Remember that system I came up with for calculating body fat percentage using a gallon jug in a swimming pool? I always let the computer do the calculations for me—I have a little script that I run that updates my weight graph. But not everyone is as geeky as that, and formula is not that simple, and when you add units conversion in it gets downright hairy.
I finally figured out how to generate a nomogram. Now you have no excuses.
I’ve always loved to swim. Or, more accurately, I’ve always loved to play in, and especially under the water. I went to the pool as often as I could as a kid, and then when I was old enough I became a lifeguard. I did not, however, join a swim team. I’ll never know if that would have been good for me, or if it would have destroyed my enjoyment of swimming. Still, as a lifeguard I watched and studied a lot of very good swimmers from my perch. I also watched and studied a lot of very bad swimmers. To this day I am utterly amazed that crazy triathlete lady managed to make it from one end of the pool even once, let alone for an hour and a half straight day after day.
So when I decided it was time to get in shape, I knew I wanted to do it by swimming. My stroke is decent, because of the tips I’ve picked up and things I’ve learned by observation over the lifeguarding years of my youth, but I knew I had a lot to learn. If I was going to swim at least 3 times a week, it wasn’t going to be like crazy triathlete lady, but like the human fish who swam so elegantly and effortlessly. Crazy triathlete lady always left (and arrived, for that matter) with a frown. The human fish was happy, not to mention strong and elegant in and out of the pool. I would need this kind of swimming if I was going to muster up the motivation day after day to get out of bed early and go climb in a pool. Google helped me find out about Total Immersion Swimming, and the book reviews and excerpts and video snippets looked gold, so I ordered the TI book.
The basic philosophy behind TI is one I like to apply in everything: work smarter not harder. The nature of swimming—pushing our bodies through water—demands efficiency. If you run inefficiently, you are just a bit inefficient. If you swim inefficiently, drag will kill you. TI is all about minimizing drag and maximizing the efficiency of the movements that you make. The other half of TI is using your core body strength instead of your arms and legs to do the work. Weight shifting and rotation, not kicking and pulling. Other sports use this secret, we swimmers can too.
I waited to write this review until I had worked through the TI drills and put together at least a rudimentary version of the “TI stroke”, so I could evaluate it better. After ½–¾ hour sessions 3 times a week for 2 months, I have what I would call a basic “TI stroke”. The first couple of drills took a lot of patience and practice, but I feel they paid off. When floating on my back, I went from sinking legs and no forward motion to the balanced and effortless cruise. My kick necessarily improved (by learning kick technique, not kicking harder), as did my balance. The next few drills were also difficult but rewarding in time. Once I got to the rolling drills I found my childhood play instincts contributing greatly and I moved quickly through the last half of the drills.
My freestyle stroke now is more relaxed and efficient. I’ve known that stretching out is important, but now that I know why and better how (by rolling to the side) I get a much better glide. I’m still not completely comfortable with the integration of breathing into the stroke, but it’s getting better every time. My stroke isn’t quite effortless enough (and I’m not yet fit enough) for me to swim along without stopping for hundreds of meters, but I can feel it coming. Like when I’m learning a hard piece on the piano or organ—one that I know I can learn—I can almost see and feel myself in the final result and the practice sessions in between are just figuring out the details.
I would definitely recommend this book to anyone looking to either improve their stroke (e.g. for racing) or just looking to make swimming as fun as it was when you were a kid and you didn’t have to go in a straight line or do specific strokes.
My next step, aside from continous improvement, is to apply the same principles to the other strokes, especially breaststroke (my favorite, and the one for which my body was built). I’ll probably enlist the help of this newer TI book, which covers all four strokes, and looks like an excellent follow-up to the first.