Swimming Made Easy: The Total Immersion Way for Any Swimmer to Achieve Fluency, Ease, and Speed in Any Stroke (Paperback)

~ (Author) "So you want to become a better swimmer, but you're a bit bewildered by all the complicated and often conflicting advice on how to do..." (more)
Key Phrases: Lesson One, Four Strokes Made Easy, Swimming Made Easy (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Swimming Made Easy is guaranteed to help you swim better than ever in all four strokes. Refine your form and increase your pleasure with 10 lessons, illustrated with 150 surface and underwater photos. Ten chapters on self-coaching show you how to be your own best coach. A proven way to gain the knowledge to enjoy every stroke you ever take!

From the Publisher

SWIMMING MADE EASY? YOU MUST BE KIDDING!

Countless millions around the world would love to be able to swim better -- not fast necessarily -- just efficiently and comfortably. But, for virtually all, swimming well enough to enjoy all its benefits remains an elusive goal. Too bad, because swimming can be uniquely beneficial – a non-pounding, joint-friendly fitness activity that exercises the entire body and is suitable for everyone from toddlers to seniors. Being able to swim well is a truly valuable gift – and an essential life skill.

But here's the universal Catch 22: Humans are "hard-wired" to be inefficient in the water. Everything we do instinctively tends to result in clumsy flailing and exhaustion. Swimming really well requires expert instruction; the better the instruction, the more beneficial and satisfying your swimming experience. But traditional swimming instruction is almost universally ineffective, because it focuses on "Human Swimming" technique -- arm and leg churning, which just reinforces our inbred inefficiencies. As a result, "average" swimmers can only watch "good" swimmers with envy, assuming it takes "talent" -- or endless training -- to swim that well.

The message of Terry Laughlin's groundbreaking new book, Swimming Made Easy, is that swimming well is not a gift reserved for a talented few, but something attainable by everyone. As U.S. Masters Coach of the Year Emmett Hines wrote: "Laughlin makes the effortless grace of elite swimmers accessible to 'average' swimmers with simple, logical, proven steps that make fluid, powerful swimming a HABIT rather than a chance encounter."

This is the most hopeful message that lap, fitness or competitive swimmers or triathletes have ever heard. Until Laughlin's first book, Total Immersion: The Revolutionary Way to Swim Better, Faster and Easier (1996), all previous books on swimming mainly recycled the same set of misleading and mistaken "rules" about what matters in swimming. They made the improvement process intimidating and confusing, and ultimately resulted in little progress. Laughlin's first book was an instant hit with readers because, as they reported, "It makes sense," and "This really works; I can feel a difference from the first lap."

Where previous books had mainly prescribed laps and more laps or presented swimming technique as something akin to rocket science, Laughlin advised human swimmers to think and swim more like fish. Fishlike Swimming, as he dubbed his method, focuses on avoiding struggle and turbulence by learning to be balanced and "slippery" and learning to swim fluently before trying to swim far or fast.

Since publication of the previous Total Immersion book, Laughlin and his associates have taught TI techniques to swimmers of all ages and abilities, from 4 years to 80-plus, from non-swimmers to Olympians and everyone in between. At every level the response has been enthusiastic. As JoAnn Della Torre, a swim instructor in Naperville, IL, said, "You can always spot a TI swimmer by his or her grace and flow." The new book, Swimming Made Easy, details the insights and lessons from thousands of teaching and learning experiences and breaks new ground in making the swimming-improvement process even simpler and more direct. It also provides foolproof steps and learning sequences for learning to be Fishlike in any stroke.

Here's a sampling of some of the paradigm-smashing information in SME:

WHAT'S HOLDING YOU BACK? IT'S THE WATER, NOT YOUR FITNESS LEVEL. Lap-based approaches to swimming improvement are doomed to fail because, unless you're efficient to start with, more laps simply make your "struggling skills" more durable. If you can walk, run, or cycle a mile or more, you're fit enough to swim a similar distance. A lack of "swimming fitness" isn’t why you run out of gas. It’s the way your body interacts with water. Chapter 1 outlines five simple skills guaranteed to help you work with, not against, the water.

HOW YOU CAN SWIM LIKE AN OLYMPIAN. Your instincts tell you to swim faster by churning your arms faster, but the world’s best swimmers are faster because they travel MUCH farther with every stroke than you do, not because they move their arms faster. Chapter 2 explains why Stroke Length is so advantageous and exactly what you can do to get it.

NO MORE SINKING FEELING. Survival instincts make us want to stay on top of the water: As a result virtually every swimmer spends most of their energy trying not to sink. They think they’re pulling and kicking to move forward, but, in reality, their arms and legs are mainly occupied with fighting "that sinking feeling." But, the fact is, our bodies are supposed to sink.. Good balance and body position is the art of sinking in a horizontal position. Chapter 3 tells you how.

SWIM "TALLER," SWIM EASIER. Most swimmers believe that "stroke technique" means "how you push water back with your hands." Want to swim better? Tweak your armstroke. Want to swim faster? Put more muscle into it. But, hydro-dynamically, the most important thing you can do with your hands is use them to lengthen your bodyline. A longer bodyline reduces drag. Chapter 4 explains how to swim "taller."

