TI coach Dave Cameron posted this amazing series of photos analyzing the freestyle stroke of Grant Hackett and Ian Thrope.
Two things I wanted to point out which were very interesting to me:
First, in pictures 5 and 6, it’s unbelievable to see how high their elbows are on the catch. I tried this and it seemed kind of awkward, and I think ultimately I probably dropped my elbow much more than these swimmers did. I also didn’t feel the full advantage afforded by such a high elbow catch. I hope to work on this more as the beginning TI drills we tend to spear to a certain low position, versus spearing more horizontal and then catching from there, which tends to be something we work on after we get past the beginning drills.
Second, in 14, the text says that in a picture of Hackett that he presses his chest down while breathing. Breathing up to this point for me has always seemed to stop me dead during that moment. So I began trying to press the armpit/chest right at the moment of breathing and some interesting things happened:
1. At the moment of pressing, my head sank very fast and there was only a small moment when I could take my breath before water encircled my sideways facing mouth. This was in contrast to being simply turned and I had more time to take a breath.
2. When I consciously pressed at the breathing moment, my hips rode higher and my momentum was preserved much better, meaning that I still had forward movement versus coming to a stop during the breath.
I hope to see more of these analyses of top swimmers. It’s so instructive to see how they move through the water.

Friday I had a breakthrough of tremendous proportions in my swimming. Since my last post, I’ve been focusing on my stroke, specifically my arm recovery, as it has been something that hasn’t felt right.
So my typical workout, once I embarked on this focus to fix the problems in my stroke, looks like:
200-300y W/U w/ drills:
200y if I get the shallow end of my pool where I can stand:
2×25 Superman glide
2×25 Alternating R/L arm skate
2×25 Alternating R/L arm underswitch skate
2×25 Underswitch swim continuous
300y if I get the deep end where I can’t stand:
100y swim easy
200y underswitch swim
4×50 Zen switch, arm submerged to elbow, continuous swim
4×50 Zen switch, arm submerged to middle forearm, continuous swim
4×50 Zen switch, arm submerged to wrist, continuous swim
4×50 Zen switch, dragging fingertips along surface
4×50 Swim w/ focus on various arm recovery drill points
The points I had focused on were:
1. Elbow led recovery, via circling the elbow, per Easy Freestyle DVD Chapter 5.
2. Elbow led recovery, by having a straight elbow path, from back to front entry, also per Easy Freestyle DVD Chapter 5. On my left, my elbow is tracing some sort of arc and ends up too close to the centerline. It even causes my body to arc sometimes. In feeling, I attempted to actually trace path that is straight, but angled towards the outside. This probably meant in actuality that my left arm was moving straight forward even though my brain thought it was going forward straight before.
The secondary points I kept a mental check on were:
1. Releasing at the end of the pull back. Tension builds on the stroke back, but then I release it all and relax for the elbow led recovery.
2. Stroking towards the outside, almost at 45 degree angle away from body as Coach Shinji puts it, although I think it just ends up being less than that. I think the important thing is to not end up alongside or close to the body.
3. Wide tracks to swim on, versus being too narrow.
4. Setting up the entry around where the opposite arm’s elbow is, and then letting gravity take the arm into the water and then spearing forward.
5. Upon entering with my left arm, keep it spearing slightly to the outside. Previously I believe I’ve been spearing my left arm too straight forward.
6. Quiet arm entry, and thus quiet swimming and as bubble-less as possible.
Other very important points that I kept an awareness of:
1. For this exercise, I chose to not stroke back strongly, but see if I could impart more forward momentum via the spearing arm rather than depending on the stroking arm back. Coach Shinji and I did some drills to illustrate how much momentum you can generate simply by spearing forward.
2. Stroking back straight and not up or down. My right arm stroking tends to make my body hop up and down slightly, indicating that my stroke back is not exactly straight back and is directing propulsive force in other directions besides fully moving my body forward.
3. At the end of spear forward, let my wrist relax and my hand just hangs down so that it is ready for the catch. This also releases tension in the arm; tension in the arm is bad.
4. Slight attention on bending at the elbow to catch at the front, but not too much at this juncture, as it requires a bit more flexibility than I have at this point.
