Swimming Made Easy will completely transform how you move through the water. Beautiful strokes are within the reach of every swimmer, no matter your age, strength, fitness, or experience. SME explains that fast, fluent, effortless swimming depends far more on how cleverly you avoid drag and work with the water than on how long or hard you train.
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SWIMMING MADE EASY
The Total Immersion Way for ANY Swimmer to achieve Fluency, Ease and Speed in ANY Stroke.
SME 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!
Book Description:
Swimming Made Easy will completely transform how you move through the water. Beautiful strokes are within the reach of every swimmer, no matter your age, strength, fitness, or experience. SME explains that fast, fluent, effortless swimming depends far more on how cleverly you avoid drag and work with the water than on how long or hard you train. Based on more than 30 years of swimming, teaching, coaching, and studying swimmers of all types, Terry Laughlin's simple, clear guidance will help you:
- Learn how to apply the critical skills of the world's best swimmers (balance, rotation, and alignment) in all strokes and at all levels: novice to elite, adolescents to seniors.
- Master the secrets of eliminating drag and tapping effortless power through smart, mindful, body mechanics.
- Learn or refine your form and increase your swimming pleasure with 10 lessons and 41 skill drills, illustrated with over 150 surface and underwater photos.
- Discover how to be your own best coach -- or maximize the value of coached workouts -- with clear, graphic descriptions of how every stroke will feel when you do them correctly.
- And best of all, enjoy every stroke you ever take!
Swimming Made Easy promises is that swimming well is something attainable by everyone, rather than a gift reserved for a talented few. 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."
Here's a sampling of some of the paradigm-smashing insights in SME:
WHAT'S HOLDING YOU BACK? IT'S THE WATER, NOT YOUR FITNESS LEVEL. Training-intensive 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, not because they move their arms faster. Chapter 2 explains why Stroke Length is so advantageous and exactly how you can get it. Read this chapter.
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." 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: What limits your speed and endurance is drag, 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 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. 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. Read this chapter.
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."