FISHLIKE FREESTYLE: The Total Immersion Way

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Congratulations! You’ve just purchased a groundbreaking instructional video from Total Immersion, the world leader in providing hands-on instruction as well as self-coaching tools
for swimmers of all ages and abilities. We guarantee this will be the most valuable swim – improvement tool you can own. The video is self-explanatory, but this booklet will enhance
your understanding of the concepts covered on the tape, and help your learning process.


ABOUT TOTAL IMMERSION

Total Immersion has achieved a worldwide reputation for its uniquely effective way of teaching swimming. The simplest way to describe it is that we teach “Fishlike Swimming” while everyone else teaches “Human Swimming.” Fishlike Swimming is fluid, effortless, and smart. Fish can swim as fast as 60 mph while the world’s fastest human swims at just 5 mph, because of their natural ability to avoid drag. Fish slip through the water; humans try to muscle their way through it.

Conventional instruction focuses on overcoming the water’s drag with a stronger pull or kick – a demanding, tiring battle with the water. Total Immersion teaches you to swim with Fishlike flow through a thoughtfully choreographed sequence of drills that retrain your nervous system to make you swim better, faster, and easier. The TI system will teach you to slip through the water exactly the way the world’s best swimmers (fish and world-record holders) do.

Fishlike Swimming is not a natural skill, but it is learnable. Since 1989, our workshops, books, and videos have helped thousands of inexperienced swimmers achieve astonishing levels of grace and economy. After teaching so many swimmers to become more Fishlike, we have identified the key body positions and movements that allow you to swim with the greatest economy and pleasure.


THE TOTAL IMMERSION WAY

All TI instruction is based on drills that are so simple you can master each with ease. The drills are presented in a logical sequence, so that each small success will lead you naturally to the next step, and we’ll give you a few clear objectives so you know when you’re ready to move on. Before you know it you’ll have an awesome new stroke without having been asked to do anything too difficult at any point in the learning process. It’s not magic, but it may feel that way. The key is patience. It’s absolutely essential that you master each stage before moving to the next! Here are the stages of the learning process:

1. Learn balance. Our first series of drills teaches you to be in harmony with the water – by learning balance. Swimmers who truly master balance stop wasting energy on fighting the water. They also learn every other swimming skill much faster. You’ll start with head-lead balance drills, in which your arms are held at your sides. Practicing first without your arms will give you the purest sense of balance, because you’ll learn to balance your body entirely through proper head position and weight distribution. Once you feel comfortable and supported by the water, you’ll be ready for the next stage in the learning process: rotation.



2. Learn rotation. Once you’re comfortable with basic balance, we’ll use dynamic drills to teach you to rotate your core-body effortlessly and rhythmically – around your body’s head-spine axis. You’ll learn to feel at ease in any position and will be able to move among these positions with a minimum of effort and turbulence preparing you for the next stage: slippery swimming.

3. Learn to be slippery. Once you can roll effortlessly among balance positions, you’ll learn to pierce the water, moving through it like an arrow through the air by keeping your bodyline as long and sleek as possible at every moment in the stroke cycle. Lengthening your body, keeping your head in line and swimming more in a side-lying position, rather than on your stomach will help you slice through the water with a minimum of drag and effort. You’ll swim with far more ease and control at any speed. Piercing the water is essential for faster swimming, because drag and the effort required to overcome it increase exponentially as you go faster.

4. Learn fluid propulsion. In the final stage you’ll learn to connect propelling armstroke to your balanced, slippery core body. When you use our special drills to make this connection, it’s far more likely that you will swim with the same graceful stroke timing and powerful, efficient core-body rhythm as the world’s best swimmers, rather than with the exhausting arm-and-leg churning employed by most other swimmers.

