Total Immersion: Dryland Rehearsal of Recovery 

Great job! I love hearing that your arm pain has gone away. Proper movement of the arm during recovery removes the nagging pain that plagues swimmers' shoulders.

yes arm is ok. thank you and it’s a big progress, but really huge difference is taking a breath. I couldn’t find out what caused stomach pain ( as inflated balloon inside :-) after my swimming sessions. I felt that I took the air too rapidly-maybe. Anyway since changing my recovery for the way you presented never happened again. So I guesss this wide recovery triggers many things and my times and lack of stomach discomfort shows it’s a good way, but for me the most important is that I discovered new great pleasure from swimming freestyle not known before. I feel I got closer to what it means effortless freestyle :-) . Best regards

First I want to point out that when I say external and internal rotation, I don't mean the classic PT terms of external and internal rotation of the shoulder. We should change the language on our side as it could be confusing. As for your question, the easiest way to think about internal and external as talked about in the video is this - put a point on each shoulder and connect the points with a line. This line defines the boundary that your arm or elbow should not go behind when you recover. Internal in our definition therefore is forward of that line, external is to the rear of that line. If your elbow and arm go behind that line, you are putting a lot of stress on your shoulder as well as limiting its potential full range of motion, which could cause you to do undesirable things with your form like bringing the hand forward too soon into a hand led recovery versus elbow led. It also will inevitably lead to injury. Does that make sense? Let me know if it isn't clear!

Hey can you point me to a video where Coach Stuart says not to push past the hips? I have never heard him say that personally. The only time I have heard or seen your hand not push past the hips was when you are swimming at a fast enough tempo and you are starting to fatigue, and thus need to shorten the stroke back in order to make the tempo (as driven by a tempo trainer). Pretty much everyone I know swims by pushing water past the hips by some amount. Also my forearm and hands never move past that boundary either. Can you be more specific in the video where you see that happen? The boundary I refer to, in a physical therapist's terms, is the frontal plane. It contains the line that connects the two shoulder points. The elbow/forearm/hands all do not break the frontal plane in our model of swimming. If you want to use the entire body for propulsion, you will want to weight shift, use a 2BK, use the hips and project energy out the spear in addition to the stroke back. Stroking back is what most people focus on and only do and that is not taking into account the full potential and efficiency you could have while swimming. We often tell people *not* to focus on the stroke back but other things like weight shift, spear, hip drive, etc. That doesn't mean that the stroke back isn't important though. We just need to get you to stop focusing on the stroke back so that you can develop the other aspects of full body propulsion.

This is a dryland drill only to practice arm and elbow positioning as well as movement. It is mostly to burn in movement that does not cause you to pull the arm behind you when you recover, nor try to lift the entire arm out of the water. if you try it in the water, you will find that your elbow will be quite high and that body angle will enable it to be high and out of the water. The key point with this practice is to not pull the elbow behind your back.

Thank you very much ...

you cannot fully not use the traps or levators when raising the arm to overhead position. however you can raise it if you don't shrug. shrugging in this case typically means the traps are overactive and bringing the entire shoulder upwards in its socket, which can cause inpingement and injury over time. for most people I meet, this is a common problem where their lats and other scapular rotators aren't working. thus i cue them to try to bring the arm forward in recovery while keeping the shoulder back in the socket.

+YEVGENIY KOVALYOV Евгений, тренера по TI действительно найти сложно, но очень здорово заниматься не в одиночку, а парой. Попробуйте найти такого же любителя, который бы тоже занимался по методике TI. Используя видеоматериалы курса и видеозаписи, которые поможет сделать напарник, можно прогрессировать значительно быстрее. Я занимался с напарником всего один раз и то - прогресс значительный! Вы не в Петербурге, случайно, плаваете? А то могли бы объединиться...

+Yuri Stepanov. Проживаю в г. Костанай, Казахстан. Единомышленников пока не нашёл, но надежды не теряю). Удачи!

Thanks for commenting - would you please expand on your question - did you mean that the elbow looks too low in my video, versus other TI videos which show a higher elbow?

