Total Immersion

Laughlin, Terry. Total Immersion: The Revolutionary Way to Swim Better, Faster, and Easier. New York: Scribner 2024. Print.

First Sentences:

It's no mystery why people have trouble swimming as fast or as far or as smoothly as they'd like: Most of them are doing it backwards.

"Don't worry if your form's not perfect," coaches and instructors have always assured us. "Just get those laps in. Eventually you'll be fit enough to develop a smoother, stronger stroke."

It really works the other way around, but that's not how it's been taught.

          

Description:

Author Terry Laughlin was a competitive swimmer all his life including college, but gave it up completely due to the boredom of endless laps and lack of personal progress in speed and efficiency. Entering Masters swim competitions much later in his life and also stimulated his interest in pursuing a revolutionary method of swimming and training: using streamlining and gliding techniques rather than energy-inefficient power strokes. 

The result: his very readable and totally reasonable swimming instruction book, Total Immersion: The Revolutionary Way to Swim Better, Faster, and Easier. 

His concept is simple. Most of us work too hard and too inefficiently in our strokes to attempt to speed up, swim longer, build strength, and feel relaxed. Unfortunately, our reliance on lap after lap of training, or just flailing away to make it across a pool is counterproductive to results or just plain old fun in the water. 

After observing such greats as Alexander Popov, the only two-time winner of both the Olympic 50- and 100-meter freestyle (1992 and 1996), Laughlin noticed how smoothly the champion stroked and how he turned his hips for added propulsion. Popov glided through the water, even when sprinting, taking many fewer strokes than his competitors. Laughlin interviewed other coaches and watched more champion swimmers to formulate his theory: quality, efficient strokes are more productive than multiple laps with inefficient strokes and body positioning.

He cites his own switch in Masters' training from endless laps to short, carefully-examined lengths; from fast, windmill arms and furiously kicking legs to slow, stretching strokes with little leg movement; from plowing through the water horizontally to smoothly gliding on one's side. 

When triathalons first became popular, Laughlin noticed strong, highly trained athletes almost drowning during the first leg, the swimming portion. He started to coach them in his new Total Immersion technique to help them swim with fewer strokes and streamlined body position with less water resistance, maximizing their "slipperiness" and thus saving strength without sacrificing speed.

Total Immersion helps swimmers from beginners to competitors become more efficient in the water through strokes and body positioning. It is an easy to comprehend and fun to practice series of techniques, laid out in step-by-step progressions to be practiced in short bursts of short distances to provide highly obtainable results. 

With the 2024 Olympics now taking place, it is interesting to watch the swimmers perform these Laughlin's stroke techniques, swiveling their hips for propulsion and barely using their legs to kick during the distance races (watch Katie Lydecky, the gold medalist in the 1500 freestyle, who doesn't kick most of her race and just glides through the water seemingly effortlessly with each stroke). 

In my own experience after recently rewatching Laughlin's video demonstrating the TI technique. I discovered with only a minor change I cut 40 strokes off my quarter mile swims and saved 30 seconds to boot. Over my upcoming 6.5-mile Pelotonia swim challenge, this means I will potentially save 160 strokes per mile or over 700 strokes, (that's about 3/4 of a mile of strokes for me!). 

For anyone interesting in learning to swim, helping their kids, family, or friends to swim better, or champions to cover distances more quickly with less effort, I highly recommend Total Immersion. It's a very simple, yet game-changing revelation of efficient technique for  swimming enthusiast of any level. Trust me, it really works and makes swimming so much more fun.

 

Happy reading. 

 

Fred

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          (and an Intro to The First Sentence Reader) 

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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Tsui, Bonnie. Why We Swim.   

A series of short chapters on the impact and enjoymnent of swimming around the world, from petryglyphs of swimmers found in the waterless Egyptian desert to swimming in freezing Arctic waters, to a club that regularly swims in Saddam Hussein's former palace pool, author Tsui explores the lure and importance of water in history and today's life.  (previously reviewed here)