ABOUT OUR DRILL DEMONSTRATORS
After more than a decade of teaching Fishlike Swimming, we know that our methods work for anyone, regardless of their age, experience, or fitness level. Beginners find our drills the fastest way to establish harmony and balance in the water, and to imprint the slippery positions that will let them move through the water with ease. Advanced swimmers find them the surest means to refine their technique and to build effortless speed and power. For this video we have chosen swimmers of different ages and abilities to show you how universally our drills can be learned and expressed. Samantha, our youngest swimmer was 9 when she was filmed. She may not execute the drills perfectly, but her fluency is extraordinary for a swimmer of her age and was achieved after just a few days of TI instruction. Shane, at the other end of the spectrum, is the only swimmer in history to break every freestyle world record, yet she swims now with greater ease and efficiency than when she won 3 Olympic gold medals in 1972. You can take some insight and inspiration from each of the swimmers on our tape by observing the individual ways they express fluency and realize that your own fluency does not have to meet a rigid ideal. Enjoy the learning process.


EFFECTIVE PRACTICE: HOW TO MAKE A FISHLIKE STROKE PERMANENT

While the old saying tells us that “practice makes perfect,” it really makes permanent whatever we practice. Every length you swim contributes to a habit of either fluency or struggle and muscle memory makes your old stroke resistant to change. The fastest way to become a more efficient swimmer and make that efficiency permanent is by learning a whole new way of swimming through stroke drills, rather than by trying piecemeal corrections.

Why Drills Teach Better than Anything Else

Many swimmers are reluctant to spend precious pool time on stroke drills. But because you’re your endurance and speed are determined far more by efficiency than fitness, an hour of concentrated skill practice can often bring more improvement than a month of hard repeats. Here are the ways in which TI drills perfect your stroke better than anything else you can do in the pool:

Your muscles need a dose of amnesia. If you’ve been swimming for any length of time, your inefficiencies have become a deeply ingrained habit. Every lap simply reinforces your energy-wasting old style. Because your nervous system doesn’t interpret them as “swimming,” drills give you a “blank slate” on which to engrave change. This allows for dramatic improvement that is nearly immediate…and almost always permanent.

Small pieces are easier to swallow. Because your stroke is made up of so many finely coordinated parts, it’s virtually impossible to focus on the whole at once. Stroke drills simplify the complex whole stroke into a series of mini-skills, each of which can be quickly mastered and gives you the key to solving the next. These building blocks assemble easily and gradually into a new, more efficient stroke.

Instead of trial and error, it’s trial and success. Because mini-skills can be mastered so quickly and easily, you begin practicing graceful, fishlike movement right away. The more you practice it, the more it becomes your new habit and crowds out the sloppy old one. And the less time you spend swimming with your old habits, the faster you learn to swim better. Your string of successes boosts your motivation and self-confidence and you learn faster.

It’s language the body understands. Conventional stroke instruction tries to get to your muscles through your mind. First you read or hear a description of a skill, then try to figure out what the movement will feel like, while wondering if you got it right. Drills bypass all those vague translations. They simplify and accelerate the learning process by teaching your body how it should feel when you swim well. And because drills heighten your kinesthetic awareness, they make it easier to fine-tune your form after you begin practicing whole-stroke again.


How to Master the Learning Curve

The more you have to learn, the more you should drill. For novices this means up to four times as much drilling as swimming. Think of it this way: Every lap of drilling is positive reinforcement for your swimming. Every lap of traditional-style swimming may pull you backward. Though every swimmer is different, drills work for most with incredible speed. Everyone I’ve taught them to has improved. No other swim instruction method can claim that. The TI drills will work even faster if you:

Think before you swim. “A drill done 99 percent right is 100 percent wrong!” Drills teach you what you’re hoping to learn only if you do them correctly, never carelessly or in a hurry. Study our images carefully and with slow motion and stop action. Watch the entire video straight through initially to understand the whole progression, then, before each practice, watch only those drills you intend to practice. Practice with understanding, attention, and a clear sense of purpose to get the greatest benefit.

