Fitness Swimming (Paperback)

“Finally, someone has written a book about swimming that makes sense. Emmett's ability to explain swimming concepts in an understandable way is unparalleled. This book will open up the eyes of any fitness swimmer, from novice to ex-Olympian.”

Troy Dalbey
Head Masters Coach, The Phoenix Swim Club
Double Gold Medalist, 1988 Olympics
Former World Record Holder

“Fitness Swimming is filled with sound, practical advice on how to swim faster and easier and is informed by Emmett Hines' elegant writing and wonderful, down-home sense of humor. A must read for serious masters and fitness swimmers.”

Phillip Whitten, PhD
Editor-in-Chief, Swimming World and SWIM
Author, The Complete Book of Swimming

“A must read for any self-coached swimmer. The discussions of cardiovascular fitness and stroke technique combined with Coach Hines' ‘rainbow' of workouts will almost guarantee improvement in swimming efficiency and fitness.”

Mo Chambers
Head Coach, Mountain View Masters
United States Masters Swimming Coach of the Year (1996)

“Coach Emmett Hines has created an invaluable tool for improvement-minded swimmers. Fitness Swimming is the first book I have seen that perfectly complements the Total Immersion book and method by providing sensible and friendly guidance on how to build fitness and stroke efficiency in a seamless combination.”

Terry Laughlin
Director, Total Immersion Swimming
Author, Total Immersion: The Revolutionary Way to Swim Better, Faster, and Easier

Many swimmers think that to improve, all they need to do is get in the pool and swim an ever increasing number of laps. What they fail to understand is that swimming is a technique sport. Unless they incorporate skill development, refinement, and maintenance into their workouts they won't become better swimmers, just better conditioned thrashers.

Fitness Swimming is designed to help recreational and competitive swimmers, as well as triathletes, improve both their swimming technique and their conditioning. The book shows how to step by step build a more effective and efficient freestyle stroke using simple drills; then it guides swimmers through a structured conditioning program that emphasizes continued development and refinement of that technique.

The heart of Fitness Swimming consists of 60 color-coded workouts that challenge swimmers according to their fitness level and swimming ability. The workouts are distributed across six color zones and get progressively longer and more intense as swimmers move through the zones. The book begins with green workouts, which are the easiest, and ends with red workouts, the hardest.

The book not only explains how to set up an effective training regimen using the color-coded workouts, it also provides 16 sample training programs. Swimmers can follow these sample programs as they appear, or they can be used as a starting point for designing individually tailored programs.

Fitness Swimming also offers advice on stretching, warming up and cooling down effectively, and choosing the best equipment.