TI Swimming

I've always been a great fan of the water. Recently though a good friend of mine introduced me to Total Immersion swimming. This is a technique that teaches people to swim effortlessly. In fact, most people who've never been able to swim at all, are swimming with ease after a few weeks of studying this new method.

My friend invited me to swim with her at the Marshal White Center and loaned me her book on Total Immersion swimming by Terry Laughlin and John Delves. If you love the water as I do, you should check out TI swimming!

After reading the book I couldn't wait to order the tapes. After watching the tapes, now I can't wait to get to the pool several times a week!

Since anything in life is better with company, I started inviting some of my kids to try it out with me. Kaedell immediately took me right up on the idea. After lots of persuasion from my friend, Karen, we went to the MW center, got ourselves a free membership, and had our first TI swim lesson. 

The Bear Lake Brawl is coming up in August and in an effort to set new goals and achieve them, I've been contemplating signing up! I love to bike, I'm enjoying running, even though I have to work on my snail like pace, so as I carefully considered everything it takes to compete in a triathlon, I knew the only thing I'm lacking is learning how to swim long distances.  

I'm not sure I can get Man With A Drill to sign up for the Bear Lake Brawl, but I do think I can talk him into taking up TI swimming. I'm going to work on that.

After practicing this new technique, I have fallen in love with yet another way to stay in shape. The nice thing about working out in the water, is nothing hurts when you climb out of the pool. Swimming gives me a total core body workout without beating my joints to death. This is definitely a middle aged woman's sport and I'm definitely middle aged! I love it! 

Here's a few TI tips! Welcome to a new easy and beautiful way to swim!

1) To propel yourself forward with the least effort, focus on shoulder roll and keeping your body horizontal (least resistance), not pulling with your arms or kicking with your legs. This is counter-intuitive but important, as kicking harder is the most universal suggestion for fixing swimming issues.

2) Keep yourself horizontal by keeping your head in line with your spine — you should be looking straight down. Use the same head position as while walking and drive your arm underwater vs. swimming on the surface. In the above video Notice how little the swimmer uses his legs; the small flick serves only to help him turn his hips and drive his next arm forward. This is the technique that allows the swimmer to conserve so much energy.

3) Remember to keep your body stiff like a board. The power in your stoke comes from the rotation of your hips and trunk, not your arms and legs like most people think.