T - 167 - Swim - Friday 12th September

I had a Total Immersion session with Tang from Fishlike. We started off on the side of the pool talking about what I wanted from TI and then he got me to swim a few lengths slowly whilst he videod me under water and out of the water. Using that he quickly analysed my stroke (I'll put the videos up in due course). Legs low, swimming ctachup, arms not entering the water soon enough. A Whole catalogue of errors. About the only good thing was my rotation but even there I rotated. flat, rotated.

We then did the various TI drills and I have to say 2 hours was pretty intense as I only practiced each a dozen times or so before we were adding a new element. The really good thing about the teach was that Tang was in the water with me and as i did the drill he'd been talking telling me what to do and moving my body to the correct position getting me to feel exactly how the movement should be. I don't have a great body sense and my usual response to being told to get my legs higher is - well where are they? This hands on approach worked  and though mentally it was very tiring I did feel that I was learning a lot.

The dilemma of course is that I don't want to learn to swim I want to race faster. Going all out TI hammers my training schedule but there are obvious flaws in my existing technique  . . . The solution talking it through with Tang is to adopt a half way house in that keep as much of the workouts the same as possible but use each segment to focus on a particular TI segment or drill. Then make up mileage with breaststroke.

The other really good thing about the session is that having been there I feel that I'll be able to use the books and videos a lot more effectively so that I can self coach myself better than I could doing the previous way. I can lock some or most of the benefits from the session in over time. Expensive but the test of whether it was worth it is to do the drills and translate the theory in practice into speed and efficiency.