Friday, July 29, 2011
YouTube: Men's 4x200m Freestyle Relay Final - Shanghai 2011
Note the "loping" stroke of both Phelps and Lochte. Note their head up position. They are looking straight across the pool. This will be my new distance stroke.
As far as I am concerned, stick a fork in Terry Laughlin's: Total Immersion head down philosophy. No winner is looking down as they swim; prove me wrong!
Winners swim with their heads up and they spend as much time as possible underwater when driving off the walls. Lochte has even bested Phelps in his ability to push off the wall under his own wake, and then triangulate in such as way that he leverages his "float" to get back into the game. He gained as much as a body length or more on the French.
Realistically we are seeing more talent at these Championships that has ever been displayed before. All countries even.
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2 comments:
TI principles apply mostly to long distance swimmers, not sprinters :)
Stick a fork? TI isn't trying to create world class sprinters. Anyone who critisizes TI style for not swimming the way Olympic swimmers do doesn't understand that what we do is adapt to the individual needs of swimmers that are our clients. Our clients primarily are older beginner triathletes who struggle greatly with balance. Often when we begin with these people their feet and legs are dragging on the bottom and they are expending tons of energy to go nowhere. What we do is alter their body position to get them more balanced and that requires them to learn how to get their weight more over their lungs as opposed to be in a fighting uphill position. Getting them to look down is just one small focal point that helps. Please do more research before publicly skewering (with a fork) a brand that has indeed helped hundreds of thousands of adult swimmers realize their dreams of being able to swim long distances from a starting point of barely being able to do 1 lap. Thats not to say that Terry and elite TI coaches couldn't also coach world class swimmers, but that what is generally known as 'TI' is a result of us adapting to the actual needs of our swimmers. We wouldn't be much use to our swimmers if we tried to apply the technique employed by 20 year old 6 ft 6 world class pool sprinters who have trained since they were 8 years old to 50 year old wanna be triathletes who have never had any swimming technique instruction or training in their lives. What we do is teach people to work with rather than against the water and be in more harmony for a better, smoother, more productive experience.
Thanks,
Fiona Laughlin TI Coach and Terry's daughter
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