Triathlon swimming made easy (3 page)

Chapter 3

How to Start Swimming Better Immediately

Perhaps you didn't start out thinking "I'd like to be a swimmer," but as soon as you mailed your first triathlon entry, swimming became a necessary evil. Or as most triathletes perceive it: "something I have to endure in order to do the two other sports I find much easier and more satisfying." And you probably began by applying what you had learned from cycling or running:
mileage equals improvement.
You may even have seen some modest progress in the beginning. But if you're like 98 percent of triathletes I've met, you soon reached a state one described as "Terminal mediocrity:
no matter how much I swim, I never get any better." There's a logical reason for that. Unlike running or cycling, which you probably did reasonably well from age 7, with little instruction or "practice," swimming well requires lots of both. Thousands of athletes who can run or bike long distances with ease, find themselves exhausted after a few laps of swimming. They know they're in shape, but swimming seems to require its own special kind of fitness. So they do yet more laps, hoping it will come. But if you're an unskilled swimmer, all those laps do is make your "struggling skills" more en
during. No matter how many laps you do, you'll never have enough fitness to compensate for the energy you waste.

This is why triathletes have responded enthusiastically to the simple logic of Total Immersion. We explain your difficulties in a way that makes sense. We suggest simple approaches that even inexperienced swimmers
can confidently practice in a way that they
know
will make a difference. And, finally, we've replaced boring workouts with purposeful and interesting practice. The result is a style of swimming that, among its many virtues,
always feels good
It looks good, too. TI swimmers are instantly recognizable to other swimmers by their unusual flow and ease.

The Water Is Your Swimming Problem

The reason you're not swimming as well as you'd like is
because you're a land animal in water.
Humans are "hard-wired" to fight the water rather than work
with
it. There are literally only a few dozen people on the planet who have almost totally solved this. Swimmers such as Ian Thorpe (and former Olympic medallists such as Sheila Taormina) have learned to overcome the "human-swimming problem" because: a) they're gifted with a rare sense of
how to be one with the water
(coaches call this "feel of the water") and b) they've spent millions of yards (typically guided more by that intuitio
n than by their coaches) developing a preternatural grace and economy.

You, on the other hand — along with virtually everyone else on the planet — probably swim more like "Eric the Eel," the athlete from Equatorial Guinea who won our hearts and admiration at the Sydney games for finishing the 100-meter freestyle, despite the fact that every stroke seemed like agonizing struggle for him.
Human swimming
looks like this mainly because water is an unnatural, even threatening, environment. Our bodies were not designed to travel easily through it, and our basic instincts as land-based animals cause us to fight it, not work
with
it. Our discomfort creates tension; we res
pond with turbulent churning. Both keep us from moving freely and fluently. Since water is a fluid, flowing freely through it is essential to efficiency. Any swimmer can learn how to do this. The first step is to understand what's holding you back.

Three Mistakes Every "Human Swimmer" Makes:

Chances are, you've thought there was something wrong with you because:

1. You think you'll sink. Fighting "that sinking feeling" is something all humans do from their very first stroke. After a very few additional
strokes, the struggle to stay afloat becomes a habit. The result? Most of your energy and too much of what you hope are propelling actions (i.e., your pull and kick) are spent keeping you from sinking, instead of acting to move you forward.

2. You try to overpower the water. Water is 800 times denser than air. In essence, it's a wall. If air can feel so resistant at 20 miles an hour on a bicycle, then imagine how much resistance the water throws at you at even the slowest speeds. As you get a little faster—particularly if your legs tend to sink as you swim, drag goes up to almost inconceivable levels. Want to better understand how that wall of water reacts to your body? Next time you go to the pool, try walking half a lap. What you feel is drag. Next, try running the same distance. Ouch! And how do we instinctively respond to re
sistance? Mainly by pushing harder. But all that does is increase drag still more.

3. You churn your arms. The medium that was too solid when you tried to walk through it suddenly becomes very elusive when you look for a handhold to support or propel yourself.

When you try to push on it, it just swirls away. Compared with running, in which we move through thin air and propel by pushing off solid ground, swimming is like running through a Jello swamp. And because the water offers neither support nor traction, our natural response is turbulent churning, like wheels spinning on ice. This increases energy cost and the extra turbulence increases drag. A double whammy.

The 5-Step Swimming Solution

The reason TI methods create such fast transformation is simple: They've had to. By teaching hundreds of workshops that last just a weekend — rather than lessons that go on for weeks — by having
hours
to teach fluency, not months or years as most coaches do, we've learned to eliminate wasted steps. And since many of our students are inexperienced, we've done away with all of the technical mumbo-jumbo. Our instruction is simple and clear. And virtually everyone who follows five basic, but non-negotiable, steps learns to swim better with almost ridiculous ease.

