"The Art of Swimming" This guy grosses $580,000 a year teaching people how to swim straight-arm freestyle!

This post is primarily for newer swimmers and triathletes.

The author of the Forbes article I point to below gets a private swim lesson from Steven Shaw and describes some marginal improvement. Note: his only swim training was by way of the Red Cross water safety program four-decades ago.

From Forbes Magazine:

In [Steven] Shaw's crawl, the arm remains straight as it pulls out of the water, bending only once it has formed an L shape with the body. "I want your stroke to be effortless, powerful and graceful," he says. "You should swim like an eagle, not like a chicken."

His 13-year-old, $580,000 (revenues) company, Art of Swimming, operates at 26 pools in the U.K., two venues in New York City and one in San Francisco. Fees range from $175 an hour for a private lesson with Shaw himself, to $250 for a six-week one-hour-a-week group course.

Devotees include Irish billionaire Dermot Desmond, 59, and Evangeline Benedetti, a 68-year-old cellist in the New York Philharmonic, who does a session of Shaw strokes before each performance.

[Link]

Are guys like Steven Shaw and others merely selling "instant talent?" (Rhetorical question and it's very "snarky" of me.)

Selling "Instant talent" is a mirage especially when it comes to swimming, it's snake oil, it's a weight-loss product on a cheesy informercial at 3:00 AM.

Glenn Mills has a DVD for about $30 called Go Swim Straight-Arm Freestyle, with Olympian, Scott Tucker. (Scott Tucker's technique appears to be the same forward crawl that Steven Shaw is teaching).

Contrast the prices of Steven Shaw, the "Swim Whisperer," to actual coaching and training through a masters program:

• $50-per-month investment in a masters program for three months.
• $30 DVD Go Swim Straight-Arm Freestyle, with Scott Tucker, or Jason Lezak, Roland Schoeman, Kara Lynn Joyce, or what ever flavor you like
• Go to your swim workout 4-days-a-week or more depending on your team schedule

Total cost: $180 for 50-hours-plus of training & coaching plus a sound video reference as a technique example.

Clever rhetoric like "swim like an eagle not like a chicken" will not make you a decent swimmer but praticing with simultaneous coaching will.