The Difference a TI Workshop Can Make

[CoachStuartMcDougal]

Originally Posted by CoachTraceyBaumann

Thanks for posting this Stuart - and what great feedback. It is so great to get feedback from students who have been struggling for so long and they manage to go away feeling their unanswered questions have finally been answered. I too often have students fly in from other countries to work with me in my Swim Studio or indeed attend our workshops in London. How lucky we are to work in such a fantastic industry and meet so many great people and most importantly teach them to swim more efficiently and faster. :-)

Originally Posted by CoachTraceyBaumann

I think it is a very good point your student made about working from the book but not getting it right. For every one person that can work from a DVD or a book - I reckon there are another 100 who need assistance from a coach and video analysis.

How much do we love Sun Yang for showing the world that turnover AND stroke length are important and being VERY fast can be VERY graceful.

Amen Tracy! And, thank you Sun Yang for changing perceptions!! Grace=SPEED :-) Yup, we are so lucky to work in this industry and change lives for so many; one workshop, one swimmer, one book/DVD/blog at a time - how grand is that.

Charles: Thank you! The TI workshop, Montreal 3/29-3/30 will be directed/coached by Coach Celsete St Pierre. You can reach Celeste at 603-616-7125, admin@triathlonskills.com.

Cheers!

Stuart
MindBodyAndSWIM

[CoachToby]

Great to hear stories of how potent the effects of TI coaching can be.

I co-directed a workshop in Windsor UK with Tracey yesterday. This was my first experience of the one day worshop format and it was excellent. The students got just about the right amount of input and at no point was anyone feeling overwhelmed. We've already had some geat feedback from attendees.

There was of course the mandatory discussion about TI v SS - I think it lasted about 30secs!

[CoachSuzanne]

Originally Posted by CharlesCouturier

Congratulations Stuart,

Speaking of Workshop, anyone has a clue as to whom is organizing the Montreal one? I think it's in March at Regina Assumpta?

I think Celeste St. PIerre was working on one in Montreal

[terry]

Originally Posted by CharlesCouturier

Congratulations Stuart,

Speaking of Workshop, anyone has a clue as to whom is organizing the Montreal one? I think it's in March at Regina Assumpta?

Charles
Celeste St Pierre of Lincoln NH--who led our OW camp in St John USVI last week--will lead the MTL workshop.
I told her she should make your acquaintance while there. Seeing this reminds me to send the intro email between you and Celeste.

[terry]

About the Overglider thing. I'll be spending Fri-Sat-Sun at the UK Tri Show near London. Paul Newsome, the guy responsible for all those references to Overgliders, will be there too. I'm thinking of sending a message inviting him to have a cuppa and a get acquainted chat.

I'm dying to ask him if he really sees all that many Overgliders in the world of triathlon.

From the frequency of mentions in his blog--seemingly every other post--one gets the impression it's the most serious and most common problem facing triathletes.

Stuart is right of course. It's clever marketing. But if we do have that chat I'll try to keep a straight face when asking.

[CharlesCouturier]

Sure thanks it's appreciated. I truly wish she manages to sell this workout out. I will answer your email but let me know if there's anything I might do to help.

I'm definitely going to speed up the writing of my next blog entry (relating our experience together in July).

Stay well and thanks again!

[CoachSuzanne]

Originally Posted by terry

I'm dying to ask him if he really sees all that many Overgliders in the world of triathlon.

From the frequency of mentions in his blog--seemingly every other post--one gets the impression it's the most serious and most common problem facing triathletes.

In my exposure it's a rare problem...I most often see "overstroking" causing all sorts of problems. But i wonder if there is a selection bias.

If someone has tried self taught Swim Smooth and needs help they may seek out a TI coach. If someone has tried self taught TI they may seek out an SS coach. Curious indeed.

I hope the two of you are able to sit down and bridge this communication rift that seems to have developed in the UK a long time ago with Ian.

It would certainly be nice if "we could all just get along". (reference to rodney king's comments re Los Angeles riots following his arrest & brutal beating by the police for the international folks)

[CharlesCouturier]

Originally Posted by terry

About the Overglider thing. I'll be spending Fri-Sat-Sun at the UK Tri Show near London. Paul Newsome, the guy responsible for all those references to Overgliders, will be there too. I'm thinking of sending a message inviting him to have a cuppa and a get acquainted chat.

