

Between 1965 and 1972, when I was developing my inefficient stroke habits, I did all my swimming in workouts– i.e. racing teammates for a couple of hours each afternoon. In 1990 I swam mostly alone, practicing the drills and skills I was teaching in TI clinics and camps. (Weekend workshops didn’t begin until 1993.) Learning to be alone with my thoughts, undistracted by teammates, was a new experience.

I began my stroke makeover with a focus on head position, which had been forward-looking for 25 years and millions of strokes. I quickly realized that before I could learn a new way to swim, I would need to learn a new way to think — specifically how to “Think About One Thing” and ignore or dismiss other thoughts.

I thought about little else but head position for three months, and didn’t feel that a neutral head position had become my “new normal” for six months. By then, I’d formed two invaluable new habits:

(1) To swim with a neutral head position.

(2) To always leave the wall with One Clear Thought about technique.

(PS: Inez went on to say that after returning from her “overwhelmed” pool practice, she reviewed the video I’d shot Saturday and posted online, and felt encouraged and calmed by seeing how much her form had improved from a week earlier.)

 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 Swim Lesson Isn’t How to Stroke– It’s How to Think One Thought appeared first on Total Immersion.

Editorial Note: This post from the old TI Discussion Forum is archived from 2012, but if you’d like to participate in the current TI Discussion Forum, it is now located on Facebook as “Total Immersion Swimming Technique Discussion Group.”

This post was originally published by Terry Laughlin on Feb. 11, 2012.

The TI Discussion Forum had a query from Werner this morning, who I’m guessing is from Germany. Werner wrote:

Hallo,
I’ve been “on the TI train” for 12 months. Thanks to TI and this Forum I was able to complete 1000 meters of continuous freestyle within six months. My anxious question is: Will it hold?

Is it like biking? My grandma didn’t ride a bike for 55 years but was able to do so again, when someone suggested she do so. So how long will my current swimming success hold?

Thanks for sharing your experiences,
Werner

Here’s my reply to Werner:

Welcome to TI and thanks for engaging with other members of this Forum. As you will soon discover, your fellow TI swimmers are a thoughtful, supportive and generous group and will eagerly share the lessons they’ve learned.

The simplest answer to your question is: No, it will not hold. Quite the contrary, it will improve. Continuously. And likely for decades, not just weeks, months or years. The key is to embrace the most important aspect of the TI philosophy and methodology — Kaizen [continuous, life-long improvement].

Here are 5 Core Principles of Kaizen Swimming:

1) Your goal in every pool session is to improve your swimming – not to complete a certain number of meters or raise your heart rate or any of the traditional goals. As I’ve written many times, “My main thought every time I enter the pool is to be a better swimmer when I leave it an hour later.”

2) Improve by finding and fixing weak points. Those will be more obvious — and easier to fix – in the early stages, and more subtle — and require more patience and more strategic thinking later.

3) Love the “plateau.” This will become more important a few months to a year after you start TI, as the improvements take longer to achieve. You’ll spend weeks, and eventually months, practicing without being conscious of any improvement. During these times, maintain faith that change IS taking place — at the level of neurons. After a period of time that change will consolidate and produce a thrilling forward leap.

4) Become passionately curious. Swimming is the most complex, challenging and non-instinctive of all physical skills. This is because it’s an aquatic skill, while humans are terrestrial mammals. If you tirelessly seek to expand your knowledge and understanding, you’ll enjoy swimming much more, make steadier progress, and be able to have great confidence in your choices.

5) Practice is its own reward. Whatever goals have motivated you to begin swimming, strive to progress to a point where those external goals — while remaining sources of motivation — essentially become beside the point. The motivation that brings you to the pool day after day, year after year, decade after decade is the knowledge that your practice is the high point of your day, it leaves you energized mentally and physically for everything else you do, and–over time–produces enduring positive change in body, mind and spirit.

Happy Laps,
Terry

Find more tips like this in the Ultra-Efficient Freestyle Handbook, a richly-illustrated, easy-to-read 140 page guide to understanding freestyle technique in depth. It comes along with 15 downloadable videos and a learning and practice workbook in our Self-Coaching Toolkit.

