Swim Speed Secrets: Master the Freestyle Technique Used by the World's Fastest Swimmers

By Sheila Taormina

Sheila Taormina’s Swim Speed Series is America’s favorite guide to faster swimming.

In this new edition of the best-selling Swim Speed Secrets, the 4-time Olympian, gold medalist, and triathlon world champion reveals the swim technique used by the world’s fastest swimmers.Taormina’s guidance is clear and easily understood so any swimmer or triathlete can learn and master the fastest way to swim.

Over the course of four Olympic Games and throughout her career as a world champion triathlete, Taormina refined her winning technique through a close study of the sport, examining the world’s best swimmers using underwater photographs, video analysis, and historical archives. From Johnny Weissmuller to Michael Phelps, Taormina found that the world’s fastest swimmers share two common elements: high stroke rate and a high-elbow underwater pull.

Though she stands just 5’ 2” tall, Taormina honed her swimming technique to victory and shares her Swim Speed method in Swim Speed Secrets. Many swimmers and triathletes neglect the underwater pull, distracted by low stroke count or perfecting less critical details like body position, streamlining, and roll. Swim Speed Secrets,2nd Ed. focuses on the most crucial element of swimming—producing power—to help swimmers and triathletes overhaul their swim stroke and find the speed that’s been eluding them.

With a commonsense approach that comes from decades of intense practice and hands-on coaching experience, Taormina shows swimmers how to transition to faster swimming.

Featuring 4 completely new speed secrets, new drills, and an all-new chapter, Swim Speed Secrets offers Taormina’s essential guidance and new discoveries that are vital for swimmers, triathletes, and coaches:

· Crystal-clear photographs and descriptions of the underwater freestyle stroke.

· New elite swimmers: Step-by-step breakdowns of the strokes of the world’s fastest swimmers including Peter Vanderkaay, Allison Schmitt, Jack Conger, Margaret Kelly, Townley Haas, and more.

· New levels of detail on the stroke path, stroke timing, hand speed change, and over-water recovery.

· NEW! Undeniable, real-world visual proof of the curvilinear, or S-curve, stroke path in elite swimmer strokes using Taormina’s patent pending grid analysis tool.

· NEW! A simplified guide to stroke rate and “gears” to guide every swimming workout.

· New drills to cultivate a sensitive, faster, and more effective feel for the water.

· Dryland and strength building exercises to develop arm position and upper body musculature.

Sheila Taormina’s Swim Speed Secrets blows up the old myths that have held swimmers back. Her best-selling Swim Speed Series—including Swim Speed Secrets, Swim Speed Strokes, and Swim Speed Workouts—brings the focus back where it belongs: to a powerful freestyle swim stroke. With Taormina’s method, triathletes and swimmers can stop swimming for survival and break through to new levels of swimming speed and confidence in the water.

• Language: English
• Publisher: VeloPress
• Release date: Jun 6, 2018
• ISBN: 9781937716974

Sheila Taormina

Sheila Taormina is a 4-time Olympian, gold medalist, triathlon world champion, and swimming coach. She is one of a handful of athletes who have competed in four Olympic games and the only woman in the world to have competed in three distinctly different sports--swimming, triathlon, and modern pentathlon. At the unswimmerlike height of just 5' 2", Taormina refined her exceptional freestyle swim technique to win a gold medal in the 1996 Olympics and the 2004 ITU triathlon world championship. For 15 years, Taormina has coached elite and age-group swimmers and triathletes to develop the strong underwater pull that propelled her to such athletic success in her racing career. Taormina conducts dozens of swim clinics around the world each year.