Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Total Immersion

Since my shoulder is feeling so much better and I have been officially discharged by my PT, I returned to the pool to work on my swimming skills. Last week was my comeback 1K and although it did feel good, it also felt tiring. So I started looking into swim workouts on YouTube and came across the Total Immersion technique which I couldn't wait to put in practice. Last night I hit the pool for another km, but this time I paid attention to the strokes more than anything and taught my body to be patient. If there is a skill that you need to perfect with this technique, that is patience.... Gliiiiiide. Now I need to also improve my breathing because I tried pretty much everything under the sun: 2 strokes/breath, 3 strokes/breath, 4 strokes/breath. I wish I could train my lungs to hold on for 4 strokes with lesser difficulty. Definitely working towards that. For now I am planning to go once or twice to the pool in a week, I love being in the water so damn much. Curious about the Total Immersion technique? Watch below:

Doesn't he make it look easy? Fact is, once you start using this technique, your workouts will start feeling a lot easier too. A week ago, without this technique, I could only swim 50m without stopping. This time I could do 200m. 400% increase in efficiency, that's something.

4 comments:

  1. it took me a LONG time to make improvements to my swim but when I did, wow did it make a difference!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Katie, I have about 140 days to improve my swim. I am hopeful I can do this. Plus, the idea of wearing a wetsuit for buyoncy gives me hope that I can concentrate on form rather than drowning :-)

    I can't wait to feel the progress!

    ReplyDelete
  3. TI is the biz! Turned me from a 40 metre into a 3 km swimmer. Takes lots of practice though.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Nice, Ian!! Hope to get there one day, for now I take it one km at a time. I posted a video after my third time trying this technique as a baseline for improvement. Don't hesitate to critique!

    ReplyDelete