5. Hanging the head in a relaxed manner.
6. Keeping the body straight, and also when I roll back and forth during swimming to roll on my axis and not swipe back and forth.
As one can imagine, keeping track of all this can be overwhelming; swimming is such a complex activity! Luckily, our bodies have imprinted all this such that all that text is really easy and burned into our natural movements. The problem of course is when we imprint bad habits and have to change them.
Running through my workout, I became a bit more unstable as I have been when my arm starts to get higher out of the water for each drill. But yesterday, I had about a lap of instability and then something changed. My swimming became amazingly relaxed and I was moving forward with ease, and by not stroking back strongly at all.
The sensations I felt were:
1. My head was very relaxed hanging down. But I remember feeling no water swirling at the top which meant that my head was pretty submerged, probably more than it has been.
2. My left arm entry felt really good. I just let it drop into the water and spear forward.
3. As I kept my stroking arm moving with firm but not extra force, I felt the first inklings of what anchoring in the water meant. My stroking arm became an anchor for my spearing arm to push forward against, as well as with a lot of help from my two beat kick putting some authority into my hip turning. With this action, I started to really understand what Coach Shinji meant by saying that you could really move forward fast without using a whole lot of energy.
4. My body was totally straight, and for the first time I felt that I was turning nicely on my axis and keeping like a needle through the water.
5. With all this working, I felt at ease from stroke to stroke, very relaxed, but yet I felt like I was moving smoothly and continuously through the water, with each stroke being very rhythmic and with no stops or starts.
I felt so good that I didn’t want it to end and swam another 4×50 in hopes of it burning into my nervous system just a bit more. It was a banner moment for me in my swimming and I hope to imprint this further in future sessions.

In my last session with Shinji, I worked on my arm recovery. Then, a reader of my blog emailed me for some questions on arm recovery, which prompted me to post on the TI forums, and then prompted this post.
In working on my arm recovery, I have been given many visuals through verbalizations to help with the right motion by Shinji and also some from an Advanced TI Seminar by Dave Cameron. These were:
a. [Shinji] The one trapezoid/shoulder shrug to bring the arm up.
b. [Shinji] Extend the shoulder blade forward
c. [Shinji] Try to exit the hand/arm through the same hole in the water that it’s laying in, at the end of the stroke. Not only does this stop placing forces that are not helping me go forward in the water (ie. making me sink or bounce in the water), I find that dragging your hand out that way means you are naturally doing the elbow led recovery.
d. [Dave Cameron] Imagine during recovery that you are scraping your bicep across the surface of the water as you bring the arm around.
e. [Dave Cameron] Use inner rotation of the shoulder, don’t bring it up and over. The arm tends to trace a path that is more a swing around rather than straight along the path over the body. He has said that inner rotation also saves your shoulder from damage.
Great coaches have a multitude of vocabulary and can come up with many ways to help a student perform some complex action. Then, posting on the TI forums, Terry Laughlin and Dave Cameron both weighed in on these comments. Here are their posts reprinted:
Terry says:
“Dave I would probably have difficulty following those focal points. For instance, I’m not sure how to interpret the phrase “extend the shoulder blade forward.” That’s why I prefer focal points that describe a simple action or a sensation described in ‘universal’ language.
One key to a recovery in which the elbow lifts and leads the hand and forearm forward is how you exit the water. I’ve used the following images to help me with that:
1. Release, rather than push back, at the end of the stroke
2. Release away from the hip – i.e. toward the outside. (This helps combat the tendency to bring the elbow toward the spine on recovery.)
3. Circle the elbow – like the crank of a bicycle. (This helps reinforce #1.)
As for video, Lesson 5 on the Easy Free DVD is devoted to release, recovery and entry. It shows LOTS of video of the rehearsal exercises that improve your kinesthetic awareness of leading with the elbow. Also of the release, recovery and entry, including contrast of all the most common errors and how to correct them.”
Then Coach Dave Cameron posted:
“One thing that must be realized about my coaching is that I always use tricks to get what I want. I wanted it to FEEL like the elbow scraped, but it shouldn’t be as wide as that in reality. Just to get people to break their habits on that one, We started with the release, went to the shrug/shift, the swing, the slice without sacrifice, and the slip.
The recovery can have a lot of variety based on flexibility and balance.
