Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Please understand, I'm rating the book here, not the swimming method. Understand also that I'm old, a senior who led an active outdoor life until my knees gave out, and I washed up into the backwater of swimming and kayaking, all that remains for the older athlete when your legs give out. There are a lot of similarities between TI swimming and kayaking, as both are somewhat concerned with a principle of that naval architects call "hull speed." Conceptually, the idea of hull speed has been known since ancient times, although modern mathematical formulae can define it precisely. It's simple: All else being equal, long slender ships go faster than shorter, wider ones. If you want to go faster with the same human propulsion engine, you either make your boat longer or you make the beam (the width) narrower. In TI swimming, you increase speed and glide by shaping your body into a longer hull by keeping one arm (alternatingly) extended, and you reduce your beam (width) in the water by swimming on your side. You use body torsioning for propulsion as well as arm motion, and you don't kick a lot because kicking disturbs the smooth flow of water around the body hull. Essentially, in TI swimming, you make your body into a sleek kayak hull, and by smoothly separating the water column in front of you, and smoothly bringing it back together again behind you, you get more "slippery" and thus achieve higher hull speed. And you don't splash or cause water turbulence that slows you down. I first heard of TI swimming from an Australisn woman in a hostel in British Columbia. She took 20 minutes to describe it to me, and it improved my swimming efficiency immensely the same day. Then I bought the Kindle edition of the TI instruction book, and my progress stalled immediately. Words, words, words! Notwithstanding what other reviewers have said, the book is hortatory to excess in wanting to convert those already converted, it lacks photographs, drawings and other illustrations to "show" you visually what's going on. It relies on the minutiae of "coach talk" (although professing to do the opposite!) for every description, and speaks excessively of "training" and "drills," which may appeal to a certain class of competitive athlete interested in winning races, but leaves me dead on arrival. Without illustrations, the book is sheer drudgery to read. I return to it now and again as ritual penance for perceived wrongdoing, and each time I return to it, I find myself bored to death and wanting to review it on Amazon to warn others like me that the method is good, but the writing of the book is just plain bad. A competitive swimmer or triathlete would understandably disagree because coaching, training, drills and dedication may be music to his ears. I've had the book a year now, and haven't been able to finish it. I watched every TI video on YouTube and even bought one of the TI videos on "breathing" (worthless, same criticism as of the book) and just by watching the YouTube videos, I've been able to master some of the techniques. I like the method; it's good, but I understand it simply as good naval architecture designed to increase hull speed. It works. It's graceful and quiet. But TI needs to hire a professional technical writer to rewrite a version with illustrations for the common man who isn't a competitive swimmer or triathlete, and who isn't interested in personal bests or races, a version for somebody who just wants to learn from good pictures and illustrations with well-designed, descriptive captions, and wants to swim effortlessly and gracefully in a noncompetitive world of his own.