Some fish can swim at 68mph but we humans max out at just 5mph. We’re slowed by drag and have to battle water resistance that makes us slow and inefficient. Even world champion Mark Foster would flail at the back behind your average fish.
Total Immersion (TI) Swimming claims to teach ‘fish-like’ swimming and has even trademarked the phrase. The company, founded by Terry Laughlin in the US in the early 1990s, offers what it calls a foolproof approach to teaching. The TI method encourages students to master a fluent, beautiful and economical style and boasts positive results faster than conventional teaching methods.
Three elements of learning ‘fish-like freestyle’ are swimming ‘downhill’, swimming ‘taller’ and ‘skating’ on your side. The idea is that anyone can learn these skills, regardless of their experience, age or fitness.
Terry Laughlin has had a lot of success with his teaching and coaching methods. He was voted coach of the year in his first year at a college team and put his success down to focusing swimmers on correct technique rather than fitness. ‘Good swimmers simply look better and I had the intuition that teaching less gifted swimmers to look that way might succeed where sheer hard work had failed me in my own swimming career.’
Since then he’s coached senior and junior national champions but it is since retirement from mainstream coaching that Terry has become better known. His Total Immersion book is the world bestseller on swimming technique.
Total Immersion relates swimming to yoga or tai chi and encourages swimmers to think in terms of moving from position to position rather than concentrating on individual pulls and kicks. ‘The primary focus is always on correct movements in the water and recognising that swimming isn’t actually instinctive.’
Visitors to the new Total Immersion swim studio, SwimShack in Loughborough, are shown how small movements in the water should be linked smoothly together to build the foundations of good technique. Practising these in a warm Endless Pool enables swimmers to remain under the watchful eye of their instructor, as well as video cameras, which provide instant feedback.
An intensive TI session approaches the frontcrawl catch by teaching a neutral head position (looking at the bottom of the pool rather than in front to ensure a neutral spine) and learning to hang in the water with the hand in the optimal position to start the pull.
The approach to the pull is less about applying force when the catch is engaged than the movements that happen before that. Swimmers are encouraged to drive their recovering hand forward and think about their hips following their hands as part of the same forward movement. Get right the timing of this and your kick and you’ll feel a surge forward.
Then, by getting into the correct position to begin the catch and waiting for the other hand to complete the propulsive phase of the stroke, the stroke cycle is effectively slowed down. The effect should be an improvement in distance per stroke and general efficiency. ‘TI is all about breaking the stroke down and teaching drills that build logically from each other as part of a sequence.’
Swimmers at the SwimShack certainly get to understand why efficiency is important when they see a short clip of Grant Hackett and Ian Thorpe swimming side by side on the big screen. Their beautifully long and powerful underwater strokes illustrate what is being taught.
The Loughborough SwimShack is the first TI studio in Britain but Laughlin hopes to see more open in the next few years. ‘Coaching technique in an Endless Pool is simply the best scenario. Instructors can see exactly what is happening and swimmers can focus on those small movements without getting cold or having to worry about turns or other people in the water. They also get instant feedback.’
TI is often associated with frontcrawl but all strokes are covered. Breaststroke and butterfly focus strongly on correct undulation and timing while backstroke is like frontcrawl in its focus - balance, rotation and timing. ‘A common theme about all four strokes is that we’re looking to use core body power and make sure that body lengthening and rotating take place at the right time.’
But what is different about Total Immersion as a teaching and coaching technique? The short answer is: not very much. ASA director of education John Lawton says: ‘I’ve been to the workshops, watched some of the videos and I think some of the drills are very good. I’ve done some of them myself and some would have a lot of relevance to swimming clubs. Essentially TI isn’t teaching anything new - it repackaged existing ideas and concepts in a different way that is very appealing and accessible to masters swimmers, triathletes and recreational swimmers in particular. I do think that most coaches could take bits of it and see some real benefits.’
Laughlin’s philosophy of teaching aesthetics before power and fitness mirrors what the National Plan for Teaching Swimming is trying to achieve through a skill-based rather than a distance-based approach. He is clearly an excellent communicator and has been able to explain the complexities of technique in a way that beginners can interpret and apply in the water. Many of these may never have received any stroke technique instruction before but even for those who have, there are interesting and new ways of approaching technique work.