Denser swimmers may need to be wider, especially with breathing in mind. Flexible swimmers will look like Shinji, but be cautious that there isn’t a hitch before entry when swimming (not a drill skill, as KevinM puts it) when you roll through some of the tougher parts of a higher recovery.
If you extend to lock at the end of the pull/anchor phase, it’s very difficult to fix this and have the right recovery. Make sure that when you transition from anchoring, the focus rotates to shoulder and elbow manipulation. If you try to take the hand around, it’s almost impossible to focus on it without putting tension on the marionette arm.”
Absorbing all this as text, and then putting it in my head as a visualization, and also wrapping in my live coaching sessions with Coach Shinji was quite a feat.
Looking to Terry’s comment about the Easy Freestyle DVD Chapter 5, I put that on and found some nice video to complement all the text above.
I think in the end, Terry’s drills on the DVD proved to be the easiest to work with. I went out for a few sessions now attempting to work the exercises and they seemed to work great.
I found out that my left arm was quite different than my right arm, and that it was doing a slightly different, but critically different movement. It definitely showed in how far and fast I would glide between my right and left sides.
Doing the Zen Switch by dragging my arm/forearm/wrist/fingertips through the water while swimming, I found that my strokes were better than when the arm was out of the water. For some reason, when some part of my arm/hand was moving through the water, I had some sort of anchor where I could tell where my arm/hand was and put it in the right place. The moment I lifted it out of the water, my left arm began to lose its form, whereas my right arm was OK.
Other tips that really helped:
1. As Terry mentioned in 2., and also Shinji has said to push water away from you at a 45 degree angle at the end of the pull, this sets up the arm for recovery.
2. I also was stroking not straight back which causes my body to hop up and down as evidence that I was putting force in other directions besides moving me forward. I need to stroke straight back.
3. I need to perfect the arm drop before spearing forward. I seem to have this OK on my right side where I can really feel gravity just dropping my arm into the water and then it spears forward. On my left, it feels awkward and I seem to be using my right arm pulling back as compensation for a weak spear forward. This is really bad when I take a breath and the spear forward is very weak, resulting in me almost stopping when I breathe.
Shinji has told me that the spear forward generates a lot of forward motion and he is right. We have done isolated drills where I am not stroking but merely attempting to move forward via spear alone. It’s pretty amazing how far you can go. So I do not want to lose this momentum generating motion and need to get it right on my left side.
4. Another bad habit to break: sometimes as I bring my left arm through recovery, I tend to arc my body. Very weird and need to stop this.
As always, thanks for the great advice from all my TI coaches and sources of information and lots to work on!

Surfing through the Total Immersion forums, I responded to someone wondering how to use the tempo trainer. I thought it would be worthwhile to re-post that here:
I have found that the tempo trainer is one of the best ways to introduce measurability and repeatability into swimming. It’s much more detailed than just remembering how fast you can swim laps; you also gain knowledge into efficiency when you couple tempo and counting strokes per laps. Remember that you can always swim faster by just cycling your arms faster, but you want to know across workouts that you are consistently putting out a certain effort, combined with efficiency, and still keeping to a speed, or going faster/slower. It is not as good to know that you swam the same interval at given speed over two workout days, but one day you worked your butt off because your form was off but the other day you were more rested/better form and you actually had less effort.
I use the tempo trainer both for improving stroke technique and efficiency and then for endurance training.
For improving stroke technique/efficiency, I first setup baseline counts for 25y lengths from 2.6 seconds tempo all the way down to 0.8 seconds tempo. Around 1.2-1.3 seconds is considered cruising, and .8-.9 you’re pretty much sprinting. In/around 2.4-2.6 seconds is almost unbearably slow. Over a period of workout days I would swim 4×25 (or 2×25) at each time and then record that down. Sometimes I would start at 2.6 and work my way down .1 seconds at a time, sometimes I would start in the middle, ie. 1.6 seconds and go to 1.2, sometimes I would start at 1.4 and go all the way down to 0.8. Sometimes I would go directly to 0.8. I usually stop when I feel I am getting too tired and losing concentration and focus.
BTW, writing it down sure beats trying to remember. Bringing paper and pen doesn’t work because they fail when wet. I use a cheap plastic acrylic picture frame and a grease pencil which is better, although it can fail when there is condensation on the acrylic, but it’s still much better than pen and paper.
