Muscling my way through Swimming

- by Deborah Georges

Slither-slipping for the first time was novel, fresh, exhilarating, compelling! The ecstasy that washed over me was one of the joyous moments I’ve had since beginning TI this year. And it certainly trumps muscling as an experience.

Athletic since childhood, my greatest joy came from running. In high school, my muscular legs were a favorite target of neighborhood bullies. Rather than proudly embrace the genes I had inherited, I spent my adolescence trying to soften or hide my muscular build.

In my mid-20s, I ran my first marathon and became completely hooked. A decade later, with 21 well-performed marathons to my credit (two of them first place wins), I couldn’t have been more thankful for, or appreciative of, my muscular endowment.

Completing graduate school at 40, I began lifting weights several times a week at the local gym. Soon, the muscle fiber in my upper body grew in fine, cut proportion to my legs, making me the envy of every weightlifter in the area!

Though long distance running has always been my principle sport, my athleticism and appetite for physical exertion moved me to pursue downhill skiing, white water rafting, cycling, sculling and mountain biking/adventure racing. Swimming was mainly an activity I used for rest and rehab when nursing an injury.

Looking back over my athletic history, I can see how my natural instinct was to use muscular strength and effort as my prime foundation – probably reinforced by a lack of emphasis on technique by my coaches and teachers. It simply never occurred to me that there might be an alternative to “muscling” my sports until I discovered Total Immersion.

As a successful long course triathlete entering my 3rd season, I’m now working to improve at triathlon-swimming, a swimming subspecialty that most rewards those who use flawless technique with little overt muscle – Terry calls it “being cunning rather than physical.” Working meticulously in the pool four times a week with a focus on drilling masterfully to acquire balance, flow and rhythm, I’ve become acutely self-aware to the point where every move I make, every muscle I contract gets undistracted attention. It was through this heightened awareness that I felt myself “muscling” my strokes.

The Total Immersion online Forum is among the best educational resources Terry has created. Interactive, personal, and friendly in spirit, technical questions are raised and detailed answers given with the communal goal of bettering one’s understanding of the sport and improving one’s swimming. So it was to the Forum that I took my “muscling” observation. Several TI coaches weighed in to advise I practice UnderSwitch drill and underwater freestyle to break myself of my “muscling” habit. It took me only one practice concentrating on these two drills to break a lifelong habit of muscling my strokes. “Slither-slipping” through the water in UnderSwitch quickly taught me to make better use of rotating with hips, abdominal core, shoulders, back, and arms moving cohesively as a single unit through the water. For some reason that sensation of being “slippery” had eluded me before. Slither-slipping for the first time was novel, fresh, exhilarating, a compelling breakthrough!

The ecstasy that washed over me at that "slippery" moment of discovery was one of the joyous moments I’ve had since beginning TI this year. And it certainly trumps muscling as an experience.

What makes TI so personally rewarding, by far, is the progress one can make in a single practice done with clear purpose. The greatest breakthroughs are made by focusing on specific aspects of technique in a problem-solving approach, much like putting puzzle pieces together. Some pieces fit together more obviously than others. But with persistence, patience, eagerness, and an enthusiastic will to see the project complete, the puzzle ultimately comes together in its glorious whole. TI works in the same fashion. Each incremental gain brings the whole into clearer focus. And the more I understand about my interaction with the water, the more opportunities for refinement I see – promising a lifetime of subtle adjustments leading to continual improvement in technique and, ultimately, performance. What could be more exciting than that?

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