FREE TASTER: The 'Total Immersion' Swimming Technique

This group of drills and skills imparts three qualities essential to ultra-efficient swimming—and to creating the conditions for continuous long-term improvement:
1. Immediate energy savings from a weightless and stable body position.
2. The body control necessary to learn all subsequent skills.
3. The focus, sense of calm, and habits of self-perception that will make your swimming more satisfying and effective for decades to come

Torpedo practice repeats are briefer than any other drill. Though you may only practice it a few times, it will create invaluable and enduring body awareness that improves Balance and Core Stability—the indispensable foundations of an efficient stroke.

The greatest benefit of Torpedo is that it has few ‘moving parts.’ This allows pinpoint focus in several key mini-skills—a ‘weightless’ head, head-spine alignment, and an engaged core:

Isolating your head in front will heighten awareness of when you’ve achieved an aligned and neutral head position, preparing you to maintain that position in every step that follows.

You’ll also have better awareness of activating core muscle. Both skills are essential to maintaining a sleek, stable body position when you begin moving your arms and legs.

• Stand tall with feet together in your best posture.
• Keep shoulders relaxed.
• Keep head neutral. Don’t lift or tuck your chin.
• Imagine you’re wearing ‘cargo’ jeans with pockets on the front. Reach hands down thighs as if to reach deep into those pockets. (We’ll reference ‘Cargo Pockets’ several times in our lessons.) Pull navel to spine. Lightly press legs together.

Torpedo: Practice with a Glide

• Push gently into a surface glide. (Don’t plunge underwater.) Your legs will sink gradually as glide slows. Maintain head-spine alignment as they do.
• Hold legs together to increase glide and slow legs from sinking.
• When you lose momentum (in a few seconds) stand for a breather and mental reset. Then push into glide again.

Torpedo Checklist
Head: Release its weight so you feel the water support (or cushion) it.
Arms: Push hands deep in Cargo Pockets.
Core: Pull navel toward spine.
Legs: Press together and lengthen.
Bodyline: Maintain the strong posture from your rehearsal.

Torpedo: Practice with a Flutter
By adding a flutter kick to Torpedo, you’ll gain a few seconds to memorize key focal points and sensations. Do not turn this into a kicking exercise! Keep kick small, gentle and quiet.

• The assisting-partner’s hands-on cues provide the most accurate feel for correct positions.
• Being towed or supported allows the practicing-partner more time to memorize key sensations.

1. Cradle head
2. Check that only the rear third of the head is visible above surface.

Gently waggle head (and/or lightly massage neck) to release any tension.

Walk backward while towing at pace sufficient to keep body balanced.

Support Feet
Lightly support (don’t lift) feet and:
Stand briefly to observe head-to-toe alignment.
Ensure that legs are pressed together . . . then push into glide.
Watch to see that legs remain together after release.

• Repeat Gliding Torpedo four or more times.
• Strive to glide a tiny bit farther each time.
• Keeping head and spine aligned and legs together should help increase glide distance.
• Then repeat Torpedo with Flutter two to four times. As you do, perform a head-to-toe scan of items on the checklist.
• When you’ve memorized the feeling of weightless head, engaged core, and streamlined legs, proceed to Superman. Revisit Torpedo any time to refresh those sensations—either between repeats of Superman, or before Whole Stroke repeats.

Because your bodyline is longer, you’ll travel farther in Superman than in Torpedo. Yet these reps are still fairly brief—about 8 to 10 seconds. However, a strong and targeted focus will help you imprint essential sensations and habits, even in brief repeats. Unlike Torpedo, Superman is worth practicing hundreds of times, over many months, creating invaluable insights each time. Because both drills are exceedingly simple, you should be able to easily apply new insights to whole stroke.

Essential habits taught by Superman include:

• A weightless, stable head position. This is always the starting point for achieving a stable balanced body position.
• A fully extended bodyline. This increases support by extending your body over the maximum water surface area. A longer bodyline also reduces drag. You’ll travel farther effortlessly with a ‘lighter’ body and less drag.
• Relaxed hands (helps Balance) and a Wide Track arm position (improves Core Stability.)
• Calm legs drafting behind your upper body (reduces drag.)
• Maintain these habits in every drill . . . and every stroke you take from now on.

Superman: Rehearsal
Start in Torpedo position, then:

• Extend arms on shoulder-width Tracks.
• Relax hands. Hands should be slightly below shoulder height, so arms slope down as shown.
• Extend hands farther by opening underarm/axilla.
• Tuck tummy.
• Memorize these sensations. Check in with them while practicing Superman.

Superman: Practice

• Extend arms with relaxed hands on Wide Tracks. Then push into glide.
• If legs sink as glide slows, let them.
• To glide farther, engage core, and press streamlined legs together.
• Stand for a breather, self-assessment, and mental reset.
• Repeat.
• Choose one focus from checklist. Repeat several times.
• After each repeat, assess body position and strength of focus.
• Choose a new focus from list and repeat. Progress focus from head to arms, then core, and finally to legs.

Superman: Partner Practice

You have three options for towing or support:

1. Hold wrists. Lengthen arms, ensure they are on parallel shoulder-width tracks.
2. Cradle head. Ensure absence of tension in neck. Draw forward for a sense of spine lengthening.
3. Support feet. Check head-spine alignment, arm extension, and leg streamline.

Immediately bring new habits and sensations into your whole-stroke swimming by adding a few strokes to Superman.

Practice Superman+Strokes
Choose a mini-skill focus from those you practiced in Superman.
Push into Superman. Glide long enough to check your chosen mini-skill. Begin stroking before glide slows.
Swim three to five non-breathing strokes with same focus, then stand for a breather. Repeat four or more times.

Choose a new Focal Point and repeat the process.