I'm dying to ask him if he really sees all that many Overgliders in the world of triathlon.

From the frequency of mentions in his blog--seemingly every other post--one gets the impression it's the most serious and most common problem facing triathletes.

Stuart is right of course. It's clever marketing. But if we do have that chat I'll try to keep a straight face when asking.

I genuinely believe that a) most references made to this set of characteristics displayed by a significant portion of their clientele, and resulting into an overgliding diagnostic has nothing to do with marketing and that b) the quest for better distance per stroke, when not properly supervised, has a lot of chances to result into developing these overgliding characteristics.

What I mean here, is that asking someone to improve dps as much as possible, with no supervision by a coach, the most intuitive solution for a beginner will be to stretch forward, and wait to loose speed until the next pull. This is especially true if the person has little or no knowledge of the resulting speed (ie, never timing yourself). Quite very unfortunately, given the cycle of using teaching swimming as a part time student job, not caring at all about becoming good, from my angle, Swim Smooth or TI plays a minor role into all this. There's an industry of teaching overgliding, stretch forward and count your strokes. This claim is legitimite. 90% of my clientele don't know at all about TI or SS. In Quebec, people don't learn swimming on the web. They mostly learn to overglide through traditional path.

Here where I work it's former swimmers who instantly become teachers. For them, it just makes perfect sens to lower the stroke count. TI values apply to them. I work with their head coach, he teaches your values. That too I can testify. I witness it every day. But the less experienced teachers may not know how to handle the subtleties and all. They go "stretch forward and count your strokes". Elbows drop they go "don't drop your elbow". So now beginners intermediate do stretch forward, wait and wait then pull very hard all of a sudden and keeping hard internal rotation (shoulder) to try not to drop the elbow. What do you think happens...

It is an issue Terry, trust me. Even TI isn't entirely clear from that as there are a lot of your learners who have never gotten their stroke analyzed, and have never been seen by a coach yet.

Problem with our companies (if I can consider my humble project as such), is that how can you distinguish "marketing" from a genuine honest and hopefully successful attempt to communicate to your clientele, tips for the sake of doing what keeps most very passionate people in the profession, helping others.

[jafaremraf]

I recently watched the Swim Smooth video showing examples of overgliders.....the swimmers to me didn't resemble any TI swimmers I'd seen on video - hands were stretching forward and up, not down, for one thing. If those people had gone to SS as TI wasn't working for them then they weren't doing TI correctly. It is hard for self taught people to learn, I'm one, and having seen a clip of video of myself I was horrified and went back to lesson 1. It takes a huge amount of self awareness, which I suspect many people think they have but don't. I believe that people who claim they tried TI and it ruined their stroke, weren't doing it properly, but thought they were. I also think many established swimmers may not want to go back to doing basic drills, so skip through the lessons, perhaps learn just the 2 beat kick, slow down, lose faith and go elsewhere complaining it didn't work.

I actually found SS before TI, got as far as attempting to analyse my type (Bambino I think!) and got no further. Then I found TI and immediately saw the potential and it gave me the belief I could swim front crawl. And so far it is working :-)

[CoachSuzanne]

Originally Posted by jafaremraf

I recently watched the Swim Smooth video showing examples of overgliders.....the swimmers to me didn't resemble any TI swimmers I'd seen on video - hands were stretching forward and up, not down, for one thing. If those people had gone to SS as TI wasn't working for them then they weren't doing TI correctly. It is hard for self taught people to learn, I'm one, and having seen a clip of video of myself I was horrified and went back to lesson 1. It takes a huge amount of self awareness, which I suspect many people think they have but don't. I believe that people who claim they tried TI and it ruined their stroke, weren't doing it properly, but thought they were. I also think many established swimmers may not want to go back to doing basic drills, so skip through the lessons, perhaps learn just the 2 beat kick, slow down, lose faith and go elsewhere complaining it didn't work.

I actually found SS before TI, got as far as attempting to analyse my type (Bambino I think!) and got no further. Then I found TI and immediately saw the potential and it gave me the belief I could swim front crawl. And so far it is working :-)

thanks for such an insightful post!