Reviews for Total Immersion: The Revolutionary Way To Swim Better, Faster, and Easier

The average rating for Total Immersion: The Revolutionary Way To Swim Better, Faster, and Easier based on 2 reviews is 5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2014-05-16 00:00:00 Scotty Dilworth TI hasn't really made it to the UK. Here we have the Shaw Method, similar, but more focused on neck position. There are few swimmers who adopt this technique. I've been swimming since schooldays but only in the last few years swum with the front crawl or 'freestyle'. For over forty years of my life two lengths front crawl was my absolute limit, leaving me a wet dish-rag with tunnel vision at the end. Trying to swim further and slowing down wouldn't be any different, I would just flounder and sink. I'd always looked-on enviously at those younger swimmers who could swim say 10 lengths, with a powerful kick and rapid shoulder rotation. They would whizz past whilst I did my breaststroke (the 2 lengths front crawl would be left 'till last - best not to collapse in the pool, when i could do it in the privacy of my changing booth!) Now, aged 51, obese in weight...I can't just keep up with those youngsters - 10, 20, 30 years younger than me...I can pass them and keep going, length-after-length, effortlessly. If such a concept seems impossible and alien and unachievable, then I've news for you. The hardest thing about the swimming technique in Total Immersion isn't learning it, its unlearning the old 'thrash-and-splash' technique you thought you had to do the front crawl with. It took me three months to pick-up TI - 2 months effectively to unlearn the 'bad' technique - the idea that to swim longer-and-faster was to simply put more effort into it - and a month to hone the TI technique. Now I'm 5 months into it. I would never go back to thrash-and-splash for anything other than a short sprint. Now my new front crawl lets me often overtake those previously God-like swimmers. Yet I can sustain the speed over 49 lengths (a mile in a 33m pool), 73 lengths (1 1/2 miles), 64 legths (mile in a 25m pool) and 96 lengths (1 1/2 miles in a 25m pool). Actually I can swim all day, until either I need a drink or my bladder says 'get out!' So even if there's a swimmer faster than me, it doesn't matter - I'll still overtake them, probably several times whilst they rest out-of-breath. There is a special 'old git' delight in overtaking a younger swimmer but only using half or just a third of the strokes they use. And with no splash, no kick (why bother kicking? You only cavitate and make bubbles and burn energy unnecessarily). Whilst the no-doubt fitter swimmer struggles through the water, dumping energy at a prodigous rate, gasping but due to their youth, still moving forward, I glide past, remorselessly, effortlessly. And sometimes, just a little bit annoyingly. There's also a special delight in swimming 1 1/2 miles and not being out-of-breath when you stop. It mystifies the lifeguards, who will have watched me going up-and-down, or perhaps doing the strange-looking drills. How can someone in his fifties (carrying a little less weight than he did before) go at that speed, for so long, and look as fresh-as-a-daisy when they finish? In the end it comes down simply to technique, not strength. TI teaches you to interact with the water, to find your place in the universe in going through it. Rather than trying to compete with the water through brute force, TI teaches you to change your body to get through the water with the least resistence, faster and over distances you couldn't imagine before. Sometimes (not recommended in a busy pool) I will close my eyes when swimming, and your other senses take over. I will feel the water, my bodies interaction with it, particularly the drag my body exerts. A slight change...an altered angle in my extended arm...the drag there diminishes and stops, I feel myself inavertantly bending a knee and I conciously stop it...suddently I have hit a sweet-spot and each stroke propels me faster and faster through the water...and then best I open my eyes to stop colliding with the side! TI isn't tough to learn. Everything is common-sense. 'Thrash-and-splash' is wonderful if you have youth on your side or you are doing just a short distance. In a race over 50m I am still quicker doing 'thrash-and-splash' than TI, as it dumps a huge amount of energy into the sprint in a short time; hugely inefficient but in just over 30 seconds it hardly matters. But above 50m (that 3rd lap in a 25m pool) and particularly 100m and beyond, TI always wins. But sprinting aside, if you simply swim for pleasure, then your pleasure will be hugely enhanced by TI. 'Be a swan' my wife always says, as I set off in the evening to the pool (I go five-or-six times a week now, when before I would be too tired to go more than twice). I used to be an ugly duckling-style swimmer. Now I'm a swan, graceful and fast. I've never met Terry. I live away from London and the nearest TI coach is over 70 miles away. If terry comes to the UK I suspect it is only to London (and those outside the city avoid it). Like so many others, if I meet him I'll shake his hand firmly. If you were ever suspicious of those 'read this and it will tranform your life' books, this is the one that genuinely works (though not instantly). Wordy and rambling, the essence is in there and once in the water and trying it out you'll be saying 'for pities sake, what was I doing before?'

Review # 2 was written on 2015-11-28 00:00:00 Sajil Panek Surprisingly (seriously - as in, wow, I didn't expect that) gratifying and effective, with the Goodreads caveat that this is a how-to, instructional book (again, to be clear, it's not literature and there's no real story going on here), and I wouldn't recommend for anyone who isn't looking for some help with their (duh) swimming. Conversely, I can't remember ever having read a how-to book that generated such immediate results (which, frankly, is kind of cool). Throw me into the category of folks who've swum, on and off, for decades, with unimpressive results. I lost interest in triathlons because my swimming was frustrating/disastrous, and I rarely, if ever, saw improvement. (Swimming was great for cardio and injury recovery, bad for ego and self-esteem.) But, having decided to give swimming another try, a little bit of research led me to this book (now in its 22nd printing), and I'm glad I bought it. Assuming you buy into his approach - and, otherwise, why would you buy the book? - his guidance and descriptions are clear, and, more importantly, they seem to work (almost immediately). What I found particularly valuable, however, was that he frequently anticipated my problems/pathologies and offered concrete solutions (or, what I might describe as workarounds) to address them. Moreover, as cynical as I was about many of his (almost breathless) claims about how much more comfortable I would feel in the water, how much more smoothly I would cut through the water, and how much better I would feel after my workout, he was pretty much spot on (at least so far). Who knows? Maybe he duped me into thinking I'm doing better, but, then again, who cares? (Of course, time will tell.) I'm not so delusional that I expect this book will turn me into an age-group elite competitor, but - at least to my mind - it (almost immediately) did exactly what it claimed it would do, help me swim better, faster, and easier, which, again, is pretty cool. Like many folks who read and enjoyed the book, I'd love to find a way to attend one of the author's clinics - my sense is that's he's an excellent coach/teacher. The strangest aspect of the book is that so much of it (it felt like the first quarter, maybe the first third) is spent convincing you to buy into to the system or the different approach or the paradigm shift or the author's way of thinking/coaching. And that's all fine, but - gee - I already bought the book, so I'm willing to try it - so let's get to work already... I also agree with the folks who say that the book has a tendency to be (extremely) repetitive, but I'm not sure that's a bad thing (from a pedagogical standpoint). Also, I found the line drawings to be relatively easy to understand, but I don't think there's much doubt that a few dozen photographs would have really helped. Conversely, the author also wants you to buy the video(s), and that's OK, because that's his business model, and more power to him.