DON'T FIGHT THE WATER, SLIP THROUGH IT. The gospel according to coaches says: "Swimming is hard." The price of speed is "more" and "harder." The gospel is wrong: The one non-negotiable, unavoidable, unyielding limiter of speed is resistance, not your capacity for work. No workout, wet or dry, can overcome the drag created when you try to bully your way through the water. But smart, strategic choices you make in how to "pierce" the water as you swim can reduce drag dramatically. Chapter 5 tells you exactly how to become more "slippery" and Chapters 7 and 8 explain how to generate effortless propulsion.

A STRONG KICK IS ESSENTIAL. Swimming instructors always start by having you kick and kick and kick some more. No wonder everyone thinks a powerful kick is the key to swimming well -- and then spends countless hours on kickboards vainly pursuing it. In fact, kickboard training does nothing for your swimming, and the best kick is the one requiring the least effort. Chapter 8 explains how to integrate an effortless kick seamlessly with fluent body motion.

These examples are drawn from just the first half the book. The second half offers a detailed plan, with progressive and sequential how-to steps, that will allow any individual to become their "own best swimming coach."

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Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Total Immersion Inc (February 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1931009015
• ISBN-13: 978-1931009010
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.3 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #117,019 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

58 of 60 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars this book IS revolutionary!, June 12, 2002

By	lily - See all my reviews

I started swimming as a way to stay active while recovering from a serious knee injury, and I picked up this book to help me learn more so I could stay challenged and interested in the water. I had splashed along and really enjoyed swimming for years, but I'd never had any formal training whatsoever.

This book completely changed the way I think about swimming, and my ability has increased tremendously in the time I've been using the Total Immersion concepts. Just today, I counted how many strokes it took me to cross the 25 yard pool. TWELVE. How many did it take when I started six months ago? TWENTY-SIX.

Even better, from my vantage point in the "medium" lane, I took a moment to count the strokes of a big, speedy muscle guy splashing his way across the pool in the "fast" lane next to me. TWENTY-FOUR. And I proceeded to easily out-pace him on every lap, which was kind of a thrill for someone who doesn't really consider herself to be a serious athlete.

This book is a great resource -- I have read various chapters over and over again. Some of the writing is a bit awkward -- but the main points are clear. Your body is a vessel, and your goal is to get through the water in the most streamlined, energy-effective way possible. When you "get" the technique, it's amazing to feel yourself travel through the water -- IN BETWEEN STROKES. I like to think of my hands as the prow of a ship, my hips as a rotor, and my feet working together as a propellor. Just think how impossible ships would have it if they were built as rectangles or squares -- there's no sense trying to push a square across a body of water, is there? Once you learn the Total Immersion technique, "ordinary" swimming seems nonsensical.

One side point I'd like to share is that I trained for the first few months months with a pull buoy, because of my injury. I wasn't able to do the exact training exercises described in the book -- I couldn't kick at all. But by using the pull buoy and focusing on the concepts in the book, I learned balance, arm work, and how to breathe on both sides - which I *never* thought I'd be able to do. This might be a helpful alternative for other novices who find the balance exercises kind of intimidating.

"Swimming Made Easy" gave me what I needed -- a set of concepts which radically changed my swimming style. This is a great book, and will change your swims in an amazing way.

28 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Slowly but absolutely Changed swimming for me!, February 4, 2003

By	J. Wong (Aberdeen, WA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Terry spends many pages hyping his technique, but after about 6 months with the book and videos and doing the drills, I can justify the hype. I have never swum competitively, going to the water only for fitness, but it always irritated me that some pudgy guys could easily cruise through the water as I frenetically splashed to keep up, exhausted after only 15-20 minutes. I read the first book which only covered freestyle, but jumped when this book came out.

When I first got this book, I rushed through all the drills hoping to swim faster in less than a week, but accomplished very little. Not quite the results as the reviewer who dropped his 50 yd time by 7 seconds in his first session. Over the last 5 months, I have spent at least 70% of my pool time practicing the drills, learning balance, breathing on both sides, gliding and streamlining my body. Before the book/videos, I couldn't keep interested for 20 minutes in the water. Now, as I drill my way to each goal & concentrate on form, I still have energy after 45-60 minutes. I swim some laps and feel much faster, smoother and quieter. I swam a 50 freestyle in about 43 secs, but in June 2003 did it in about 34.5 (push start from the wall with flip turn)--and in July 2003 in 30 secs. The drills helped me by improving my form and increasing my level of fitness. By the measure of other swimmers here, I still move like a barge, but personal goals override all such comparisons.

The book definitely helped me and I think I underpaid when I compare the cost of the book/video package to the expense of going to one of Terry Laughlin's weekend clinics. I doubt I would get out of a weekend what it took 6 months to accomplish. If you can't buy the book at Amazon, Terry has his own website.

21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Swimming Just Got Easier, March 21, 2001

By	Emmett Hines (Houston, TX USA) - See all my reviews

I've been teaching swimming for nearly 30 years. I thought I had a pretty good handle on what makes for better swimmers. Then I met Terry Laughlin and was introduced to the Total Immersion philosophy. My thinking about movement in the water and how to improve it changed dramatically. His methods have proven time and again to be enlightening and effective for swimmers of ANY ability level. With this book, Laughlin makes the effortless grace of elite swimmers accessible to 'average' swimmers with simple, logical, proven steps that make fluid, powerful swimming a HABIT rather than a chance encounter. Buy it, read it, apply it. You won't regret it.