This was post was originally published by Terry Laughlin on Jan. 25th, 2013.

Earlier this week a large number of TI coaches around the world received the same email from someone who identified himself as a contractor with an on-line outsourcing agency called oDesk. His message was as follows:

I am conducting research for a USA Swimming coach, who asked me to inquire the following from Total Immersion coaches:

1. Persons that you have coached using Total Immersion technique that are past or current world record holder or NCAA Division I Champions

2. Major accomplishments of each of those athletes listed in question #1 (example:  “Former World Recorder Holder in the 200 meter backstroke”).

I was among those receiving this message but chose not to respond. However, a few TI coaches did take the time to answer, including Peter Hendricks of Melbourne, Australia, who eloquently expressed how our value system differs from that reflected in the query:

I’m struck by how your query infers that the only meaningful measure of success in swimming is winning a World Championship, or whether it can be measured by your time for 100, 200 or 400 Metres.

Rather than focus on teaching the .01% of the population that might win a World Championship, TI coaches strive to teach a proven method that works to countless other people for whom simply swimming with ease and enjoyment would be a great gift. TI is also about swimming every stroke with clear purpose . . . whether for health, enjoyment, or competition.

My reward is knowing I’ve taught hundreds of students, most of them adults, to swim the distance of their choosing in a relaxed and efficient manner. I relish the fact that hundreds of people now enjoy swimming more than anything else. And that hundreds of my students, for whom the swim leg was formerly a “show stopper,” have since realised their dream to participate in triathlons.

I learnt how to swim, with TI, at the age of 42. At the time a single 50-metre lap would leave me exhausted. Now I swim 5, 10 and 20 Km Open Water Marathons against World Champions. While I don’t beat them, I know that I love every stroke I take. How many NCAA champions can say that?

It was because I was so thrilled by this transformation that I became a TI Coach and am now helping others join me in these marathons. Accomplishments like these mean more to me than the prospect of coaching a single person to elite status.

And here’s a pic of Peter with six of his swimmers, taken after all seven completed the 11.2km (7 miles) Bloody Big Swim Marathon in Melbourne.

Just as I was about to publish this post, I received this email from Sun Sachs of Beacon, NY, a perfect complement to what Peter Hendricks wrote about why TI coaches feel our work has inestimable value:

Today it’s been 30 days since I came to your Total Immersion Swim Studio in New Paltz to take a workshop with Alice Laughlin. Since then, by practicing your drills and whole stroke with your focal points, I’ve improved my stroke count for 25 yards by almost half.  At your recommendation, I’ve also been using the tempo trainer, beginning with a tempo of 1.7 (sec/stroke) and gradually working my way to 1.4.  

What used to be a stressful and unpleasant experience– and one in which I swam for 18 years with no improvement– has turned into an adventure. Not just the improvement, but even more that I enjoy swimming so much now that after each session, I count the hours until I can “play” in the water again.  

I also notice how little sense it makes to swim the traditional way. All around me I see others grinding out laps, stroking awkwardly and craning their neck for every breath. I wonder at their willingness to waste energy on something that looks, and– I know from experience– feels unpleasant. But then I understand why. At the pool where I swim, this poster is hung prominently on the wall for inspiration, along with others that assert “Oxygen is overrated” and “Swim Now Die Later.” 

While these messages are intended to inspire, they completely miss the point. Why do so many people still think this way? Meanwhile, I enjoy every stroke and anticipate more of those magical moments when everything comes together and I understand what it means to be in harmony with the water.

TI has literally changed my life and I can’t wait to put it into practice this summer in triathlons and who knows what else.  What a gift.

Transform Your Entire 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 How Do You Define “Success” in T.I. Swimming? appeared first on Total Immersion.

Mark Fromberg coaching an open water swim clinic at Okanagan Lake, Jun. 2012

Guest blogger and T.I. Swimmer Dr. Mark Fromberg lives in the Okanagan Valley of British Columbia and first learned to swim in 2004 at the age of 49, through practicing exercises in the learn-to-swim sequence in Total Immersion’s “Happy Laps” video. Since then, he has swum in many long-distance open water events and raced in triathlons, including some world championship events. Most notably, Mark has become the longest term director of Kelowna’s “Across The Lake Swim,” Canada’s largest open water swim event, and recognized in 2015 as one of the “World’s Top 100 Open Water Swims” by openwaterpedia.com. As a retired physician, he has also provided medical support for dozens of triathlons, including the Kona Ironman World Championships. From October to May, he swims with his local triathlon club twice a week and enjoys trying to keep up with club members half his age. From May to September, he swims in the Okanagan Lake 2-3 times a week, mostly for fitness and relaxation, and often accompanies novice swimmers who need to build their open water swim confidence. He’s recently started to kiteboard and hopes to get good enough to travel to some fantastic kiteboarding meccas—in addition, he also plans to pursue scuba diving certification, something he could never have considered when he was younger!

