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Swimming Fastest (Hardcover)

~ Ernest Maglischo (Author) "When the first edition of this book, Swimming Faster, was published in the early 1980s, I believed that the Bernoulli effect, which I will explain..." (more)
Key Phrases: second downsweep, anaerobic muscular endurance, underwater armstroke, Swimming Fastest, Olympic Games, World Swimming Championships (more...)
4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
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Swimming Fastest + The Ultimate Guide To Weight Training For Swimming (Ultimate Guide to Weight Training for Swimming) (Ultimate Guide to Weight Training for Swimming) (Ultimate Guide to Weight Training for Swimming) + Complete Conditioning for Swimming
Total List Price: $91.85
Price For All Three: $54.89

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Product Description

Put science to work for you in the pool to swim stronger and faster than ever! Swimming Fastest is a fully revised and updated version of Swimming Faster, widely considered by coaches and swimmers as one of the best books ever written on competitive swimming. Author Ernest Maglischo reveals the science behind the training methods that led his teams to 13 NCAA Division II national championships.

Swimming Fastest is the definitive reference on stroke technique and training methods. In addition to explaining what swimmers should do, Maglishco explains why techniques and training are to be executed a certain way.

A primary feature in the book is a thorough and insightful technique analyses of the four primary strokes: freestyle, backstroke, breaststroke, and butterfly. Accompanying the text are more than 500 photographs and illustrations, including photos of world-class swimmers demonstrating picture-perfect form. Supporting the technical instruction is a complete explanation of the physiological basis for the most effective training methods, including detailed sample workouts and training programs for each event.

Swimming Fastest will benefit every serious swimmer and swimming coach. Gain new knowledge, refine technique, maximize training, and trim precious seconds off previous record times.

About the Author

Ernest W. Maglischo coached swimming for 38 years, working at four universities and two swim clubs. He has won 13 NCAA national championships at the Division II level and 19 conference championships. In 1996 he was honored as the Pacific 10 Conference Swimming Coach of the Year, and he has been named NCAA's Division II coach of the year an unprecedented eight times. He has also received the highest coaching award, the National Collegiate and Scholastic Swimming Trophy.

Maglischo holds a PhD in exercise physiology from the Ohio State University. He's a member of the College Swimming Coaches Association, the American Swimming Coaches Association, and U.S.A. Swimming, where he serves on the Sports Medicine Committee. Now retired, Maglischo lives in Phoenix, Arizona.

Product Details

  • Hardcover: 800 pages
  • Publisher: Human Kinetics; 3 Revised edition (February 28, 2003)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0736031804
  • ISBN-13: 978-0736031806
  • Product Dimensions: 11 x 8.8 x 2.1 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 5.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.com Sales Rank: #104,757 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    Popular in these categories: (What's this?)

    #23 in  Books > Health, Mind & Body > Exercise & Fitness > Swimming
    #32 in  Books > Sports > Water Sports > Swimming
    #91 in  Books > Science > Medicine > Specialties > Sports Medicine

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Ernest W. Maglischo
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Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
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Inside This Book (learn more)
First Sentence:
When the first edition of this book, Swimming Faster, was published in the early 1980s, I believed that the Bernoulli effect, which I will explain later, produced the lift forces primarily responsible for swimming propulsion. Read the first page
Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
second downsweep, anaerobic muscular endurance, underwater armstroke, overload endurance training, first downsweep, right armstroke, basic endurance training, race preparation phase, lactate tolerance training, reverse body wave, threshold endurance training, pushing drag, anaerobic threshold speed, first armstroke, lactate production sets, left armstroke, underwater dolphin kicking, lactate removal rates, constant stroke rate, endurance kicking, improving sprint speed, middle distance swimmers, applying propulsive force, hand velocity patterns, incoming swimmer
Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Swimming Fastest, Olympic Games, World Swimming Championships, Increasing Propulsion, Power Rack, Tom Dolan, Alexander Popov, Susan O'Neill, Mike Barrowman, Australian Institute of Sport, Back Crawl Stroke, Biomechanics Department, General Specific, Janet Evans, Kieren Perkins, Arizona State University, Jon Urbanchek, Legend Basic, Pablo Morales, World Championships, Auburn University, Competition Analyses of Swimming Events, Matt Biondi, Anita Nall, Francisco Sanchez
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Customer Reviews

15 Reviews
5 star:
 (11)
4 star:
 (2)
3 star:
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Average Customer Review
4.5 out of 5 stars (15 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
76 of 76 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Maglischo Even Better, February 6, 2003
By Donal Fagan (Baltimore MD United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
-
Swimming theory has advanced significantly since Dr.
Ernest Maglischo wrote Swimming Faster 1982 and
Swimming Even Faster 1993. He opens Swimming
Fastest with an acknowledgement that his views on
propulsion have changed significantly with each
successive book. He writes this book in a more
personal voice than the 'third person authoritative'
style of the previous weighty tome, and I find it
much more readable.

In the largely rewritten and well-illustrated
section on Technique, Maglischo describes his latest
beliefs on effective swimming technique. In some
cases, he allows for differing techniques or styles
of swimming, but general favors one method.

Although he generally agrees with the drag-reducing
fundamentals and front-quadrant stroke timing of the
very popular style coached by Bill Boomer, Emmett
Hines and Terry Laughlin and exemplified by the
efficient, long-reaching front crawl styles of Alex
Popov and Ian Thorpe, he offers much criticism of
what he calls "Stretch-Out" swimming, in which he
says that the emphasis is on stretching forward too
long, and swimming a catch-up style, to increase
stroke length rather than speed.