Do them with feeling. Drills create a direct mind-muscle connection. If you’re really tuned in, you’ll soon know what the skill you’re practicing feels like when you’re doing it right giving you an unprecedented mind-body connection. Spend 30 uninterrupted, thoughtful minutes on each new drill to firmly imprint the new sense into your muscle memory so that you can eventually be guided more by sensation than thought. Then, each time you go to the pool, experiment with subtle refinements until the skill begins to feel natural and effortless. The more familiar you become with the drills, the more you should shift your attention from the techniques to the qualities of economy, ease, flow, and grace. As these qualities become habit in your drilling, your swimming will be transformed as well.

Shorter is sweeter. Short repeats of 25 to 50 yards – with 15 to 30 seconds between each for rest, reflection, and adjustment – and concentrated, brief sets of 10 to 15 minutes duration, will bring the greatest benefit. Each successive length should feel a bit smoother and more relaxed, a bit more precise and economical. If not, check the pictures again (or have a friend watch as you practice), or go back to the previous drill and polish that one before returning to the drill that’s giving you trouble.

Take your drills out for a test swim. After you’ve practiced a drill long enough to make it second nature (a process that may take weeks of consistent practice for the advanced drills), begin alternating drill and swim lengths – at first more drilling than swimming, but gradually shifting toward more swimming – trying to make each swim length feel a bit more like what felt different and better in the drill. The main benefit of the drills is that they give you heightened insight into how to make your swimming feel more efficient. When you can “swim as well as you drill,” you know the lessons have been learned.

Make intelligent use of tools. We’ve found in teaching drills at TI workshops that Slim Fins and the fistglove® stroke trainer can be valuable learning aids. During the momentary pauses in Sweet Spot which are integral to each drill, you’ll need a modestly propulsive kick to maintain momentum and stay smooth. If your kick is non-propulsive (usually from rigid ankles), you could waste so much energy struggling that your drill performance could be compromised. With fins on you’ll be better able to pay attention to the fine points. Just keep your kick very relaxed if you do wear fins. The fistgloves move you to a much higher level of sensitivity, heighten your awareness of what the drill is supposed to teach, and encourage you to keep your practice gentle and quiet. But take time to master the basics of the drill before putting on the gloves; they’ll work better in reinforcing the lessons, once you already drill well.

Keep practicing! The best aspect of drills is that they’re self-adjusting. The drills we teach to unskilled adults at weekend workshops are the same ones we use when coaching highly accomplished swimmers. Each group gets exactly what it needs: The inexperienced swimmers learn basic skills. The more advanced swimmers acquire subtle polish. So as you improve, you won’t have to learn new drills; you’ll simply do the ones you’re learning now with more refinement. You can also improve by practicing the drills in logical sequence.


The Fishlike Freestyle Drill Progressions

Lesson One: Finding Balance and Your “Sweet Spot”

These drills may seem so simple, at first glance, that experienced swimmers may be tempted to quickly move on to more “challenging” stuff. But if you have human DNA – even if you’ve already swum in the Olympics – you can still improve your balance, and as it improves you’ll use less energy at any speed. If, on the other hand, every stroke you’ve ever taken has been a frustrating struggle, if you’re “toast” after two laps, if you always feel as if you’re sinking, Lesson One can give you an unprecedented feeling of being able to just lie there, kicking gently, while tension and discomfort melt away. Once you have that, you’ll immediately swim with far more ease, and the rest of the lessons will go much more smoothly.

In watching underwater video of thousands of “human swimmers,” what I notice first is how their arms and legs are almost completely occupied with trying not to sink. They may think what they’re doing is “stroking” but virtually none of their energy is producing propulsion; most of it goes into fighting “that sinking feeling.” Only when you learn to balance effortlessly without your arms helping, will it be possible to drill or stroke efficiently. Thus your first step is to get the water to support you without help from your arms. In “head-lead” drills, because you’re unable to use your arms for support, you’ll learn to balance your body entirely through proper head position and weight distribution.