Once you establish baselines, then you can see if you can figure out ways of beating those stroke counts. Mostly this is about firming up your technique more than anything else. Also, you will notice that at certain points you’ll jump 1-2 strokes per length. These are critical points at which something is happening; maybe your technique is deteriorating, maybe you’re getting tired.
BTW, if you get tired, it may be a good time to just get out of the pool because you don’t want to imprint bad habits!
At some point you’ll find that it’s almost impossible to beat your stroke count at given tempo time. This is now your max and now you can use this to practice against from time to time to know if you’re technique is suffering for some reason. However, I also think it is an interesting exercise to take some time to see if you can actually beat and maintain a lower stroke count for a given tempo time, so play with this.
For endurance, it’s been about figuring how to maintain a tempo in the face of declining resources, and maintaining form at those tempos over a longer period of time and distance. So I use tempo trainer on more continuous sets, starting with 50, 100, and then longer, usually by adding 50m every week, or sometimes varying it up with more short 50m lengths, or sets of 200s, or one big 500 or 1000m set. But definitely start low distance in lengths and give yourself some rest, even upwards to 30 seconds rest. The object is to slowly increase lengths, and reps, and lower rest between reps (ie. 20 sec, down to 10 or 5 seconds rest) gradually such that you do not ruin your ability to maintain optimal swimming form by getting too tired. If you find that at a certain interval distance that you are having trouble keeping up or your form is getting messy, I would back off and practice that workout a few more times before increasing the difficulty.
Over time, you will get better and be able to go longer, with your tempo trainer keeping time along the way as a relentless timemaster.
The other thing to do is to practice different tempos with this protocol. Then you will have different speeds to engage, such as sprinting to get in front of a pack and then cutting back to cruise mode and being able to switch cleanly from all that.
A word about training on the slow end. I have found that, while almost unbearable, it has also been extremely valuable as a way to reinforce holding perfect form and practicing balance in the water. I find this translates to helping my form with faster tempos.
Hope this helps…Coach Shinji is going to run me through a “strategic use of tempo trainer” talk soon. I hope to learn more from him on how he is using the tempo trainer to help improve swimming.

This morning I got up early before my usual swim time and read some blogs while eating a bit before leaving for the pool. I came across this post on the Total Immersion forums, shinji asked how i cut strokes to 7, which caught my eye for two reasons: one, my coach was referenced, and two, this guy was going to talk about how he attained 7 strokes!
I quickly skimmed through it and set it to memory, and then went out to the pool today to try to apply some what he had done and see if I could get my minimal stroke count for 25 yards down to 7 (previous best was 9).
On the first try, I hit 8! It took two more 8s before I actually glided in for 7! Unbelievable! I then managed to do a few more glide-ins to 7 and 2 actual solid 7s. I stopped when I started drifting to 8 and knew that I was getting tired.
Some notes on how I achieved the 7 strokes:
1. Everything that don h said worked great!
2. There definitely was a lot of gliding. I found that I must be able to hold my body position without a single wiggle and be perfectly balanced between strokes in order to glide as far as possible on each stroke.
By the way, gliding is harder than it looks. You have to be perfectly balanced *and* also in body position for the next stroke with your arms. You also have to be relaxed and not tense, and not anticipate the next stroke but just wait patiently for the right moment and let it happen. Total Immersion drills really helped here.
3. Forget breathing. I haven’t perfected breathing without some slowdown, so I elected to hyperventilate and recover fully before each length, so that I could swim the entire 25y without taking a breath.
4. The push off the wall was with a traditional streamline, with both hands pointed into a spear in front of my head with one hand on top of the other. This allowed me to travel further before slowing down.
5. As Don mentioned, I too played with the first stroke, which was my right hand. I attempted to make that stroke also propel more further before my official first stroke (remember that my coach told me that the first stroke is counted *after* this initial stroke pulling the arm back from the first streamline). This was difficult, and very much brought me back to skating drills; I had to stroke back strongly and then get into skating position without losing balance. Once I get the knack of that, I could go 11 yards or so before taking my first stroke.