The post 5 Principles for Continuous Improvement… for Decades! appeared first on Total Immersion.

This post was originally published by Terry Laughlin on December 14, 2012.

In a post on the TI Discussion Forum forum [from the 2012 archive], Steve asked:

“My practices are limited to 100-meter repeats because I get too winded to swim farther. Though I can swim as much as 2000 meters in a pool session, I still need to stop and rest every 100 meters. How can I swim farther without becoming winded?”

Craig Arnold, a TI enthusiast from the UK replied:

“When swimming a longer distance, why don’t you call it a warm up? That way, you give yourself permission to swim more slowly. Swim with a balance focus, concentrating on a weightless head, then marionette arms, with no splashing or bubbles. When I start out that way, before I know it I’ve swum 1000 meters.”

Craig gives good advice, but his phrase “permission to swim more slowly” is especially powerful. Though I began swimming 47 years ago, it took me over 40 years to give myself permission to swim more slowly.

My good friend Amby Burfoot, the 1968 Boston Marathon champion, long-time editor in chief of Runner’s World for 30 years–and a TI swimmer since turning 60–revealed to me that world-class Kenyan marathoner runners typically warm up for a race at a pace of about 9 minutes per mile—barely more than half their racing speed.

Compared to the Kenyans’ ability to run slowly, I was pretty poor at swimming slowly. At that time, my racing pace for the 1650-yard free was about 1:15 per 100 yards. I realized I never swam at anything remotely close to 2:30 per 100. All of my swimming was in a narrow window between 1:15 and 1:30 per 100. Immediately I decided that henceforth, I would start most practices with up to 10 minutes of swimming at the e-a-s-i-e-s-t pace possible.

The effect was instantaneous. I felt and swam much better in everything that followed. As it happens, my “superslow” pace turned out to be only a few seconds slower. I was amazed how little speed I sacrificed when I went much easier.

Striving to achieve a state of profound relaxation at the start of practice resulted in several surprising benefits:

1. I became hypersensitized to the interaction of my body and the water. I felt as if I was aware of the water at the molecular level.

2. My balance and stability were far better tuned — and I could feel the difference at every faster speed.

3. To swim faster after those initial laps of deep ease, I didn’t have to push the throttle. My pace seemed to pick up effortlessly as I continued.

Within a few months I had swum the 1650 in a pace of 1:12 per 100. Giving myself permission to swim slower made a clear difference in enabling me to swim faster.

Teaching regularly in an Endless Pool, I’ve found it’s a rare student who knows how to swim well . . .  slowly. Students who would finish far behind me in a race cannot keep from crashing into the front of the pool when I set the current at moderate speeds. They find it eye-opening when I turn the current way down and swim in place with impeccable form and no interruption in rhythm.

I explain that there’s a wide spectrum of both power and tempo. The vast majority of swimmers constantly push the upper—or physical–end of the spectrum and ignore the lower—or artful—end. It’s at the lower end where you learn most about how to form a partnership with the water.

3 Specific Ways To Swim Slower

1) Observe your hand speed as you begin your stroke. Allow a moment-of-stillness after you reach full extension, then begin stroking at slowest possible speed and lightest possible pressure.

2) Explore how slowly you can bring your arm forward over the surface, without discontinuity in recovery or instability in balance.

3) If you swim with a Tempo Trainer, turn it down gradually. Can you maintain flow at a tempo of 1.80 strokes per second?

I promise you’ll discover these are exacting skills requiring great focus and great body control. And therefore invaluable to swimming any faster speed.

Find more tips like this in the Ultra-Efficient Freestyle Handbook, a richly-illustrated, easy-to-read 140 page guide to understanding freestyle technique in depth. It comes along with 15 downloadable videos and a learning and practice workbook in our Self-Coaching Toolkit.

The post Permission to Swim Slowly: 3 Ways to Artfully Cultivate Smart Speed appeared first on Total Immersion.

Photo credit: Bob Fagan and USIA Video

This post was originally published by Terry Laughlin on Mar. 22, 2011.

Like previous practices posted, this is another example of a technique-focused Mindful Swimming Practice. These are similar to a series of classes led by me and other TI Coaches at the Multisport World Expo [in 2011] for some 160 swimmers at MIT. All showed visible and measurable improvement– in some cases improving stroke efficiency by over 30%, in others improving 1500m pace by as much as 6 minutes – in just over an hour.