His less-revised section on Training includes
improved illustrations and sample training routines
used by Janet Evans, Susie O'Neill, Brooke Bennett,
Kieren Perkins, Mike Barrowman, Alex Popov, Penny
Heyns, Tom Dolan and Summer Sanders. It includes
the most thorough look at breathing strategies I
have ever read.

His brief Racing section presents numerous splits of
races by the swimmers mentioned above, at various
distances and strokes.

Essentially, Maglischo has vastly improved what was
already the most thorough and highly-regarded book
in the field.

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19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Very advanced book. Not for beginners, December 20, 2003
By A Customer
I am a novice swimmer. I can swim breastroke, but poorly and I got this book to improve. Mistake.
This book is very advanced. You can see that it is well documented, researched to a level close to academic style. The book is really concerned with speed, and is directed to coaches and swimmers who are starting to compete.
Although you could potentially take this book without having ever swum before and learn from here, in practice I don't recommend it: there are far too many details and seeing the forest is terribly hard because of the trees.
I found particularly hard to understand the movements from the drawings and pictures. I would expect drawings to show the whole body at different stages, instead you get the arms in one drawing and the legs in another drawing. Each drawing is subdivided in three quadrants: 1) seen from the front 2) seen from the side 3) seen from below. The WHOLE movement is depicted in ONE drawing: the only thing depicted is the path you should be following with the hands (respectively, legs). It is left to you to figure out how to achieve the movement puzzling together the three quadrants and the (very detailed) explanations in the text.
You can then read the section on how put the legs and arms together and you have the whole thing. But it is too hard for a novice, in my opinion.
Being a graduate student myself, I see how such a precise description could be invaluable to athletes, but in the same way as you would not start studing physics from a PhD level text book, you are better off not starting to learn swimming from this book.
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40 of 48 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars Out of date information - I returned the book, January 21, 2005
By Alistair Cockburn (Salt Lake City,, UT USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
I am a master's swimmer, been swimming most of my life. In the last two years I've been relearning swimming techniques for all of the strokes and am very interested in both theory and latest ideas. It was on a friend's recommendation I bought this tome.

I was very disappointed, and just returned the book for a refund.

The lastest research results reviewed are dated 1999 --- this is not acceptable for a book published in 2003. I don't mind that he recycled much of his old material, but to be 4 years out of date on a rapidly moving topic won't work. Again, for a supposedly state-of-the-art book published in 2003, this is far out of date.

His theory section doesn't include the mechanics of Thorpe's and Hackett's front quadrant swimming. I was expecting to see a thorough explanation of why it works. Instead, he says he doesn't think front quadrant with a long glide will work (Thorpe and Hackett indicate he's wrong here), but doesn't include any models for why it would or wouldn't.

The theory sections of the other strokes are very thin. Mostly he shows a picture of a fast swimmer and writes, "You should swim like this." But unlike freestyle, there is no substantive theory backing up why 'this' is supposed to be good.

I was most disturbed by the backstroke, since the patterns of movement he says one 'should' do seem to violate the hydro-physics principles he spent so much time on in the first chapter. Without any theoretical backing, he repeats that one should do like the fast swimmers. I came away from this chapter not understanding at all why fast backstroke swimmers swim with a stroke that has a strong downward component, which he clearly advises against in the first chapter.

There is a little nod to Thorpe and Hacket toward the very end of the book, but it looked to me almost just a gratuitous injection of modern names just before sending to print.

I'm now looking for a 2004/5 up-to-date swimming theory book.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Fastest Swimming
This is an excellent book, it's the type of book you would like to have with you, but given its size that is a totally impractical proposition. Read more
Published 1 month ago by Martin Dolan

5.0 out of 5 stars A must have for swim coaches
I can't tell you how much I enjoy this book. It has a wealth of information about stoke technique, training programs, and a very in depth explanation of energy systems. Read more
Published 1 month ago

5.0 out of 5 stars Encycolopedic reference
This book is a very thorough, well researched reference book on swimming. It digests and presents proven techniques for swimming all strokes, down to pretty small but important... Read more
Published 5 months ago by cogtrj

4.0 out of 5 stars Highly technical. Great book, but probably not what you want.
Maglischo is writing about physics as much as he writing about swimming. If you wanted to generate a computer model of a swimmer, this book is where you would start... Read more
Published 20 months ago by Michael P. Quinn

5.0 out of 5 stars Happy Marriage of Acadmic Science and Practical Coaching.
This book lays yet another milestone on the road to understanding competitive swimming. It combines two polar points of view - academic science and practical coaching. Read more
Published 21 months ago by Alex Boutov

5.0 out of 5 stars All I ever needed to know about swimming
My background is that I'm a former NCAA Championship competitor, nearly 30 years of age group and high school coaching; an MS in exercise physiology with specific research into... Read more
Published on January 7, 2007 by Curt Altschul

5.0 out of 5 stars Swimming Faster
As a former swimming coach of elite swimmers, I consider this to be the gold standard on competitive swim training. It is the modern successor to Dr. Read more
Published on January 31, 2006 by D. Graham

3.0 out of 5 stars Needlessly cumbersome and obscure
Not for beginners, very academic language, not how-to book
but it is so huge that you can drain out of 300 words one single clear word which will actually answer you... Read more
Published on November 30, 2005 by George

5.0 out of 5 stars Swimming bible
Altough I'm a duch user, the book is a perfect help for trainers.
Everything I want to know is to be found in the book. Read more
Published on October 23, 2005 by H. P. Bosma

5.0 out of 5 stars Review Title
I read this book alot. Just when you think you know everything there is to know, 'Swimming Fastest' presents yet another aspect of swimming. Read more
Published on October 1, 2004 by NoodleNoggin

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