Customer Reviews

Becoming A Faster Swimmer: Freestyle Swimming

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I'm a runner that recently turned to compete also in triathlons, so I've been training freestyle for about 2 years, with coach, following the guides of total immersion (Terry Laughlin).

I looked for this DVD trying to complement my knowledge on freestyle. Tom Jager isn't only a great swimmer, but also very good in teaching the 'howtos'. Everything viewed in the DVD is very important and crucial for maintaining an efficient stroke, it doesn't miss any of the basic details about.

I learned some drills I never imagined before (which by the way amazed me). Some of the explanations are great, for example regarding water physics, like how to "manage" water with hands, legs, etc, why do we have to keep elbows up (explanations!, not just 'doits'!), so it has been very useful for me in that matters, to understand why do I have to do things how I must.

What I didn't like and missed were things apart from Tom Jager: the direction of the video and the team. The video doesn't capture good enough Jager's demos, because the camera is always still; we just see him pass by and look most of the time his feet from the back. To really appreciate his style the camera should have moved along with him (sadly it's a very low budget film). The other thing, about the team, they are kids!, "good swimmers", but I think the best for a class video would have been to put professional swimmers there! (imagine a Jane Fonda's workout video with kids doing the routines, giving them more time than her)... bad idea! If the DVD was intended for coaches only, I would have understood, but it's not.

For the basics it's fine.

The DVD is actually pretty good for both kids and adults if you can get past his inability to finish a sentence and his arrogance in the first scene. It seems to be a low budget instructional video mostly aimed at kids but helpful for adults too. He uses children swimmers as teaching subjects, some of which are good swimmers that can actually demonstrate fairly well. Overall effective. Helped me improve my technique. I like his way of letting you know that his principals and methods are not the only way of doing it well and that each swimmer has individual technique that could be just as good as his.

I thought this was a helpful DVD. It taught me lots of useful tips and techniques that I use in my workouts.I thought the underwater camera work was useful. It was great to see what the stroke looked like beneath the surface.

Very good swimming lessons, focusing on the most important techniques of freestyle. I strongly recommend it for all level of swimmers.

This DVD offers lots of informations but you do need to know the basic swimming knowledge. I had to get a book to read up on some of the techniques and instructions mentioned on ths DVD. The DVD is not for a complete beginner. The production quality (editting)is not as good as most of those DYI TV programs, and the instructor keeps switching what he was about to say in the middle of the sentence. He is definately not reading off of a script and I wish he did.

If you are not good at picking up instruction information from unique speach pattern, this DVD may not be right for you.

I am not a fast swimmer and usually my first hundred meters was about 2:05 which is slow. don't laugh.

But after working on the drills, I went to 1:52. I am drilling everytime I go into the pool and slowly working all the steps together. But beware, swimming properly is more tiring than swimming poorly....