6. One interesting note. I tried to glide with my arm up in cocked position, ready for the next stroke as Don suggests, but I found that where my previous head position was, this would actually drive my head forward and deeper into the water, sometimes actually even sinking me down! This was not good, as it did not allow me to use gravity to drop my cocked arm down into the water and forward into the next stroke. In fact, being partially submerged made it harder to even perform that movement with that cocked arm. So I had to actually lift my head up slightly, which counterbalanced my dropping hips with the cocked arm’s weight and I was riding much better and higher on the water that way.
7. I practiced minimizing my leg movement between strokes. I relaxed and tried to keep the insides of my feet lightly touching. This minimized drag.
8. One thing I tried actually not to do was to glide too much with my recovery arm in stationary cocked position. I was feeling like this may relate to some of the comments my friends and I have regarding efficiency training as “cheating” because you glide so much and this doesn’t happen in real swimming. While I have come to feel that super slow swimming for efficiency training is not cheating, I felt that it was better to just pretend that I was super duper slow motion swimming where my recovery arm never really stops moving. In this way, I could just imprint the movement, however slow, and in theory speed it up and hopefully keep form.
Super slow swim training really works, in my opinion. I can really examine everything my body does in slow motion, and I know when something is wrong when all of a sudden I need an extra stroke to the touch the wall. Or, sometimes I need to glide just a little longer on that last stroke to hit the wall. Then I replay my length in my head and try to remember where I didn’t do so well and try to not to that again on the next length.

Yesterday, the day after my longer swim with LAMVAC’s annual 10K swim, I was feeling a bit tired. Still I went to the pool to limber up and try to lower my SPL again on a 25y pool. Based on my previous attempt and hitting 10 SPL, I decided to try to figure out what my tempo was at that SPL so that I could use my tempo trainer to help me figure out how to maintain that SPL and increase tempo.
By the way, I have figured out that the tempo trainer, in concert with counting strokes for a given length, is an excellent way to determine if you are working out at a level that is consistent with past workouts. On my bike I know I can do this with my Computrainer and training by watts; on running, I have the relentless treadmill to repeat training conditions, and also measured distances and times on either the track or known running paths. For a long time, I didn’t have a good way of doing that with swimming. I only had swim times per length or lap, but I don’t think that is good because I may be swimming with more or less efficiency across workout days but yet still hit the same time for a length or lap. Now, with the tempo trainer and counting strokes, I have a more precise measure as to how I’m swimming, how much effort I am putting into that interval, and even know when I should get out of the pool because I’m tiring.
My reason, thus, for determining my tempo at my 10 SPL is to figure out how to maintain SPL while increasing tempo, which should mean that I am maintaining efficiency while increasing my speed.
I had a pleasant surprise though; I hit 9 SPL! Here are my results:
Tempo 2.6 seconds:
11, 9 strokes
10, 9
9, 9
Tempo 2.5 seconds:
10, 9 strokes
10, 9
9, 9
Tempo 2.4 seconds:
10, 9 strokes
9, 9
9, 9
Tempo 2.3 seconds:
10, 10 strokes
10, 10
10, 10
I began at 2.6 seconds on my tempo trainer, which is almost unbearably slow. I knew my 10 SPL was also at a very slow tempo, so I just started here. Then I increased it by .1 seconds, doing 6×25 at each tempo. I flipped flop for a while between 9 and 10 SPL and eventually could not maintain 9 SPL at 2.3 seconds. This is my critical point at which I need to see if I can pull it down to 9 SPL at some point.
Some notes:
1. I need to relax more and not anticipate the beep of my tempo trainer. This caused me to lose balance as my body began to turn in anticipation of the beep coming but I was conditioned to swim at a faster tempo and I would turn too soon, resulting in an unbalanced position while gliding and creating drag.
2. My body was unstable and I need to learn to maintain my glide position and balance in the water for longer. I got better at this as my session went on. Also, being tired from the previous day’s swim session didn’t help.
3. For some reason, I had a decently coordinated switch with my left hand driving forward/right hand stroking back, but my right hand driving/left hand stroking was terrible. Bad hip drive with bad arm drop, and even bad beginning body position because of item 1 above. I need to make sure my switch/stroke is perfectly coordinated. Swimming super slow is tough!
4. I need to hang my head more; at times I seemed to lift up and I know my hips are also dropping as a result, creating more drag. This seemed to happen intermittently.