Note: To increase the number of strokes you can take, use a Finis Swimmer’s Snorkel. Increasing
the number of correct repetitions will accelerate learning.

Suggested Focal Point Sequence
For a simple but systematic way to organize Focal Points to cover all key skills, use the ‘head-to-toe body scan’ method, as follows. Focus on these stroke thoughts in this order 

Head. In Superman, feel your head ‘hanging’ (like a dead weight) between your shoulders.
Maintain that sensation as you begin stroking. (Alternatively, focus on feeling the water cushion your face, or visualize a laser projecting from your head-spine line . . . in Superman and while stroking.

Arms. Extend arms on Wide Tracks during Superman. Reach on the same Wide Tracks on each stroke. Also, note where hands are in Superman. Reach to the same place while stroking.

Underarm. Open underarm in Superman. In each stroke, extend forward until you feel underarm open.

Core. Feel core engaged in Superman—and as you stroke.

Legs. Lengthen legs and press together lightly in Superman. Begin stroking by reaching forward (not kicking) and let legs follow your body. Keep legs calm, quiet, and streamlined.

How Much Whole Stroke Practice?
We encourage you to practice whole stroke swimming at regular intervals throughout the lessons. However, if you’re learning these techniques for the first time, we recommend you limit whole-stroke practice mainly to the short, non-breathing repeats prescribed in 1.3 Superman+Strokes.
If you find it difficult to stroke as described in the Focal Point sequence just above, proceed directly to the Group Two Recovery exercises that follow. We promise you’ll feel markedly more comfortable and coordinated upon completing the skills and drills in that lesson.
However, if you already have fairly extensive TI experience, feel free to spend time becoming more deeply familiar with any new sensations or insights gained so far, by employing them in your normal practice routine.

Group One (Balance and Body Control) exercises rely entirely on gross-motor skills. These involve large body parts and major muscle groups. They’re relatively easy to coordinate—and to sense when you’re performing them correctly. This makes them ideal as the first step in improving efficiency.

Group Two exercises introduce many fine-motor skills, requiring the coordination of many more, and smaller, muscles. There are nearly limitless opportunities for error and a very narrow range of effective solutions. This greatly increases the difficulty of coordination and requires much deeper sensory awareness.

To reduce the learning curve, we’ve broken this section into many ‘bite-size’ skills—some in rehearsals, some in whole-stroke—and devised new forms of partner-assisted practice. But, these challenges can also be an opportunity—to develop Super-Learning habits that prepare for years of continued improvement . . . and will apply to learning any skill.

As noted earlier, moving an arm through the air—where it weighs 10 times as much as in the water—has enormous potential to create instability in your core body, making it much harder to learn skills and swim efficiently.

Control these destabilizing forces by imprinting three qualities in your recovery:
Symmetry. Each arm should be a mirror image of the other. This equalizes the forces affecting the body.
Relaxation. This gives arm muscles a ‘rest break’ between strokes. It also averts the creation of ballistic forces in recovery—which can divert your body off its intended path . . . forcing you to do constant course correction.
Direction. Any body part moving through the air should move in the same direction you wish to travel. This channels energy and momentum forward.

And finally, besides closely complementing the lessons learned in Group One, providing a solid foundation for efficiency and skill development, Group Two skills are also the most important for injury-free swimming.

In the companion ebook, Ultra-Efficient Freestyle, Terry referes numerous times to Bill Boomer’s maxim “The shape of the ‘vessel’ matters more than the size of the engine.”

Chapter 6 “How Streamlining Works” provides powerful supporting evidence, including:

Fish scientists and DARPA engineers learned that dolphins are over 2500 percent more efficient than human swimmers—and can swim 700 percent faster than their muscular power should make possible possible—because of “a natural ability for active streamlining.”

Olympic medalists generate strikingly less stroking power than slower and less successful swimmers, proving that their success and speed is primarily due to “a superior ability to avoid drag.”

This lesson teaches you the lowest-drag position possible in freestyle. It will also transform your idea of freestyle technique from Upper-Body-Pulls/Lower-Body-Kicks to Streamline-Right-Side/Streamline-Left-Side.

1. Keep head and spine aligned. I.E. Don’t lift your head.
2. Breathe with body roll. I.E. Don’t turn your head.
3. Keep lead arm on Track and lead hand patient as you breathe.

Because breathing challenges are considerable—and the solutions non-instinctive—this lesson includes breathing several rehearsals, two basic-skill exercises, and three wholestroke drills. The preparatory work will be invaluable when you get to the main drills.

Breathing Rehearsals

Rehearsals are more valuable for breathing than for any other skill because breathing requires a far more intricate coordination of many moving parts. If any part breaks down, overall efficiency can suffer significantly.

Breathing rehearsals incorporate two familiar skills—2.2 Paint a Line and 2.3 Mail Slot. Performing those skills correctly is critical to getting air efficiently and comfortably. These rehearsals also teach the precise coordination of rotating-to-air with the armstroke.

Lessons 1 through 4 of this video series illustrate a step-by-step method for increasing the efficiency of every key component of your stroke. This whole stroke study shows how all the pieces work together as a holistic system. We do that via a series of stroke studies, from multiple stroke views, to show each part of the stroke from it’s most revealing perspective.
In a holistic system all parts are intricately interrelated. This study guide, in combination ith the video studies, is designed to deepen your understanding of those relationships and empower you to make confident and knowledgeable choices about your own stroke.

Each view is shown first at normal speed to let you take in the natural flow of the stroke.
Then it’s repeated at slower speed to allow you to look closely at fine points.
You will learn the most by using the cursor key or your computer’s mouse to advance or reverse the video one frame at a time, while following the study cues we’ve provided for each stroke view. These study cues provide a systematic way to understand the synergies between all parts of the stroke.