Mark pausing during a swim at at Gellatly Bay, Okanagan Lake, Sept. 2016

I just read the T.I. blog posted today regarding the common theme of how swimming changes people’s lives, so I thought I would respond to share the story of how swimming changed my life. For me, it was one of Terry Laughlin’s older T.I. DVDs—“Happy Laps”—that changed everything for me. In early September of 2004, I was playing an extended game of squash with a younger and fitter opponent, when I had an awkward twisting injury to my back as I lunged into a corner to try to return a ball. Fatigued and dehydrated by that point, I had to stop due to the acute spasms and my sudden inability to even walk normally, or get into and out of my car. For 3 weeks I couldn’t do anything physical at all—even walking, sitting, and rolling over in bed caused sharp back spasms. After just a week of this, with no ability to exercise, I was going into some kind of exercise withdrawal—I had to do something. So, even though I didn’t swim, I thought I would find some rehab value in just walking chest deep in a pool, since I used to work in a rehab center where this was a common strategy. I discovered I could walk easily in the pool and both floating and doing basic breast strokes were pain-free, as well. So learning to swim became my salvation to recovering from my back injury.

But even before I had started lessons, I found myself asking what it was about me that kept me a non-swimmer all this time. I recalled having a couple of YMCA-sponsored free swimming lessons when I was 7 or 8 years old, in a public, unheated outdoor pool in Vancouver, in a group situation that really didn’t allow for much individual coaching.  Needless to say, I didn’t get far, and only remember how afraid I was of being asked to go into the deep end. The one time I was asked to tread water there for just a minute, I was all but exhausted as a result of how frantically I was moving, afraid I would sink to the bottom if I didn’t. Although nothing bad happened, I never learned to relax in the water and, as a skinny kid, I never enjoyed the coldness of the water either. And deep water? Not me! When I decided to learn to swim as an adult, I remember thinking how embarrassed I often felt about my non-ability to swim, and since my own kids were both in early adolescence then, about to start their Bronze Cross training to become pool lifeguards, I wondered how it was possible that they could be such naturals in the water, while I was not. Since I have always prided myself on being able to learn anything I put my mind to, I decided to take on this challenge to learn to swim: for rehab for my back pain, to end my chronic embarrassment, and to not be the “weak link” of the family in the water.

  [Click HERE to check out this video Mark used to learn to swim– click HERE to download the free user’s manual]

So before I showed up for the first day of lessons at the local community center, I resolved to find some kind of easy-to-understand study guide for beginners like me. That is how I came across Total Immersion’s learn-to-swim DVD called “Happy Laps”—I actually no longer have it because I lent it out to other beginners a few times too many and lost track of it years ago! However, what I still remember in the video was a sequence with a middle-aged, non-athletic-looking African-American woman who followed a very simple and logical progression over what appeared to be only a single session in the pool, and then she was swimming by the end. Seeing that was very inspiring for me– despite my 49 years of age at the time, and despite my successes in health and fitness in a variety of milieus, I was still completely stumped by swimming. It was a sport that I just had not been able to master, or even feel comfortable with, for no explicable reason I could discern. I thought I was smart enough, fit enough, competent enough, and still young enough to learn something that kids could do, and yet… something was missing.

Mark enjoying a midsummer swim in Okanagan Lake, Jul. 2016

When I watched the practice sequence in the “Happy Laps” video over and over again, I recall saying to myself, with each progressive drill, “I can do that”… “I can do that”… “I can do that…” and “I can do that”… all the way to the end of the sequence. When I signed up for some local learn-to-swim lessons at the community center, armed with what I had learned from Terry’s instructional video, I became a swimmer very quickly! I went from maxing out after a gasping, frantic, anxiety-provoking 25 meters to 400 meters of calm stroking just a half hour later.  I was a swimmer!!  Something I could never have said for the previous 5 decades of my life. I did my first sustained, relaxed swim around my 49th birthday, but in the year following, by joining the local masters swim club, I really learned the finer details of swim strokes to the point that I could do a triathlon just a few months shy of my 50th birthday.

Thinking back to my university years in an undergraduate kinesiology program, there were a couple of occasions where I did ask swimmer-classmates to teach me how to swim. And although they were happy to oblige, they would focus just on the arm strokes, without any discussion of how to integrate breathing—so my frustrations continued back then. I find that adult swimmers who learned to swim as kids do not recall what they learned way back when— for example, forcefully and completely exhaling in the water eventually feels natural as a kid, but it sure doesn’t for an adult swimmer. Thanks to the exercise hiatus that was forced upon me when I strained my back, I finally wanted to get to the bottom of what I was not understanding about swimming, so I decided to read about it, and then watch instructional videos about it, both courtesy of Terry’s T.I. teachings.

