Swimming Pool Information: Total Immersion

Swimming Pool Information: Total Immersion

Total Immersion is a new approach to the hydrodynamics of the human body when swimming. Its chief proponent is American swimming coach, Terry Laughlin. The aim is to swim like a fish, undulating/oscillating the whole body, rather than propelling only with the arms and legs.

Principles

Total Immersion claims to be a new way of swimming, to make the rewards of swimming well available to everyone, not just to elites, and to emphasize the pursuit of pleasure – feeling good in the water and enjoying it intellectually and emotionally – as the surest way to improve skill, endurance and even speed.

Though swimming is an essential life skill, and acknowledged as among the healthiest of all activities, few people have the skill necessary to enjoy its full rewards. This is so because humans, being land animals, are “hard-wired” to swim inefficiently and this instinctive inefficiency is reinforced by traditional instruction and coaching.

Although few people do swimming as a sport, the paradigms of competitive swimmers and coaches have been highly influential in how recreational or fitness swimmers develop their swimming, leading to a focus on power and conditioning. This makes as little sense as if cyclists who ride mainly for transportation, fitness or pleasure tried to copy Lance Armstrong’s workouts.

According to Terry Laughlin, the primary impediment to swimming better is neither fitness nor power (otherwise marathon runners could all swim great distances and weight lifters would set records in the pool), but the unique problems presented by the medium of water to a human body traveling through it. Water offers poor support, poor traction and is 880 times denser than air. Thus an emphasis on pulling, kicking and conditioning will lead to frustration and stagnation for most people.

The Total Immersion way is to focus on four essential skills:

• (1) balance – because that turns swimming from survival into a skill;
• (2) active streamlining – because reducing drag will always yield greater benefits than trying to increase power;
• (3) rhythmic weight shifts – because the combination of gravity and mass is a virtually effortless source of power; and
• (4) traction – because water is so elusive that it’s easier to “hold onto your place in the water” (then use weight shifts to move past your grip) than to push yourself forward.

Because these four skills that make humans more efficient in the water are non-instinctive and counter-intuitive, Total Immersion swimmers focus on swimming as a mindful practice done in the spirit of yoga or tai chi, rather than the endurance-and-power-focused workouts done by competitive swimmers. The aim is to become more self-aware and to feel at “one with the water.” Lap counts and pace times are considered far less important than economy, grace, attention and awareness

Details

The technique for front crawl:

• The body should be as streamlined as possible, maximising length, and minimising frontal area. Body length is maximised by keeping the leading arm extended for as long as possible - each recovering arm almost catches up with the arm about to start the next pull.
• Because the head is dense and the lungs are buoyant, the alignment of the head and chest is all important in reducing drag and improving speed. Most of the head should be kept under the surface all of the time.
• Body rotation is emphasised, so that the turning of the torso adds to the propulsive effect of the arms.
• Emphasis is placed on developing balance and awareness of the dynamics of swimming, over and above the development of simple strength and power.

For butterfly and breaststroke the body undulates up and down, so that the movement of the torso contributes to the power of the kick.

Debate

The approach has critics, who oppose what they see as a movement away from the essential primacy of cultivating strength and endurance.

These critics maintain that Total Immersion is most suited to beginning or fitness swimmers, who need a style which emphasizes technique over fitness, or older swimmers. The emphasis on balance and streamlining removes the need for a strong leg kick (so often needed to prevent the feet from sinking) and directs more of the force from the kick to forward propulsion. The stroke is thus less tiring, and can be sustained for long distances. Adult amateur triathletes use Total Immersion methods, so that they can conserve their legs for the cycling and running stages of a competition.

Swimmers who have been training competitively since their pre-teen years may not benefit from Total Immersion techniques. These experts may have "outgrown" the Total Immersion training concepts, because their stroke style is already ingrained and automatic. To swim faster, they focus more on stroke speed and intensity of interval workouts. Detractors believe Total Immersion techniques alone won't enable swimmers to progress to top-level competition standards.