All attendees expressed enthusiasm for being exposed to a refreshing alternative to uninspiring workout formulas based only on how hard or long. One set of classes was based on thoughtfully choreographed series of Focal Points (Mindful Swimming), the other on using Tempo Trainer and Stroke Count exercises to discover combinations of Stroke Length and Rate to create faster paces with less effort. 

This practice is devoted entirely to increasing sensitivity and awareness of how your hands enter, extend and find a grip.

Warmup/Tuneup 300 “Add Fingers” 
Do a continuous 300 or 12 x 25 or anything in between. Do 2 rounds of the following series:

25 Fist, 25 1-finger, 25 2-fingers, 25 3-fingers, 2×25 Full hand.

Focus: Round 1, concentrate on improving your sense of holding water as ‘grip’ area increases. Round 2, you may count strokes instead. Or both.

Narrow Focus Swim 6 to 8 x 25 of any 3 of the following Focal Points. Practice those you choose in the order given.

• Hang Hands Keep hands relaxed (not stiff) with fingers loosely separated (not closed).
• Mail Slot Cut a ‘slot’ in the water with fingertips. Slip forearm through that slot.
• Bubble-Free Watch for bubbles as you extend. Try to eliminate if you see.
• Light and Lazy Hand should feel weightless as it floats ‘lazily’ forward.
• Wide Tracks After Mail Slot entry, extend your relaxed hand so outside of wrist and elbow bones are wide of your shoulder. Avoid the center.
• VW Beetle Visualize the hood of a VW Bug. Slide your hand across the hood and down to the bumper as you extend.
• Patient At full extension, pause hand for a nanosecond before stroking. Begin pressing back as slowly and gently as possible.

Combined Focus Combine your three focal points as follows:
2 rounds of [3 x 50 (50 of each) + 2 x 75 (25 of each)]
Test your ability to transition smoothly from one focus to another and sense a distinct difference in your stroke as you do.

Extended Focus
Choose favorite Focal Point and swim [4 x 25 + 3 x 50 + 2 x 75 + 1 x 100]
Test your ability to sustain both focus and an improved sensation for a gradually increasing distance or duration.

Optional: Do this set a second time with Tempo Trainer set at a tempo of your choosing. Rather than count SPL, do this to test whether the addition of Tempo beeps aid in maintaining focus.

See closeups of Mail Slot, Bubble Free, Light and Lazy, Wide Tracks, Relaxed Hands from :20 to 1:20 of this video:

The post PRACTICE SET: Guaranteed to Develop “Smarter” Hands and Improve Your Grip on the Water appeared first on Total Immersion.

Over past couple weeks, we’ve shared excerpts from a companion instructional manual that Terry Laughlin created for T.I. workshop attendees, adapted from his 2006 book, “Extraordinary Swimming for Every Body.” The purpose of the supplementary material in this manual was to provide practical suggestions to guide T.I. swimmers through the first several weeks or months following a T.I. workshop (or after learning with T.I. self-teaching tools). This week’s post is another excerpt from that manual, focused on the first phase of Kaizen (Continuous Improvement) Training: Energy Conservation. In this article, Terry details the importance of spending time on balance, comfort, and relaxation. From this solid foundation, one can build a stable, fluid, and efficient stroke… and be well-positioned to then cultivate advanced stroke mastery, increase distance, and increase speed. We’ll go in-depth on those latter topics next week, when we’ll share another post in this continuing series of excerpts from Terry’s workshop manual on Kaizen Swimming. Enjoy… and Happy Laps! 

SELECTED EXCERPT FROM:

“KAIZEN SWIMMING: HOW TO MAKE THE MOST OF YOUR TOTAL IMMERSION WORKSHOP” 

This part of the Workshop Manual will guide you through the first several weeks or months of training after your T.I. workshop (or after beginning T.I. practice with self-teaching tools). Pages 136-164 of the T.I. book Extraordinary Swimming for Every Body (“ES4EB”) also includes detailed guidance on how to plan a Kaizen Training program for the long term. Here’s an overview of what do in the first few weeks or months of your T.I. practice.