I must say that, for me anyway, successfully learning how to swim has first and foremost been a conceptual exercise, much of which can be done as a thought exercise without being anywhere near water. In fact, in recent years, I have conceptually “taught” swimming to people who were interested in learning, even while chatting with them socially—by simply telling them the sequence that appeared in “Happy Laps,” combined with what wound up being a similar process in my community pool lessons. I would ask them, “Do you think you could blow bubbles into water, for 5 minutes, while standing in chest deep water and holding on to the edge of a pool? Where the only rule is, every exhalation has to be in water?”  Then I’d ask, “Okay, if you can do that, can you do the same, but not hanging on to the edge of the pool?”  “Can you do it while walking in the shallow end of the pool?” “Can you do it while floating on your side/back with flippers on for easy propulsion, with one arm extended, in the shallow end of the pool?”  And so on.  Most beginners, like I did when I saw the video, would embrace the baby steps of progression, responding “Yes, I can do that.” Prior to even getting in the pool, I had watched the steps on the DVD again and again, and then, while in the pool, the consistent instruction made it easier to believe in it as the right way of doing it—so I progressed very quickly.

  Mark savoring the open water near Tulum, Mexico, Jan. 2016

A major epiphany I had when first learning to swim was realizing that my breathing rate and pattern would dictate my arm stroke frequency, and not the other way around—a simple lesson that took 4 decades to understand! Once again, learning to swim was actually conceptual for me, much more so than physical, although I did need to get comfortable with being more forceful in breath exhalation when my face was in the water than when it was in the air. In my experience, once you shore up and believe in a principle that makes sense, it is easy to progress, even rapidly. My first “aha!” moments were:

• that breathing control is of paramount importance—these days, I teach that it is the only thing that matters—if you do not have breath control, you can’t swim

• that breath control can be quickly lost if you are not fully committed to full and complete, forceful exhalations (lest you build up CO2, which quickly gets you short of breath)

• that breath control can be quickly lost with the shock of cold water, so ease into it, and do some easy strokes to get used to the cold and establish your breathing

• that swimming is probably the only sport where breathing matters—a lot—and cannot be taken for granted

• to manage a sustained (especially open water) swim, you must stay relaxed, so that your breathing stays under control

Learn about breathing in our video “O2 in H2O: A Self-Help Course on Breathing in Swimming” 

After learning to swim, I went on to tackle things that I had previously thought would be impossible for me–swimming in distance open water swim events (I have swum across Okanagan Lake in B.C. about 20 times, and I swim along its shores for exercise every summer), and racing in triathlons, including some world championship events. Learning to swim, and feel comfortable swimming in open water has been one of the most liberating experiences I have ever had—swimming was once a challenge that for so long seemed insurmountable, and now it is a part of my life, a great exercise, and a great reminder of what you can attain if you believe you can succeed.

Mark at the finish of Beijing ITU Aquathon World Championships, Sept. 2011

When I swim in the lake now, even when I am with others, I am really swimming by myself—I feel embraced by the water, one with the water. I do not feel it is my enemy, or that it is out to get me; instead, I feel for what it wants to show me, what it is doing that day, whether with waves, swells, or currents. I give myself to it freely, since I have confidence in my abilities now that I never had before. Just like the Japanese concept of “shinrin-yoku,” [which means “forest-bathing” — see link here: http://www.shinrin-yoku.org/] I think swimming in open water has a remarkably meditative quality, allowing you to connect with the primordial soup from which we all evolved. Just like the intangible, calming experience of communing with nature within a forest canopy, regular open water swimming has a profound effect on people that is hard to describe in words. But I am sure every one of the T.I. instructors, and certainly Terry himself, would have been intimately acquainted with this experience.

Since my transcendent experience 15 years ago, I have become deeply involved in nurturing Kelowna’s “Across the Lake Swim,” becoming its longest term director, while growing it from about 250 swimmers, to now over 1200 per year–and becoming Canada’s largest open water swim in the process.  Because of the many unique attributes we have incorporated into the event, most especially our obsession with safety, a de-emphasis on racing (we call it an event, not a race), a 6 week training period in open water, unparalleled swag, and an inclusive, supportive environment, we were recognized in 2015 as one of the “World’s Top 100 Open Water Swims” by openwaterpedia.com. In addition, all of our proceeds go toward supporting swimming lessons for kids in our area.  Last year, we sent 3000 3rd and 4th grade kids in our region for a series of lessons, as our way of both: 1) drown-proofing a generation of kids in our community– Okanagan Lake, being a tourist town, is the most-drowned-in lake in British Columbia; and 2) exposing everyone here to the gift of swimming from a young age, a sport and experience they can enjoy for life. We consider swimming as a life skill. As a primary care physician, I frequently counseled older people to consider swimming as a great exercise for those with chronic health problems, but I was always dismayed when I would hear the retort similar to, “I could never do that.  I am petrified of water.” So we want to change that too.