5. Relaxing is key and maintaining perfect balance, slightly on either side as my arm recovers overhead, so that I just glide with minimal water disturbance and drag.
6. Sometimes my feet would start to drift apart, mostly in anticipation of the beep and wanting to do a kick. But the beep wouldn’t come and then my kick was cocked for longer than it need be, creating more drag. Need to keep them together for more streamlining.
7. Breathing still slows me down. I need to practice doing this more at slower speeds.
8. Despite the problems, there were times I felt that my stroke and glide between beeps was perfect. I would stroke with a perfect switch and arm drop, and then I would be in perfect gliding position as my arm recovered overhead and timed the next beep perfectly. This is the situation I need to imprint and work on repeating over and over again.

On New Years Day, my Master’s group, LAMVAC, hosts a 10K swim each year. I think this was the first time I actually went and swam this annual swim, although I was pretty sure I would not make it to 10K as I haven’t swam more than 1600y since Ironman CDA!
I did want to test two things, which was to see what my SPL was for a 50m length, and also practice a bit of longer distance tempo training at various tempos.
Here are my results for trying to minimize SPL for 50m:
38, 36, 37, 33, 35, 35 strokes
That was a vast improvement for my usual 50 strokes to hit the other wall of a 50m length!
After that, I did some tempo training by doing 100m laps at 1.6 seconds tempo, and then lowering my tempo by .1 seconds for each 100m thereafter until I hit .8 seconds. Definitely finding that I am limited now, because I really haven’t been training for distance in the last few months but only on refining technique. As it gets warmer, I will begin to add a longer distance swim each week just to practice long distance at various tempos. But I don’t want to turn all my workouts into distance training as I don’t have any race to train for this coming year, but rather want to focus on cementing and imprinting the right body movements for technique.

This week, for kicks, I decided to take one workout to see if I could lower my SPL for 25y to as low as I can get it.
My best SPL before this was 12 strokes for 25y. I was determined to do better, but also figure out what I needed to do to actually get a low SPL.
On my first 2 tries, I hit 11 SPL. Then I hit 10 SPL and held that for 4 lengths, and then ping ponged between 11 and 10 SPL as I got tired.
Some thoughts on getting to a lower SPL:
1. For this exercise, I had to lower my tempo a great deal. This increased my glide time for each stroke.
2. At higher tempos, I try to ride my speed curve, meaning that I try not to let my speed drop too far as my current stroke ends, before my next stroke picks up the acceleration again. But for this exercise, I let myself get further down the deceleration part of the curve after my current stroke ends, and I let myself maximize my glide before my next stroke begins. This minimizes my stroke count and maximizes the distance I glide for each stroke.
3. I found that I for each stroke, I had to really stroke back with great force, as well as shooting the lead hand forward at the same time. This is to maximize the distance I cover with each stroke. However, I tried to do so with proper form, not throwing water with my rear hand backward, really engaging the core in my stroke for more energy, and using my kick to give my rotating hip extra energy.
4. My bodyline needed to be perfect. It needed to be straight and extremely streamlined, so that on each glide I would minimize deceleration due to body drag.
5. My body also needed to be stable, and not be rocking back and forth during a stroke and glide. Any kind of extra movement creates drag.
6. I need to be as relaxed as possible and just let my body glide in between strokes. A tense body creates all sorts of disruptions leading to more drag in the water. Besides, it also wastes energy.
In some ways, I felt like I was cheating; I would just stroke once and then ride the glide for as long as possible. In thinking more about this, I think this is a beginning to a set of exercises to increase efficiency in the water. I had to go through this first to figure out what it would take to get to 10 SPL. What did I need to do to my body? My stroke? How much force do I need to generate with each stroke?
Obviously to maintain my SPL at a higher tempo, I would have to be moving faster and farther with each stroke or else my increased tempo would add a stroke before I would cover the same amount of distance per stroke, at a lower tempo. This means I have to do all those items I noted above, but just at a higher rate and with more forward acceleration and momentum.
My next task is to slowly increase my tempo and seeing if I can still maintain my 10 SPL, and then find my breakpoint tempo-wise where I cannot maintain 10 SPL no matter what I do. This is a critical point at which I’ll have to practice a lot.