PHASE I: ENERGY CONSERVATION

Every workshop alum (or self-taught T.I. swimmer) should devote at least 10 to 20 hrs of practice to balance, comfort, and relaxation. (Some swimmers have remained at this level for a year or two without stagnating.) Your goals are to eliminate discomfort and tension and develop basic habits of efficient, fluent movement. For many swimmers, drills are essential for this, but whole-stroke can be helpful too. The specific foundations you should form include:

(1) Make breathing routine so it doesn’t distract you while working on other foundations.

(2) Create effortless support or balance by imprinting a neutral head position and the right position on the “track” for your relaxed extended hand.

(3) Make long, “slippery” bodylines a habit by learning to “pierce the water” with your spearing arm and follow the “track” with your bodyline.

(4) Make whole-body propelling movements a habit.

TOOLS

30% Balance Drills to learn balance and imprint sleek bodylines

40% Switch Drills- Focus on minimizing drag and turbulence, and becoming “patient” in trapping water

20% Mindful Swimming (whole stroke with focal points) to transfer awareness gained in drills into whole stroke

10% Stroke Counting to measure your improvements in efficiency and compare the effectiveness of various focal points

PRACTICE TIPS (for more guidance, read pgs. 115-135 of Extraordinary Swimming for Every Body)

Efficient, fluent swimming starts with exploring basic movements and positions with a sense of curiosity– and no sense of urgency. Whenever you feel discomfort during a drill, your natural reaction will be some kind of compensation– craning your neck, sculling, kicking too hard. These unconscious reactions imprint energy-wasting movements on our nervous system. 

Patience in mastering basic skills may be natural to martial artists and dancers, but not to most swimmers. I only came to appreciate its value after a few years of regular yoga practice. The most beneficial goal for your first 10 to 20 hours of pool time following the workshop (or after first working with T.I. self-teaching tools) might be to make mindful, examined movement a habit. Don’t count laps or watch the pace clock; focus purely on sensation and awareness– aiming to reduce effort and increase flow. Your period of concentrated drill practice may last a few weeks for some students, several months for others. Your drill practice will benefit greatly if you follow these guidelines:

• Short repeats. 25s or less for the first week or two, and seldom longer than 50s.

• Short sets. To maintain acute attention, change your focus regularly. Alternate tasks that require intense focus, with less exacting ones.

• Clear focus. Think about doing just one thing well on each length. Break it down finely. (e.g. on Switch Drills, you could divide your focal points into soft arms on recovery, recovering arm deep and slow, leading with your elbow, slicing your hand to your target, and tipping your fingers down.

• Ignore the clock. Use “yoga breaths” to regulate your rest interval between repeats. 3 to 5 breaths should be sufficient. 

* To continue reading about the progression of Kaizen Training, click here for the blog post on “Phase 2: Develop Your Stroke”

Advance beyond the basic T.I. skills with this comprehensive guide on pursuing the kaizen path of swimming to the highest levels of swimming mastery: 

Terry Laughlin’s book– Extraordinary Swimming for Every Body– shows you how!

The post Kaizen Training: Priority #1– Conserve Energy appeared first on Total Immersion.

Last week we shared an excerpt from a companion instructional manual that Terry Laughlin created for T.I. workshop attendees, adapted from his 2006 book, “Extraordinary Swimming for Every Body.” The purpose of the supplementary material in this manual was to provide practical suggestions to guide T.I. swimmers through the first several weeks or months following a T.I. workshop (or after learning with T.I. self-teaching tools). Continuing in this vein, this week’s post is another concise excerpt from that manual and is focused on the shift in mindset as you get started with Kaizen (Continuous Improvement) Training, after learning the basics of T.I. fundamentals– and illustrates the contrasting benefits of pursuing a Kaizen Training approach instead of a traditional training approach. In the coming weeks, we’ll continue to share more excerpts from the manual on Kaizen Swimming, including the topics of energy conservation, and increasing mastery, distance, and speed. Enjoy… and Happy Laps!  