Drill #1: Basic Balance on Your Back
This drill is the easiest way to relax and enjoy the support of the water. You don’t have to worry about breathing, so you can just lie there and experience balance. Effortlessness and stability are the key sensations of balance; you’ll learn them here then maintain in other positions.


Drill #2: Find Your “Sweet Spot”

You’ll swim mainly on your side and start and finish every drill on your side, but “side balance” is almost never exactly on the side. The “Sweet Spot” is where you’ll find true equilibrium and balance and is influenced by your body type. If you’re lean or densely muscled, side balance will probably be almost on your back. Finding your Sweet Spot is critical because you’ll start and finish every drill here. When you master Sweet Spot, you’ll drill with ease and fluency; if you don’t take time to master it, you’ll struggle instead. Once you feel at home in Sweet Spot, focus on staying tall and slipping through a small hole in the water, then on making stillness, quiet, and effortlessness feel natural. When you begin to feel comfortable in Sweet Spot on each side, you can begin practicing Active Balance, which teaches you how to maintain equilibrium while shifting your weight from side to side.


Lesson Two: Becoming Weightless and Slippery

After using head-lead drills in Lesson One to become effortlessly horizontal – and freeing your arms from helping with balance – we can now extend a “weightless arm” to make your “vessel” more slippery. When your bodyline becomes longer, drag is reduced, allowing you to swim faster without working harder. This lesson will give you a balanced vessel that is longer and more slippery.


Drill #3: Hand-Lead Sweet Spot – Lengthen Your “Vessel”
This drill introduces you to how balance feels with an arm extended and will imprint your most slippery body position. Hand-Lead Sweet Spot is also the position in which you’ll start and finish every drill. Finally, it’s one of the two best positions for practicing flutter kick. (Skating Position – Drill #4 – is the other.) Your key focal points for this drill will include:

1. Create a long clean line from extended fingertips to toes.

2. Slip through the smallest possible hole in the water. Make sure your head slips through the same “hole” that your body is traveling through.

3. Glide silently and effortlessly. Kick gently, keeping your legs long, supple, and within the “shadow” of your body. (Use fins if this is impossible.)

4. If at any time you lose balance or comfort, put your arm back to your side and start over.


Drill #4: Balance in the Skating Position
This is your first opportunity to experience balance, as it should feel when you begin swimming. This is also the first movement in all the Switch drills that follow. Last, but not least, this is the first drill in which you practice the proper technique for breathing, developing good habits now, that you can maintain right through to whole-stroke. Here you’ll learn to breathe by rolling your body to where the air is — rather than lifting or turning your head.


Lesson Three: Tapping Effortless Power from Your Kinetic Chain
The first two lessons have taught you balance and slippery body positions. In Lesson Three, you’ll learn to use rotation of your balanced and slippery core body to generate effortless power for propulsion. Lesson Three also introduces you to the first of our three Switch drill sequences. These will be the most dynamic and powerful movements you have yet practiced.

Drill #5: UnderSkate
You learned the most valuable form of balance in the Skating position. That brings a new dynamic to your balance practice. It reinforces the key skills of staying on your side as you swim, and of breathing by rolling a balanced, aligned, slippery body to the air. The arm movement introduced here is so simple that the key focal point for this drill will be to maintain the “hidden” head position (looking directly down) and the deep position of the extended hand (below your head) while introducing a new skill. If you don’t feel completely supported by the water, lower your head more and put the extended hand deeper. In fact keep putting those fingertips deeper until your hips feel really light.




Drill #6: UnderSwitch
This is the first drill to tap the power of the kinetic chain by teaching you how to link an armstroke to core-body rotation for effortless propulsion. It also simplifies the learning process for swimming “taller” with the front-quadrant stroke timing that keeps your bodyline long. It does this by giving you a visual cue for when to make the switch. The key focal points for this drill include:

1. Be patient. Take a moment – after rolling to the Skating position and before you begin to bring your hand forward – to check your head and hand position and feel complete support from the water. And, don’t switch until you see your hand under your nose.