In fact, in June 2015, the Doctors of British Columbia’s Council on Health Promotion advised us that our Across The Lake Swim Society was selected as the 2015 recipient of the Doctors of British Columbia’s Excellence in Health Promotion Award – Nonprofit category. They stated that, “We felt your program is of great importance to youth growing up in the Central Okanagan, and ensures prevention of needless fatalities in your region. This program also empowers children to live healthier lifestyles and experience the benefits of regular activity that will hopefully continue into their adult life. We consider you a very deserving recipient of the award and would be honoured to present it to you at the Doctors of B.C. Awards ceremony and banquet…”

Mark directing the start line of Kelowna’s “Across The Lake Swim” in 2016

I especially enjoy the teaching aspect of open water swimming to the many adults that, like me, need to get over a mental hump to become a competent swimmer, and they use our event as the “bucket list” item to prove that they can do it. Last year, I even wrote a book on how to become less anxious and more confident when swimming in open water, and stated several times throughout it how learning to swim in open water will change your life [link to book in blogger bio below]. Since I am a recently retired physician, I have also taken a medical interest in swimming, and especially open water swimming. I have provided medical support for dozens of triathlons, including the Kona Ironman World Championships, Ironman Canada for three years, and Kelowna Apple Triathlon Canadian National Championships. In that time, I became aware of the unsettling trend of triathletes dying in the swim portion of their event, well before fatigue or dehydration would normally be expected to occur. I personally reviewed virtually every one of these cases in the hope to gain a better understanding of these deaths, so we could take the necessary steps to reduce risk at our open water event. I eventually wrote about this in another book as well, to reassure aspiring open water swimmers that most risks are preventable [link to book link in blogger bio below].

Here are some further insights I’ve had in more recent years:

1) Recognizing just how many adults have never learned this life skill of swimming because they never understood the breathing aspects that I think are pivotal. I always get excited hearing of someone who has reached the same barrier that I did 15 years ago, since I know how to fix them!

2) Discovering just how liberating learning to swim is—I am more willing to take on learning challenges, I enjoy the water like never before, and I find extended open water swims pure meditation, which is a stress-releaser I never knew existed previous to learning to swim.

3) I have come to realize how important it is for all of our communities to get committed to getting every child to learn how to swim—an inexpensive exercise for a lifetime, a drowning prevention strategy, and a confidence and self-esteem builder.  Unfortunately, fears get hardened with age, yet deep down, most people who have had a history of bad swimming experiences or fear really know that they could learn swimming if they really wanted to. The mental game of swimming is the most important aspect of successful learning.

Anyone can learn to swim, whether young, old, weak, strong, big, small– even paraplegics and amputees.  Like most skills, it is easier to learn as a kid, before you develop multiple fears or overthink it. To learn swimming as an adult, you have to accept some seemingly paradoxical messages—like learning to forcefully exhale into water, like prioritizing breath control over stroking your arms, like staying relaxed while doing something physical. And you have to have the courage to face your fears, and revisit them as just a mental barrier to overcome. Do not compare your swim progress to someone else’s—we all learn at our own rate. If you really want to learn to swim, you can, especially if you are doing it in a reliably safe environment.

Given the interest I have developed in promoting open water swimming, it should be pretty obvious that learning to swim, and particularly, learning to swim in open water, has changed my life.  I have thrived on my swim event volunteering, open water swim coaching, and have become an impassioned author and website designer as well. I am now starting to write my third book– it will be a race director’s guide to running a successful open water swim event, a treatise to inspire more people to take the plunge. And I have recently organized the first swim-run event in British Columbia (kelownaswimrun.com).

For me, learning to swim was certainly about proving to myself what I could finally do, but now it has really become more about “sharing the wealth” afforded by swimming– the riches of self-discovery, self-efficacy and personal growth, and the joy that fulfills you once you learn how to swim competently.  After a long career of helping people mostly return to their normal state of health, I find tremendous satisfaction mentoring people to become something more than they ever were, helping non-swimming adults (like I was) overcome what is often a large hurdle (and vulnerability) in their lives—doing so within the context of our bucket-list signature open water swim event. Despite Terry Laughlin’s many amazing personal swimming accomplishments, I really think Terry’s greatest contribution to the swimming world was his loving embrace of this sport, and one that he shared in earnest every way he could, helping all of us T.I. followers to become swimmers. For me, he deconstructed my most daunting hurdle into simple components, and led me to a promised land I never thought I could reach. And I am certain he and Total Immersion have done this for many thousands of others.