1. Learn balance. Balance — the feeling that you are effortlessly supported by the water and free to devote all of your efforts to efficient propulsion — is what makes Ian Thorpe and other Olympians swim as beautifully as they do. Lack of balance — the sense that you must constantly fight that sinking feeling — is what made Eric the Eel swim as he did. In the Tl program, mastery of balance is the non-negotiable first step: You do nothing more difficult until you have learned to be effortlessly horizontal and completely supported in a few basic positions. And you continue practic
ing these positions until balance feels completely natural. When you learn balance first, you not only stop fighting the water and wasting energy, you also learn comfort and ease, which allows you to master every other swimming skill much faster...and ultimately will let you virtually glide through a triathlon swim of any distance.

2. Unlearn struggle; learn harmony. Being able to relax and enjoy the support of the water is just the starting point of a series of sequenced movement skills. At every step, it's critical to remember that your human DNA, combined with your history of "practicing struggle," makes
you incredibly vulnerable to regressing. The great advantage of the TI process is that it starts with simple movements and positions and progresses in small steps. At every step, you have the opportunity to eliminate struggle and let fluency replace it as a habit. When you master basic
balance, and move on to active balance and beyond, remember that the qualities of fluent movement you will be practicing are just as important as the mechanics of drills and skills.

3. Learn to roll effortlessly.
Human swimming
propulsion instinctively starts with arm-and-leg-churning. What that does best is make waves and create turbulence. Fish propel by undulating their bodies. Scientists have yet to puzzle out how, with little "horsepower" and resisted by drag, fish can reach speeds of 50 mph and beyond, without ever seeming to
try.
That effortless power is produced by core-based propulsion. You'll learn to tap effortless power when your rhythms and movements originate in your core body, not in your arms and legs. Those core-body rhythms release the energy
and power that subsequently become a strong, economical rwimming stroke. You learn them by advancing from static to active (rolling) balance drills.

4. Learn to
pierce
the water. Torpedoes, submarines, and racing boats are sleekly shaped for the same reason fish are: to avoid drag. Because drag increases exponentially as speed goes up (twice the speed equals/owr times the drag), drag reduction pays off exponentially as you swim faster. That's why humans who learn to slip through the smallest possible hole in the water see such rapid and dramatic improvement. Slippery swimmers need far less power or effort to swim at any speed. Awareness of slipping through the smallest possible hole in the water is maintained at every ste
p of our skill-building sequence.

5. Learn fluent, coordinated propelling movements. To most swimmers, technique means "how you use your hands to push water toward your feet." That's the starting point and remains the primary focus of conventional instruction and stroke drills. In the TI approach, arm stroking is among the
last
things we teach: First, you acquire a long, balanced, needle-shaped, and effortlessly rotating core body. Then you link your pull and kick to the body's movements and rhythms. As your propelling actions, practiced first in "switch" drills, gradually grow into "strokes," we maintain a focus on keep
ing them coordinated and integrated with core-body rhythm. Our slogan is "swim with your body, not your
arms and legs." And the moment your speed, effort, or fatigue causes you to feel "disconnected," it's time to slow down and regain your flow. Never... ever... "practice struggle."

But remember: None of these positions or skills is natural or instinctive. You must apply yourself to learning them. The clear and logical course of instruction in the chapters that follow should put you on the path to better swimming immediately. But first I'll ask you to forget everything you "know" about swimming so you can learn a completely fresh way to move through the water, a way I guarantee will make more sense, feel better and make improvement easier than anything you've tried before.

Dear Terry,

Early last year I started competing in sprint triathlons. I trained my proverbials off to become physically the fittest 1 have ever been, but remain a dreadful swimmer. Fortunately I came across your web site and purchased your book and video. Where I have been going wrong is so clearly described in the book that I instantly felt optimistic for the first time that I could actually start to enjoy swimming instead of dreading it and, perhaps, make some gains in my competition times.

I'm only 3 weeks into practice working on hand-lead drills but already feel so much more relaxed and controlled; all that arm/neck pressure I used to exert to get my head out of the water to breathe has disappeared since I learned how to balance and rotate my core. I can't wait to attend a workshop in the UK For now, however, I thank you sincerely for your work; it's revelational stuff! Cameron Irving Huddersfield West Yorkshire England

The lesson: As soon as you have correctly identified your swimming problem and started working on a clear and logical path to solutions, your sense of your future prospects will brighten immediately.