2. Finish the switch by rolling past your Sweet Spot.

3. Stay slippery: Switch through the smallest possible hole in the water – particularly concentrating on keeping your head inside the “tube” that your torso travels through.

4. Focus on doing the drill as quietly as possible. This will make you more fluent and economical.


Drill #7: Double UnderSwitch
Switch drills teach powerful, coordinated, effortless movement of the core body. Multi-switch

(2 or more switches) drills introduce swimming rhythms (steady, rhythmic core-body rotation) to these movements, but retain pauses in the Sweet Spot, to allow time to regroup, evaluate your practice, and make fine adjustments.


Drill #8: Triple UnderSwitch
This drill will give you even more space to make yourself more Fishlike and learn the feel of a swimming rhythm. Key focal points for Double and Triple UnderSwitch include:

1. Keep your head hidden and still. Water should flow over the back of your head during all three switches.

2. Keep your timing consistent. Switch at the exact moment you see your hand under your nose.

3. Maintain a focus on piercing the water, particularly while sneaking your arm and switching.

4. Finally reduce the glide between switches. Roll your body a bit less during the three switches, to increase rhythm, and see if you can pause your kick while switching, resuming it gently after you return to Sweet Spot


Lesson Four: Mastering a Compact, Relaxed Recovery

After mastering Lesson Three, you will have experienced two important elements of Fishlike Swimming: First, how to generate effortless propulsion by using your hand to simply hold on to a spot in the water while dynamic body-roll takes you past that spot. Second, how to keep your bodyline long and to “lie on your lungs” while doing that rhythmically. This lesson will give you an even stronger sense of balance and start imprinting the muscle memory for a compact, relaxed recovery. Having painstakingly developed a balanced, aligned foundation for stroking, we don’t want to let an arm-swinging recovery upset that. This lesson teaches you an energy-saving, alignment-preserving, drag-reducing recovery.

Drill #9: ZipperSkate
Over time this will probably be your most valuable balance drill and the one you should practice most often. It will give you a clear picture of a) how well you’ve mastered balance, b) where your supporting “buoy” is, and c) how to use that awareness to steadily improve your balance. You could easily practice this drill non-stop for 15 to 30 minutes once a week for the next month or two and learn valuable lessons on every lap. These are the key focal points:

1. Are you stable or do you immediately begin to sink as your arm comes forward? If you begin to sink right away, keep your head down and the extended arm below your head. Your goal – if you sink – is to sink in a horizontal position with your armpit at the same level as your hips and feet.

2. If your body position remains fairly stable as you draw your arm forward, “skate” for a few seconds with your elbow motionless above your shoulder. The weight of your arm in the air should give you a clear sense of how to balance by “lying on your lungs.” If you feel balanced while doing this, practice doing the recovery more slowly. This is the nearest sensation thus far of how you’d like to feel once you begin whole-stroke swimming.

3. Focus on sensing the water resistance against your hand on recovery. Don’t fight it. Instead yield to the resistance by softening your hand and arm. How compact and gentle can you make that recovery action?


Drill #10: Zipper Switch

The compact, relaxed, unhurried recovery you are learning will be an important key to effectively linking your armstroke to the power of core-body rotation. This drill will also teach you the front-quadrant timing that keeps your bodyline long throughout the stroke cycle. The purposeful exaggeration on this drill is to slice your hand in alongside your ear, before slicing it forward underwater. This corrects the nearly universal tendency to over-reach on the recovery. As you practice, emphasize these focal points:

1. A compact and unhurried recovery. Continue to focus on switching through the smallest possible space, but that space is now above and below the surface.