@@dshentube Yes David, thanks for reply. In other videos of TI the elbow looks much higher. I understand that the body may be more vertical when swimming but would arm be out of water if elbow didnt go past shoulder? Thanks again

@@mmoloni3221 Remember first that this is just a drill and one on dryland. It has a specific purpose to train your recovery, how to move the arm, and what muscles you would use and not use. I would not get hung up on whether the hand is or is not out of the water when practicing on dryland. Now having said that, note that the apparent water surface is not horizontal to the floor; when practicing like this kind of bent over, it is parallel to your spine, which means it will be at some angle to the floor, like 45 deg. So it can be difficult to visualize exactly what is happening when your arm is moving, relative to this imaginary water surface. When you are lying in the water, your body is angled. So sticking your arm out to the side, even if forward of directly to the side to be moving in the scapular plane, will mean that the upper arm is sticking out of the water at an angle. Now comes what to do with the forearm and hand. So while letting it hang vertical will mean that it is dragging through the water, extending the arm at the elbow will bring the hand out of the water as it recovers. Does that make sense? So remember that this is a drill that is teaching your body to move in a certain way with the right amount of relaxation and tension. When you swim you will then be best positioned to get that hand out of the water in the right way and not by bringing your elbow behind your back in an attempt to lift the hand out.

You should know first that this is a drill. And like focal points, drills can reflect reality but may not actually be reality. Their purpose is to train you with certain movement patterns, instill new habits, and abolish old undesirable ones, not necessarily be reality since on dryland, simulating the reality of being horizontal in water is very difficult. In this case, we are teaching you not to "lift the elbow up" as a mental command to the arm during recovery. We want you to swing the arm out from the side of your body instead. "Lifting" as a cue and mental command can have undesirable results, like bringing the elbow behind your back which will lock up your shoulder and restrict your ability to bring the arm forward. We want you to instead keep your elbow and upper arm in front of the "frontal plane" as the clinical community calls it (see this image: i0.wp.com/lateraledgeonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/frontal-plane.png?zoom=2&resize=744%2C480&ssl=1). It can be on the frontal plane or in front of it, but don't bring it behind it, or behind your back. Forget for the moment the forearm. If the upper arm swings directly out to the side, AND your body is angled in the water, your upper arm will be rising out of the water. Then depending on the angle of the arm at the elbow, the forearm and hand with either clear the water or be dragging through it. We have found that it is not important to train explicit reality with this dryland drill. We just encourage people to hang their forearm down because when they swim, they instinctively know how much to bend at the elbow to clear the water. It is the swinging out of the upper arm in the proper path that is important to train. Even dangling the forearm down has value; this teaches people to relax the arm when they recover. If they are tensing up the forearm, they inevitably are tensing up the entire arm which doesn't do a recovery movement any good. Also note that when bent over, the water is actually more at a 45 deg angle, not horizontal. The plane in which your head and spine lie isn't truly horizontal. So when we train, how do we know exactly where the water is, when we're on land, not lying down, and kind of bent over not to 90 deg but something less? Does this help?

Thank you very much for the detailed explanation. Now that I understand the process and intention, I am more inclined to start these drills. I would like to attend a workshop some day as practicing without someone watching you and telling you what you are doing wrong is very frustrating. I think I am doing the right things but I'm 100% sure I'm not or I would not be exhausted after just 50 meters or less. Anyway, thanks again for your videos. Without a live coach, these are the next best things. 😀

@@HeliSimDriver You bet - please do come to a workshop soon! Find them here: www.totalimmersion.net/get-coached/workshops

@@dshentube Hi David, great video. I have seen several of your videos showing dryland drills which are very helpful, but it would be really good to see the same principles demonstrated in the water. As you have said above, practicing on land is different to practicing in water. I find that while I may be able to do the dryland drill, when I try it in the water it doesn't work the same way and/or I don't know exactly what it should look like. Maybe you could just link to other existing videos where someone is demonstrating the principle you are explaining?

@@timspencer9650 I'm glad you like this video! As mentioned in the comments of many of those videos, dryland drills are designed to solicit particular actions with your body and nervous system. They may reflect reality but are not necessarily truly reality. That is the first thing to note. We are trying to get you to recover your arm along this path, but also have the correct muscle activation (or deactivation as the case may be) so that when you get in the water, it is more familiar to you than not. Then comes the actual movement in the water, where you have to acknowledge that your comfort while in horizontal position must be at a high enough level for you to be able to fully deploy this movement. So if you are not comfortable in the water, how will you know if you can/cannot execute the recovery movement as described in the video? If you can do it on dryland, it is because you're on very familiar territory: land, vertical orientation of body aka standing, not worrying about breathing, etc. If it is hard then let's explore why that is and it may be something else besides the drill and movement itself...