 SELECTED EXCERPT FROM:

“KAIZEN SWIMMING: HOW TO MAKE THE MOST OF YOUR TOTAL IMMERSION WORKSHOP” 

KAIZEN EQUALS PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

I’ve emphasized that T.I. Swimmers have a very different mindset from most swimmers. Our paradigm for training is no less distinctive. Those training the T.I. way are not only improving steadily, but also enjoying it more than ever. In a few words, we believe in the pursuit of pleasure, rather than pain. This section provides guiding principles for maximizing the value– and enjoyment– of every hour you spend in the pool (or open water).

Expect improvement. Most adult swimmers have become resigned to swimming year after year with little to show for it. A T.I. Swimmer’s goal should be Kaizen (continuous improvement) Swimming. Because swimming offers limitless opportunities for solving the UHSP (Universal Human Swimming Problem) and increasing self-awareness, you could continue gaining in Mastery for decades. I still make exciting advances every year, and still sense almost limitless possibilities for further improvement. The refinements I’m making are fairly subtle, but my capacity for fine distinctions in position and timing has increased steadily. My current focus is on greater relaxation, especially when swimming faster.

CLEAR THINKING

There’s a great deal of “folklore” about swimming technique and training. One goal of T.I. instruction is to replace those misconceptions with clarity on how swimming works and to make that knowledge the basis for effective goal-setting. Since I entered my 50’s, I’ve begun every practice with two conscious intentions. Since I made this my practice– at an age when most swimmers are slowing down– my improvement not only continued, but accelerated. 

Intention #1: My intention in every practice is to swim better than I ever have in my life. Setting the bar that high keenly concentrates one’s mind. Since I adopted that intention, I’ve enjoyed great fulfillment– and even excitement– in virtually every practice. A key to making this happen is to never push off a wall without a specific purpose.

Intention #2: My intention on every set and repeat is to accomplish whatever task I set for myself (whether technique, stroke count, time, or some combination) with as little effort as possible. In conventional training, the goal is typically to work harder, to increase physiological capacity. But time and energy are finite, while opportunities to increase efficiency are virtually infinite. After more than 40 years, I’m still improving my sense of how to swim more economically. 

 WHAT ABOUT FITNESS?

In writing about training, I don’t mean to suggest that fitness is unimportant. But instead of training to “get in better shape,” train to improve your swimming. Conditioning will be something that happens to you while you improve your swimming. To illustrate:

Redefine Endurance. Webster’s defines endurance as “the ability to sustain a prolonged stressful effort or activity.” T.I. defines Swimming Endurance as “the ability to repeat effective swimming movements for a duration and speed of your choosing.” That definition places as much importance on nervous system development as on aerobic system development. The critical difference is that when you train the nervous system, the aerobic system also receives the training it needs; when you train the aerobic system, there’s no guarantee that the nervous system will be trained the way you wish.

Ideal for Fitness Swimming. Many of those who take our workshops swim purely for fitness, rather than speed or performance. A common question among fitness swimmers is: “If I swim easier, will I lose fitness?” You won’t– and here’s why: 

(1) A quality workout is one that makes good use of the body. T.I. practice makes better use of the body than conventional workouts, minimizing the chances of injury and increasing the likelihood that you’ll be able to do healthful training consistently.

(2) Motivation matters. If you enjoy and are engaged by your fitness routine, you’ll continue for the long term; if you don’t enjoy it, you’ll lose interest. Kaizen– Continued Improvement– Swimming will keep your interest higher than conventional training that you do simply because “it’s good for you.”

(3) Increasing intensity is always an option. Once you begin to master the basics of efficient T.I. swimming, you’ll find yourself able to swim longer– and faster– with less fatigue. 

Should I Increase Yardage? In Kaizen Training, the primary reason for swimming more yards is to increase opportunities to imprint efficient movement. Will fitness increase as you do so? Yes, but your swimming will benefit only if that increased fitness accompanies increased skill. So if increased yardage causes you to compromise form, don’t swim those distances until you can do so and maintain good form.

Advance beyond the basic T.I. skills with this comprehensive guide on pursuing the kaizen path of swimming to the highest levels of swimming mastery: 

Terry Laughlin’s book– Extraordinary Swimming for Every Body– shows you how!

The post Conventional Training vs. Kaizen Training: Maximize the Value and Enjoyment of Your Practice appeared first on Total Immersion.