Swimming Made Easy: The Total Immersion Way for Any Swimmer to Achieve Fluency, Ease, and Speed in Any Stroke by Terry Laughlin
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

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I learned a lot from this book’s emphasis on how to smooth out and lengthen one’s strokes. The author describes his approach as teaching “fishlike” swimming, and effortlessness is emphasized.

The book covers all four of the strokes one sees in competitive swimming (i.e. crawl [a.k.a. freestyle,] backstroke, breaststroke, and butterfly.) For each stroke one learns how to improve balance, stroke length, and fluidness, as well as a bit about breath and coordination.

The book is presented in two parts. The first is the more theoretical bit and the second describes drills one can use to improve one’s technique. Part one is longer, more detailed, and written in more readable prose. Part two is shorter, more picture-laden, and tends to stick to bullet points. Photos are monochrome, mostly from above water level, and of varying degrees of clarity / informational value.

My biggest peeve with the book is that it frequently breaks into advertisement for other products (i.e. DVD’s [dates the book, as I’m pretty sure no one has an operational DVD player anymore] and gear.)

I’d recommend this book for readers interested in learning to swim more efficiently. The book is geared toward competitive swimmers interested in shaving time, rather than recreational swimmers who are just interested in a move pleasant experience (e.g. if one swims for fun, one will probably not be running a sequence of drills as that kind of defeats the fun of the activity.)

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