 Mark finishing a summer swim in Okanagan Lake, Jul. 2016

Guest Blogger and T.I. Swimmer Mark Fromberg is a recently retired physician from the Okanagan Valley in British Columbia who only learned how to swim at age 49, primarily with the help of one of Total Immersion’s dvds:  the learn-to-swim “Happy Laps” video.  Since then, Mark has been making up for lost time, having completed innumerable open water swim events and almost 50 triathlons, and has become deeply involved in providing race support for a variety of triathlons and swim events, most notably Canada’s largest and longest running open water swim event, Kelowna’s Across The Lake Swim. This event is now on the “World’s Top 100 Open Water Swim” events, due to its commitment to safety, its great swag, its unique pre-event training program, its financial support of swimming lessons of every grade 3 and 4 child in the community, and its remarkable growth in the last decade, now over 1000 participants per year. In 2018, Dr. Fromberg published two books on open water swimming (linked here): one to help get over open water anxiety and develop confidence, and the other to better understand some important physiological principles that can affect open water swimmers. Mark’s wife is also an open water swimmer and former lifeguard, and they have two grown children in their late twenties, one of whom worked as a lifeguard for many years at their local YMCA.

Do YOU have a personal Total Immersion success story that you’d like to share with us? We LOVE hearing about the positive impact– both in and out of the water– that learning to swim with T.I. has had on those of you who have experienced transformation using our approach. If you’d like to send us your success story, please email blog editor Carrie Loveland at carrie@totalimmersion.net — we look forward to reading your stories!

The post Guest Blog: This T.I. Swimmer Learned to Swim at 49– Now He Directs One of The “World’s Top 100 Open Water Swims” appeared first on Total Immersion.

Naji Ali swimming from Point Bonita to The Bay Bridge (9.3 miles)

Guest blogger and T.I. Swimmer Naji Ali learned to swim as an adult in 2008, when he took his first T.I. workshop. Since that time he now swims year-round in San Francisco Bay and is scheduled to swim the Santa Barbara Channel in 2019, from the mainland to Anacapa Island. If successful, he’ll be the first African-American man to accomplish this. He follows official channel rules in his practice and does not wear a wetsuit– he trains in a regular bathing suit, cap, and goggles. He rises at 4 AM, 5-6 times a week, and is in the water by 4:45 AM. He usually swims in the dark and, at times, swims till sunrise. Water temps in the Bay range as low as 48F in the winter, and as high as 60F in the summer and fall, with the temps usually hovering about 55F. We are delighted to share his inspiring story with you– he truly exemplifies the spirit of mastery, kaizen learning, patient dedication, and enthusiastic practice that are hallmarks of our approach to swimming with Total Immersion. Enjoy… and Happy Laps!

I have lived near the water my entire life. I love it. I absolutely love living next to the Pacific Ocean, watching the waves crash upon the shore, seeing surfers ply their trade. I can sit around and gaze out over the water for hours and never get bored.

To me, the water is magic. About as close to paradise as one can get.

As luck would have it– or more appropriately, upon the demands of my mom– at 13 years old, I got a summer job working for a marine biologist at Scripps Institute of Oceanography, located in La Jolla, CA. Every day I’d hop on a bus and ride an hour down to my job. My boss, a very kind man, taught me about sea turtles, seals, sea lions, and jellyfish, better than any school teacher ever could. In fact, I can still dissect a frog and list all its organs in detail to this day.

About two months into my time with him, he invited me to go on a boat that was going out to fish for albacore tuna. He and several other biologists wanted to be the first scientists to bring one back in captivity. We went out about 20 miles from shore to fish. I remember that day being very calm, with gentle “rollers” rocking the boat like a mother would a sleeping child. I also remember that it was very hot, so hot that one of the crew members decided to go for a quick dip. He stripped down to his trunks and dove in. I ran over to the railing and watched as he swam breaststroke, backstroke, and freestyle. “Wow,” I thought to myself, “I wish I could do that.” Afterward, he climbed back onboard and toweled off. I approached him and asked: “That was pretty cool… could you teach me how to swim like that?” He looked on and said: “Kid, Black people don’t swim.” The whole boat erupted into laughter. Even I was laughing… but not really.

I was embarrassed. Embarrassed because I was the butt of the joke, and more importantly, that I didn’t know how to swim.