2. Hand entry that is exaggeratedly early and close to your head. Drive your hand into the water alongside your ear to over-correct the tendency to over-reach.

3, Practice silently, taking all the time you need to feel in your bones the right moment in your recovery to make the switch.

4, Continue to feel “connected” to your core-body as you switch.


Drill #11: Double ZipperSwitch

As in Double UnderSwitch, Double Zipper introduces swimming rhythms to the movements you’ve just learned. You’re coming ever closer to actual swimming.

Drill #12: Triple ZipperSwitch
This drill will be the most valuable of all the dynamic or “switch” drills in the Fishlike Freestyle sequence. Doing more Zipper Switches primes you to transition from skillful drilling to beautiful swimming, Practice this for many cumulative hours and you’ll have the best chance of breaking the powerful hold of muscle memory for old habits. If you allow this drill to imprint new movement habits in your nervous system, your whole-stroke will have amazing flow, ease and beauty. When you feel great ease doing three switches, add more – perhaps up to 5 or 6 Zipper Switches before returning to Sweet Spot. Here are some specific focal points for practice:

1. Hide your head. Water should flow over the back. Look straight down and watch yourself slide effortlessly past tiles on the pool bottom.

2. Hug the surface, as if you were swimming under a very low ceiling.

3. Pierce the water… Slip through the smallest possible space both above and below the surface.

4. Soften your arms and hands. Feel the water resist your hand, but try to recover without splash or turbulence.

5. Feel the complete support of the water and bring your hand forward as slowly as you can.

6. And finally drill without making a sound.



Lesson Five: Meet Your New Stroke

Lesson Five, though simple to master, will teach you precisely how your stroke will feel for the rest of your life. For some, Drills 12 & 13 are their form of “swimming,” at least for a while. The great value of Lesson Five, particularly Drills 12 & 13 is that it gives almost anyone, even someone in the very early learning stages, an easy way to practice Fishlike Swimming.


Drill #13: OverSwitches
This drill teaches you how your new “Fishlike” stroke will feel. In fact, you’ll be swimming with your new stroke between pauses in Sweet Spot. This drill reinforces the timing that helps you swim taller. It also allows you to practice a deft, knifelike entry. Both of these skills help connect your arm to effortless power from core-body rotation. Do as many switches as you can without feeling breathless, using them to imprint the same focal points as in Drill #12, plus these:

1. When you take your hand out, try to have it out of the water for the briefest possible time and have your fingertips clear the water by the minimum possible clearance.

2. Slice your hand back into the water just in front of your goggles. Cut a hole with your fingers and slip your arm cleanly through that hole.

3. Be “patient” on your switches: Wait for the recovering arm to reach your ear before you start to “pull” with your extended hand. Make the switch just just as your hand is entering the water.

4. Gradually shift focus from the timing of your switches to your core-body-rolling rhythm. Once you feel body rhythm, adjust body roll to allow for fluid, rhythmic, and seamless movement with no hesitation or interruptions.

Transition to Swimming

Your swimming movements are all in place now. All that remains is to take out the Sweet Spot pauses and replace them with rhythmic breathing. Your goal here is to make breathing a seamless part of your body-rolling rhythm. Starting with Overswitches establish your core-body rotation rhythm then fit a breath into that rhythm with no interruption. Here’s how:

1. Take your first breath simply by rolling right to where the air is and immediately back in the other direction. Try to do that with no interruption of the rolling rhythm you established on your switches before the breath.

2. Roll as far as necessary. Old habits may be causing you to lift or turn your head. Keep everything connected and aligned as you roll your head, neck, and torso as one unit to air. Roll all the way to the air. If you’re having difficulty getting air easily, roll farther.

3. If that breath goes smoothly, do another the same way, several strokes later. If you sense a slight interruption in your rhythm, try to smooth it out on the next stroke cycle.

4. If you lose control, go back to Sweet Spot on the next breath and think about how to improve your breathing technique on the next 25.