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.
Review by Laura Lopez-BonillaLaura Lopez-Bonilla is a swimming instructor and the second Spanish woman to complete an English Channel swim. She lives in Greenwich, England.
Swimming Made Easy is a handy manual for swimmers of any age and ability, as well as for swimming instructors and coaches. The book delivers what its title promises: It unveils the mysteries of swimming and makes it easy for anyone to achieve the fluency of a champion.
Terrestrials – dogs, horses and humans too - generally swim out of sheer necessity. We think that the harder we work, the faster we’ll swim. As Terry Laughlin writes: "Swimming is no longer about brute strength but about sheer smarts." In Part 1 he explains how to do that by swimming as fish and aquatic mammals do:
- Balance - how to be completely at home in the water;
- Eliminating drag - how to be more slippery; and
- Whole-body propulsion – how to achieve effortless flow, grace and power by linking your stroking movements to core-body rhythms.
In addition, in special-subject sections, Terry answers swimmers’ most frequently asked questions, including: how to breathe seamlessly in all strokes; the most advanageous way to practice kicking; the smartest ways to increase your power in the pool; which training aids help and which do not; and how to integrate stroke drills into your training.
Part 2 guides you through drill progressions for the Long Axis (freestyle and backstroke) and Short Axis (butterfly and breaststroke) strokes. These teach you the fundamentals explained in Part 1, to learn or improve each stroke with a series of "bite-size skills," that can be assembled gradually into a whole stroke. As you do, the nervous system takes "snapshots of sensations similar to the ones elite swimmers instinctively feel".
And "snapshots" of the strokes is what we get. The detailed descriptions of the drills are illustrated with clear photographs, which also show you "how not to" move. These invite you to experiment, so you can feel the difference raising your head higher will make to your balance, for example. Each illustration shows just one part of the movement, and is accompanied by clear, easy to understand instructions written in "feel language".
This "feel language" is what makes all the difference between Terry Laughlin’s books and other swimming books, as he teaches the biomechanics of swimming through "neuromechanics," for instance: "Feel as if a thin film of water could wash over the top of your head at any time." This is language your body understands, rather than the complex cognitive descriptions found in other teaching manuals.
In another book, considered a "bible" by many coaches, I found this: "Continuous propulsion is obtained by so timing the movements that each arm will apply (catch) while the other still retains the pressure on the water at the end of its drive." In Swimming Made Easy, the same action is described this way: "Hold onto the water as if you were pulling your body past a rung on a ladder."
If you’re a novice swimmer, you’re in good hands, since you have fewer old habits to get rid of and you can start becoming fishlike from day one. If you are an experienced or competitive swimmer, you’ll be able to refine your skills and continue to do so for years to come, as the TI method is an addictive journey of self-discovery in interacting with the water. If you’re a teacher or a coach, it will change the way you think, teach and coach swimming.
If you have been wondering what it is that eludes you in swimming, this is the book for you. It teaches you to swim, but also to think about swimming. After reading this book and learning the drills, you will be ready to be your own best coach. Swimming Made Easy just makes sense.