Total Immersion feedback
3354
Member
1412 days
RV posted 2 years ago.
I followed TI - book and DVD, no coach. I needed it to basically reteach myself to swim. It took a long time to work through the drills. I started it immediately into the off-season. I worked it for quite some time and I was finally able to swim. Maybe I could have used a coach, cuz I swam better, just really (really) slow. Since then I got the swim e-book from Rich Strauss. Followed those drills, which I think built off of what I learned in TI, but Rich does focus on propulsion. My speed picked up a lot once I did this (of course speed is a relative thing!).
So for me TI was a good foundation.
RV
It takes a long time to get good. - Scott Molina
Slow is smooth; smooth is fast. - Rich Strauss
196
Member
1122 days
Tri Hard posted 2 years ago.
Here's a brief rundown of my TI experience and suggestions:
Took TI class in Feb. worked on the drills almost exclusively when I went to the pool. Would swim a couple lengths at the end, and as you experience had trouble swimming 50 yards, I was having real trouble breathing. I kept at the drills, one of the guys that went to the same clinic as I did lives near me so we met up about every other week, he hadn't spent as much time as I had doing the drills so we ended up doing the early drills extra one day (fish, skating, single underswitch, double underswitch). After we were pretty much done, I did two length of swimming and it was great, had no problem breathing and the swimming felt effortless. It came and went over the next couple weeks, but finally it stuck and I didn't have any problems. I could swim for as long as I wanted at a nice relaxed pace (I went up to 45 minutes, but didn't see a point in going any longer since I was just trying to work on my form). I did an OLY last weekend and took 2 minutes off of my swim and didn't feel like I had worked at all. This was after not being in the pool for 2 weeks and only going sporatically for the two weeks before that. Swimmings much more a skill than it's about endurance, if you're in shape enough to do a long bike ride you're in good enough shape to swim. Here are a few suggestions that I think will help, which may also help anyone who has recently started swimming using TI.
-75%+ of your time should be spent on drills when you're getting started.
-do extra lengths of: fish, skating, single and double underswitch, until you are very comfortable swimming, this isn't to say that you shouldn't do the drills that come after these, but these are critical for developing the balance that you need to swim well.
-after you are swimming easily focus on: shark fin (zipper skate), zipper switch, double zipper switch, single switch, and double switch.
-when you swim think about working on something that length (examples: keeping your nose pointed down, entering just in front of your ear, being patient with your lead arm: the thing that I think is most critical, after your keep your head down)
-see if anyone else near you is doing TI, ask your coach if there's he's coached that you could do drills with, so you can be critiqued and offer suggestions to your partner, or post a message on the TI forum asking if there are any in your area.
-keep at it, it will work.
-PM me if you have any questions about what I'm saying or other questions.
90
Member
989 days
speedster67 posted 2 years ago.
Thanks, and it makes me feel better that you experienced most of the same feelings.....the breathing you mentioned is definetely tougher right now. My brother-in-law and I are doing 5 group lessons with a TI coach here in South Florida, so I do atleast have a partner to watch me when were not with the instructor.
For those who have some TI experience....was it hard to master and did it all finally tie together and become second nature?
I started some swim instruction this week with a TI coach and now I feel like I can't even swim 50 yds. while concentrating on a new technique, and am a little worried about so much drilling. Will too much drilling hurt my endurance or will improved technique make me not exert too much energy in the long swims and therefore go longer distances without tiring? Good TI swimmers look like they can swim forever without tiring!
Seeing some underwater video of myself was an enlightening experience~!
Please share your TI training experiences...