Functional Swimming for Athletes: Cross-train like a Pro series pt. 3



In 2009, I decided I was going to start doing triathlons. The second thought I had was "OH CRAP! I have to actually learn how to swim." Well, this started a search for a swim coach. Being a biomechanist, I immeditaely went to the Internet and did a search for "The Biomechanics of Swimming." Because its such a big field, I had pages and pages of results but I happened to click on TOTAL IMMERSION (TI) SWIMMING and to my surprise, they were dead on for what I needed. The founder, Terry Laughlin, promised efficieny and easy freesytle, so naturally I was encouraged. I eventually got the TI videos and TI book and started woking with a TI coach, and to say my life was changed was a bit of an undesrtatement.

The magic of the TI method is that it is systemically broken down to build or rebuild your stroke so that instead of having a barge-shaped vessel, you are more torpedo or "fishlike" so that you are able to literally glide through the water. The method is VERY 3-D in its approach as it uses all 3 planes of motion to combine into a seemeless technique.

3-D BIOMECHANIC TECHNIQUE OF TOTAL IMMERSION

Transverse Plane: Arms and lets are not used as primary propulsion. Instead, a horizontal rotation of the entire body or "hip-drive" in TI parlance is the engine that moves the body. Terrys' reason being that in longer distances (not sprints), the arms will fatique quickly and the swimmer will not be able to sustain the swim. The larger muscles of the 'core' assist the swim so the smaller muscles do not have to.

Frontal Plane: The arms become more integral in this plane since they are set as "tracks" for balance and stability. They are set wider than shoulder distance, so when the swimmer has a stable point for the rotation to go to.

Sagital Plane: The arms and legs do play a role but not as large as we would think. They do reach forward but only to have "patient hands" that just hold the water and not pull it back. As for the legs, TI preaches a 2-beat kick.

SO WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH CROSS-TRAINING???

As I started swimming more and more, I was not as sore from my other training. The swimming, even for an hour or more, had a very therapeutic affect on me. I was able to workout longer and harder without the fear of overtraining (even in fucntional training). The result was that I improved in nearly everything I was doing from strength, to flexibility, to body awareness to cardiovascular conditioning.

SO WHY DO I NEED TOTAL IMMERSION???

Well, the fact of the matter is that you dont really need the method to just get in the water and do aquatic based conditioning. However, the benefits of someone learning how to swim properly far out weigh the cons of just flopping around in the water. Feeling comfortable in the water and not feeling like you will drown is probably the top reasons why most people do not swim more. They fight water instead of moving with it. My father always told me "Do not fight the water because it will always win." I kept this in the back of my mind when I began my swim training.

With Total Immersion, the athlete is able to go through a step by step process on how to build the stroke up from nothing. If he or she is truly mindful, they are able to not only develop a good stroke, they will have improved their kinestthetic sense which, as I've said in other posts, are a vital to improving athletic ability. Moving through water, you must allow yourself to float and that is done by maintaining a sense of calm and being able to remove excess tension from the body where it doesnt need to be. What we see typically is that when an athlete becomes aware of their body, they are able to move better overall.

ON THE THERAPEUTIC SIDE....

Much research has been done to back up the wisdom of coaches regading aquatic therapy and conditioning. Some of the most cutting edge work is being done by Dr. Jan Prins at the University of Hawaii, who is also owner of Prins Aquatherapy. In a recent keynote speech to the International Society of Biomechanics in Sports, Dr. Prins described the kinesthetics of exercising in the water are:

- Most movements in the water are learned skills and take time to develop.
- Kinesthetic movement in the water is subtle, therefore, efective movement patterns must be developed and then closesly monitored.
-The water reduces the pressure induced loads on the joints and consequently allows continue exercising with decreased risk of internal injury.

Dr. Prins primary population is rehabiltiation but his strategies are still very valid for athletes.

OUR SUMMER WORKOUTS
This summer our athletes would do at least one, sometimes two pool session per week. If they could swim reasonbaly well we would do a pool set that looked like:

100yd freestyle warm-up
50yd kicking drill with kick pad
50 yd upper body pull using buoy between legs

We would then repeat for backstroke and breaststroke. Butterfly was omitted because of how complex it could be.

The guys would repeat this for at least 3 sets. For my guys who could not swim or were struggling, I took through them the Total Immersion freestyle progression. One student in particular was able to improve his stroke so much he was able to swim 1/2 mile easily and started coming in on his own before practices to swim.

For the strong swimmers, we would finish with a 10 minute continuous swim using any stroke they wanted to.

Sometimes it would be a little more conditioning based, so I used the program from Human Kinetics. Again, the effect that it had on their bodies and our recovery cannot be stressed enough how productive it was. Usually the biggers hurdle are athletes feeling comfortable in the water to do this work. Once they do, they LOVE it. Many of my athletes are still doing it on the weekend to stay up on their swimming but also recover from a long week of land-based practices and workouts.

I am posting videos below from Total Immersion. The first is the first of a video presentation that Terry gave at the Multi-Sport expo. The other are from Shinji Takeuchi, a TI master instructor, who has a beautiful form with videos that allow you to see how he started and how much he progressed with TI.


Thank you,

Will



Please click on the video to go directly to Youtube to see the rest of the series. It's worth your time to watch them all for a better understanding of the method.