Comments on: The ‘Over Glider’

By: pete from utah

pete from utah — Wed, 05 Nov 2014 17:54:00 +0000

I think I am the classic triathlete learning (or at least trying to learn!) how to be an at least compentent and hopefully strong swimmer. The TI approach helped me to become comfortable and develop balance in the water. But my times were not improving. I stagnated at about a 32 min 1500 m open water swim, from 35. 3 years of diligent self teaching and this is where I plateaued. I did the drills religiously and worked on doing workouts while following the TI principals—no improvement. I had some coaches from a more traditional swimming perspective look at me and they gave me the classic TI critiques (without me mentioning practicing the TI method): overrotation, waiting too long to initiate my catch, overgliding, and dropping my elbow and showing the palm. I am in the process of correcting these errors with a coach and my times are dropping dramatically. In the last 3 months my 100 yard base dropped from 2:00 to 1:43–and it’s still dropping. My last tri I focused on high elbow and fast turnover and I was faster and it felt nearly effortless. I am thankful for TI introducing me to streamline and balance as important swimming fundamentals, but it led to my plateauing at a particularly mediocre pace.

By: Dan The Man

Dan The Man — Mon, 14 Oct 2013 15:43:00 +0000

The overgliding thing is really about a truly good catch vs. a catch that feels good but actually isn’t. I believe the “site down under” points this out, and rightly so. While TI has done a lot for my
swimming, it never taught me what a truly good catch is. It taught me a catch that felt good to me because of the strong “locked on” sensation it provided, and the powerful feeling of pulling myself toward a point in front of me. Besides, TI is an excellent way of going from being a so-so swimmer to being a pretty good one, and that understandably makes you so happy with your TI technique that for a long while after learning TI you don’t really want to know about anything else.

But… once I discovered what a truly good catch is, I realized how ineffective my old catch was — I realized that the strong pulling sensation in front actually provided little propulsion and was mostly
just my hand churning the water. A truly good catch requires the lead hand to “join” the water’s motion, and for a moment this *removes* all sense of pressure from your hand. The sensation you get from a good catch therefore, is quite different from what you’d expect: with a really good catch there is almost no locked-on sense at all until the catch becomes a pull. The moment of maximum propulsive pressure therefore, occurs later on in the stroke. Now, one might say: TI is not to blame, but I disagree. TI really does emphasize keeping your lead hand stretched until your recovering hand punctures the water — and that is slightly too long. By keeping it stretched that long, you run out of time for an excellent catch, and so you end up doing this “powerful” TI catch, which as I’ve explained feels great but is not the most effective catch. For the best catch, your lead hand must drop (not push!!) down, slightly out, and back earlier, and must *not* attempt to “grab” the water in front. Try it and be amazed.

By the way, there is a interesting relationship between the two-beat kick (which I learned) and overgliding. The two-beat kick reinforces overgliding because only with a two-beat kick can you “postpone” your kick until you feel that the time has come for your catch and pull. With a steady six-beat kick, this is very awkward. Unless you vary your rhythm (1-2-3-pause 1-2-3 pause — which many swimmers do), a six-beat kick almost forces you to start your stroke earlier.

On a closing note: for anybody interested in learning a better catch, be warned that it will in the beginning make breathing a little harder again. A excellent catch exerts so little pressure in front that your rotation will be less, your head will stay even lower, and the breathing opportunity will occur later. For example, if your left hand is in front and you’re about to breathe on the *left* side at the end of your upcoming stroke, you’ll notice that your pull-through doesn’t really rotate your body that much until your hand is almost exiting the water. In addition, having relinquished the locked-on sensation in front, there will be a sense of swimming even more head-down and being perhaps an inch farther away from the surface of the water. This takes some getting used to and does not necessarily make for a more comfortable swimming experience. If you’re interested in swimming efficiently and/or fast though, switching from a catch as-taught-by-TI to the earlier, subtler catch that I’ve described here can be a major step forward.

By: Dropping Elbow at Forward Extension | Total Immersion

Dropping Elbow at Forward Extension | Total Immersion — Sat, 03 Aug 2013 06:00:07 +0000

[…] with swimming at slower tempo or turnover. Coach Todd E wrote an excellent post on the “Over Glider” which best describes this […]

By: CoachStuartMcDougal

CoachStuartMcDougal — Tue, 30 Jul 2013 06:12:33 +0000

Excellent piece Todd! And yes, ‘over glider’ is an overloaded term and misleading diagnosis to the untrained eye. Even the precision of Shinji is characterized as an ‘over glider’ – hysterical. What one sees as an ‘over glider’ is really a swimmer with poor balance, swinging straight arm recovery, recovery elbow dropping on entry, and recovery hand scooping to the surface. The source of the problem is not holding a long streamlined profile, but a list of errors beginning with limited balance. I suspect ‘main stream’ coaches recognize this, but feel the need to jab at TI creating an ‘over glider’ rather than discuss/promote the merits of their own program. Good marketing strategy or insecurity? Possibly both.

Stuart

By: CoachBobW

CoachBobW — Sun, 01 Jul 2012 21:54:52 +0000

Todd,
Well said. Just because the leading arm isn’t digging into a pull doesn’t mean it isn’t of great value, ‘doing less’. I prefer to refer to the too busy lead arm as ‘premature pulling’.
Bob W

By: jsacco

jsacco — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 13:37:32 +0000

The difference between gliding and over-gliding is measured in fractions of a second. Watch the famous Shinji video clip in slow motion and you will see that: (a) Shinji does not over-glide, and (b) His hands and arms move continuously.

Over-gliding becomes problematic when the deceleration during the glide becomes severe enough to effect body orientation. If a swimmer’s speed during a complete cycle goes up and down like a yo-yo, there is a high probability that the swimmer will bounce up and down like a yo-yo, which will cause the swimmer to plow, rather than glide, through the water.

If a swimmer can keep their longitudinal body axis parallel to the surface at all times, then they too will be able to glide effortlessly through the water, just like Shinji. If maintaining your longitudinal body axis parallel to the surface requires you to shorten your glide, then do so.

-Joseph