I told no one about that day and didn’t think about it for another 27 years. Fast-forward to 2008, and I’m sitting watching the Beijing Olympics, and witnessing history as Michael Phelps won 8 gold medals. Although this was a truly amazing feat, the most exciting thing for me was watching the Men’s 4 x100m relay final [click link to view race]. No, not because Jason Lezak, the anchor of the relay, came from behind to win the gold for the Americans and defeated the French; nor was it that they set a new world record. I was excited because a young Black man named Cullen Jones was a part of that record setting team. At that moment, I determined that I was going to learn to swim. The memory of everyone laughing at me on that boat– and my embarrassment– needed to end. I had to learn to swim. The question was:  How do I get that done?

I looked online and found a man not far from me that taught swim lessons. He showed me how to float with my face down in the water, float on my back in a comfortable position, and the rudimentary skills of pulling, kicking, etc. He was a nice enough person and certainly knew how to swim himself, but it didn’t feel right for me. So, I went to a second person who specialized in working with adults who didn’t know how to swim. She too was kind, but didn’t offer much more than the previous person. But one thing she did do, and I’m forever grateful that she did, was mention a system of learning how to swim called “Total Immersion” (TI).

“What the heck is that?” I asked, confused.

She told me to look it up online and see for myself. So, I started researching TI and noticed that they had a book that a man I had never heard of– Terry Laughlin– had written. I went to the library and checked out a copy. The minute that I started reading, I knew this was what I needed. But just reading the book wasn’t going to help me– I’m a visual person and I have to see someone doing something, or get in-person teaching to catch on. That’s when I discovered that there was going to be a TI workshop held in San Francisco not far from where I lived!

Naji Ali doing a training swim in Aquatic Park in San Francisco

To say I was initially confused and intimidated at my first TI workshop would be an understatement.

I was with about 20 people, all of whom– with the exception of me– had either average swimming skills, were triathletes, or were former competitive swimmers. At this workshop, I was coached by Coach Fiona Laughlin and Coach Dave Cameron. They showed me all the drills: Superman glide, right skate, left skate, torpedo drills into right skate and left… Well, you get the idea! I did my best to try to keep up, but the more they did my video analysis, the more I cringed. “What the heck have I done?” I said to myself. “I can’t swim. I’m never gonna learn to swim. The guy on the boat years ago was right.”

I should say that throughout this workshop, Coach Dave and Coach Fiona never had the negative attitude that I had about my learning process. They saw the positive that I couldn’t see. They focused on continuous improvement.

After the workshop was over, and I was left all alone to try and sort things out, I began going to the pool to do the drills. At first they were beyond frustrating; I rolled too far to stacked shoulders in skating, I wasn’t moving forward during Superman flutter, my head position was incorrect… Arrggghhh!

But instead of packing it all in and calling this a big scam, I decided to heed Coach Fiona’s advice. She said: “Just concentrate on two things at the pool, not five, just two. Give all your focus to those two throughout the whole practice.” So, that’s what I did, and over time I began to see small incremental improvements. No “aha” moments, but small baby steps. This went on for several months. Some days I would leave the pool feeling exhilarated, other days I was ticked off and ready to pack it all in. Luckily, by this time, I started following along on the TI blog site. I was able to voice my frustration and reach out to others for advice– one of them was Terry, who wrote: “Always make sure that you can focus on one thing that you did well at the conclusion of your practice, even if it’s just coming down to practice itself.” I kept remembering that and somehow I kept coming back and running the drills until I felt comfortable enough to try a lap or two of whole stroke.

I remember that day very vividly. There I was in the slow lane, adjusting my goggles, making sure my earplugs were in properly. I reminded myself to just concentrate on two things: “Don’t concern yourself with the others, just those two,” I said to myself.

What happened next is what made me a TI person for life.

I swam the entire length of the pool (33.3 yards) in 17 strokes! I looked back with my mouth agog: “What the heck was that?” I tried it again– same thing! Then again, ditto. After years of thinking about how the words of that man on the boat inhibited me from swimming, here I was, doing it with ease and enjoyment. This came because someone taught me a simple way to swim faster, easier, and with more enjoyment than I could have ever imagined.

To be honest, I’m not a fan of the pool and do most drills in the San Francisco Bay. But one thing that I have never wavered from is always concentrating on two things. TI has taught me how to be able to sense when something is just off in my stroke and correct it on the fly. The kaizen approach [lifelong, continuous improvement] that Terry spoke of so much is what has pushed me to learn to be a better swimmer and better person. More importantly, I have been truly blessed by the folks that I have met online and in person, over the years, who are TI enthusiasts and coaches. In particular, Coach Mandy McDougal and her father Coach Stuart McDougal have been instrumental in taking my swimming to the next level.

