Total Immersion lesson 1

My copy of “Total Immersion” – ‘The revolutionary way to swim better, faster and easier’ arrived from Amazon yesterday and I tried out the first two drills in the pool this lunch time.
There’s a lot of different drills and lessons and whatnot I’m going to need to perfect should I actually stay the course of this book and whether I have the patience to go through with it we shall see. But, having read through the opening chapters explaining the TI philosophy I can see where it’s going, and it looks rather good - so am going to try to stick with it.

Drills 1 and 2 are about finding balance.
My physique (lean, long legs, muscular) had already been classed as “a sinker” by the book which was not good news. However, it turns out I can float. I think I did ‘hide my head’ and ‘pressed my buoy’ and did indeed feel really rather relaxed just gently kicking my way up and down on my back with my hands at the sides, and them doing the change onto each side in turn to find the ‘sweet spot’. Flat on my back my legs do drop and I do have to kick a little to keep them up (and, err, yes I did go backwards at first) but it was actually all rather pleasant, as promised by my main man Terry Laughlin.

Bit dull though just floating along for the whole session so I have decided to combine the basics with doing slow lengths going for an improved stroke system (taking tips from the TI book). Stretching out and gliding, and also concentrating on lifting my hips up. My SPL (Strokes per length) of a 25m pool has always been around 30, but concentrating just on these two things it immediately drops to 24, and that’s going slow. It’s hard work to adjust though and I am taking a few breaths rest at the end of each length.

One thing that will keep me going, and always has with front crawl is the absolute technicality of it, which means I’m never bored swimming. Maybe there's enough to keep me amused with these TI drills and I can break myself out of bad, self-taught habits and get to be a super-efficient swimmer?