I read in Competitor Magazine (disclosure: I'm the editor of Competitor NorCal, but didn't assign this story) a feature on the Pose Method of Swimming. The article is a summary of a new book coming out from John Robson and Nicholas Romanov, who also wrote "The Pose Method of Running."

As further disclosure, I had and still have serious misgivings about the Pose method of running. In fact, I kind of disagree with it whole-heartedly. So I was NOT predis"posed" to agree with their foray into swimming.

But the article made some real sense to me; one of their central theses is that you "set" your arm and hand in the water and use them as the fulcrum of the force movement in your stroke. You strive to pull your body past your arm, using your hips as levers.

I'm not doing it justice here, but it did provide an "A-ha" moment for me, tying in some disparate threads of movement through water that were previously unspooled.

For example, in paddling, which I do a fair amount of, this anchoring "catch" with subsequent focus on moving your craft past your paddle - rather than trying to draw your paddle through the water - is now widely accepted, but never really applied to swimming.

They re-cast the whole idea of hip rotation, which I also appreciate and agree with but is too complicated to get into.

Also, in elite swimming, much mention is made of how great swimmers seem to "find quiet water," which could be reconfigured to mean that they are successfully finding good slots for their arms to pull their body past.

Anyway, I tried it out in the pool a couple of days ago, and found it to work. My stroke felt powerful, and since I've plateued a bit in my times, I'm eager to continue to apply it.

It doesn't really seem that they're calling for any drastic reconfiguration of the stroke. Just more of a mindset about how to move your body through the water.

So ... just wanted to know if anyone has heard of the book, or has experience in implementing its findings.

Cheers,
gw