TI has been a godsend for me in many ways, as I’ve stated above, but the most important focus of TI for me is its emphasis on water safety. Remember back when that man on the boat said that Black folk don’t swim? He was right. According to the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, Black children drown at a rate five times greater than that of White children. In fact, remember Cullen Jones, the Olympic Gold medalist I mentioned earlier? He nearly drowned when he was a toddler at a water park and look at him now!

Oh, don’t get me wrong– I know plenty of Black folk that swim. In fact, we’ve had a rich swimming history dating back thousands of years, but the ugly face of racism, discrimination and our own perceived fears of the water prevented generations from my community to learn water safety and the enjoyment of swimming.

But all of that is going to end in the future, if I have anything to say about it.

Let me tell you all something: I had the pleasure of meeting Terry in person back in 2009, when I hosted him for a day at The South End Rowing Club, where I regularly swim in open water. He was in town to do an advanced workshop. We spoke of my desire to become a TI coach and teach Black people to swim regardless of their ability to pay. I also spoke of my dream of training more Black people that want to learn to swim in open water. I can still see how his eyes lit up as he told me: “Naji, we have to make your dream a reality because it’s mine too.”

Terry, I promise one day it will be.

Naji attending a swim briefing at The South End Rowing Club

Naji Ali is a TI enthusiast based in San Francisco, CA with his wife Chrissy and their cat, Mrs. Chippy. He works at a soup kitchen and swims 5-6 times a week, year-round in open water. He is scheduled to swim the Santa Barbara Channel in 2019, from the mainland to Anacapa Island. If successful, he’ll be the first African American man to accomplish this. You can follow his thoughts and musings about being a marathon swimmer at his blog: https://adeadkennedy.wordpress.com

Do YOU have a personal Total Immersion success story that you’d like to share with us? We LOVE hearing about the positive impact– both in and out of the water– that learning to swim with T.I. has had on those of you who have experienced transformation using our approach. If you’d like to send us your success story, please email blog editor Carrie Loveland at carrie@totalimmersion.net — we look forward to reading your stories!

The post Guest Blog: From The Mainland to A Marathoner– My T.I. Journey from Non-Swimmer to Open Water Long Distance appeared first on Total Immersion.

A few words about the inspiration for Terry Laughlin’s forthcoming final book: Total Immersion: Swimming That Changes Your Life  (tentatively expected for publication in late 2019) :

For Terry’s final book, he had chosen the working title, Total Immersion: Swimming That Changes Your Life, after years of hearing innumerable swimmers remark, “Learning to swim with Total Immersion changed my life!” Receiving this type of continuous enthusiastic feedback from thousands of T.I. swimmers around the world– about how their success with T.I. swimming enhanced their life beyond the water– prompted Terry to explore the deeper aspects of how transforming one’s swimming can transform other aspects of one’s life. Even to the end of his own life (in Oct. 2017), Terry himself was an exemplar of this: despite the exterior ravages of cancer on his physical body, he continued to use his swimming as a practice for retaining an inner sense of core identity, cultivating a feeling of vitality and enjoyment in life, and motivating his laser-focus on his life-long mission of teaching the world to swim with more ease and enjoyment. The feeling of enjoyment he still experienced in the water in the last months of his life did indeed give him some respite from the deteriorating effects of his illness, and allowed him to sustain a relatively high quality of life in his waning time that remained. That is perhaps the ultimate way that swimming changed Terry’s own life, as he came to grips with his mortality: practicing the mindful T.I. approach for decades had enabled him to maintain a sense of internal calm and engaged focus– and continuous passion for life!– even as his lifespan was drawing to a close.

Terry stated the following as the intention for his final book: “A path for achieving meaningful swimming goals and using swimming as a vehicle for learning, growth, and creating enduring positive change in body, mind, and spirit…” To honor just a few stories of personal transformation (among the innumerable accounts we’ve heard) that inspired Terry to begin viewing swimming as a path for enhancing one’s overall life, we are re-sharing with you some success stories that Terry chose to feature in previous blogs. Longtime readers of this blog may recognize these swimmers from prior posts in past years, and newer readers will be introduced to these remarkable T.I. swimmers for the first time– either way, we hope you are as inspired, encouraged, and motivated by their stories (both in and out of the water) as we have been. May they illustrate for you the promise and potential that lies in all of us, if we are willing to tap into it. As always: Enjoy… and Happy Laps!

 SUCCESS STORIES: Swimming with T.I. CAN Change Your Life!

BARRY SHORE

In a few weeks, we will post a guest blog with an update from Barry Shore, a man whom Terry once described as “the most enthusiastic T.I. student ever”– and he’s progressed even further since this blog post from September 2011! We can’t wait to share with you where Barry is now and what he’s up to, but here’s a hint: I spoke to him last night and he had just logged his 7,000th mile of swimming! 

Excerpt from Terry’s original blog post:

In 2004, Barry woke one morning unable to move anything but his head. Taken to the hospital, and diagnosed with Guillaine Barre Syndrome (GBS), he was in intensive care for 11 days, monitored by telemetry for 11 weeks, in the hospital for 4.5 months, then confined to a hospital bed at home for a year and a half. He’s had personal care assistants full time ever since [as of this writing in 2011]. As soon as he could leave the house, he asked his assistants to take him to the pool.

They put flotation aids all over him and moved him around. He had an instinct that water would be healing, but no specific idea how. Someone who saw him at the pool for hours every day recommended the TI book. Barry borrowed the book from the library, started reading and became convinced this book carried the key to his healing. He ordered our DVD and carefully studied it with his care aide, and made plans for the aide to mimic the movements. Barry still couldn’t use his muscles volitionally, but he had a conviction that if his muscles and nervous system could be imprinted with outside assistance, that would help him recover. And indeed, over time, practicing T.I. swimming became physical therapy that enabled Barry to heal significantly, accomplish wildly ambitious swimming goals, and continue to live a full and vital life today. READ BARRY’S FULL STORY HERE

 PAOLO CARIGNANI

Excerpt from Terry’s original blog post:

When we describe TI as Swimming That Changes Your Life, we mean change for the better. That’s not a marketing slogan, it’s a core principle. Paolo Carignani, who was born in Milan, lives in Zurich, and travels the world conducting leading opera companies, exemplifies what that core principle means to us as well as anyone could. Most people come to TI initially because of utilitarian goals—to swim easier, farther, or faster. They also recognize swimming is healthful exercise. When ordering a TI DVD or registering for a class, most will be happy to get a smoother stroke and strong heart. Few expect it to benefit mind and spirit. And fewer still anticipate it could even improve their work or professional lives. Paolo took up swimming to reduce stress. And look where it got him.  I [Terry] met Paolo in Nov 2008 when he came to NYC to conduct “Aida” at the Metropolitan Opera. We swam together near Lincoln Center, then Alice [Terry’s wife] and I were his guests at the opera. It was my first time seeing an opera. The main thing that struck me was, during our swim, Paolo kept repeating: “TI has such a gift to make people happy.” Then I learned just how important a happy conductor can be to an opera company! READ PAOLO’S FULL STORY HERE

 IOANNIS KARAMPELAS, M.D.

Excerpt from his guest blog, “T.I. Technique and Neurosurgery Training: A Survival Guide”

I started a neurosurgical residency in 2007. It was a 7-year marathon. Few other professional training courses are so demanding in terms of physical, emotional and mental powers that need to be cultivated and ingrained to the person going through it. Our days as residents would regularly start around 5 am and end around 8 pm. We would still work the next day after being up all night when we were on-call. Most of us would leave the hospital dead tired, wishing to go straight to bed. I was no different.  But somehow, I elected to keep making a stop at the nearby swimming pool, just 100 yards from the hospital, to practice TI, before going home.

This was one of the smartest things I elected to do. It was not just that I was getting better at swimming. After a while I noticed that I was getting out of the pool feeling less tired, needing less sleep, and waking in the morning feeling better overall. I felt restored as I came out of the pool. I could tolerate longer hours of standing in the operating room without backache. In my work, I could feel my hands and arms coordinate better with the rest of my body and I could sense more fluidity in my surgical technique.

Above all, swimming and the TI technique helped me tremendously in relieving the daily stresses of work, rejuvenating my psychological resources, and sustaining my body through very tough times.  Progression in swimming technique generated positive feedback for progress in mind and spirit. Balance and streamlining in the pool would find a parallel in balancing my acts and thoughts during interpersonal interactions and streamlining my daily work in the hospital. I often say to my friends that I survived residency because of the support I got from my mentors, family, and TI. To this day, I feel eternally obliged to Terry Laughlin and his commitment to make a change in peoples’ lives. A change that goes beyond becoming a better swimmer. READ IOANNIS’S FULL STORY HERE

Do YOU have a personal Total Immersion success story that you’d like to share with us? We LOVE hearing about the positive impact– both in and out of the water– that learning to swim with T.I. has had on those of you who have experienced transformation using our approach. If you’d like to send us your success story, please email blog editor Carrie Loveland at carrie@totalimmersion.net — we look forward to reading your stories!

The post SUCCESS STORIES: Can Swimming Actually Change Your Life? Short Answer- Yes. appeared first on Total Immersion.