Swimming Fastest

As a former swimming coach of elite swimmers, I consider this to be the gold standard on competitive swim training. It is the modern successor to Dr. Jim Cousilman's classic, "The Science of Swimming". This volume should be a required reference for all competitive swimmers and coaches.

I read this book alot. Just when you think you know everything there is to know, 'Swimming Fastest' presents yet another aspect of swimming. This past summer I focused on stroke form, which the book describes in wonderful detail complete with accompying photographic series. The book also describes metabolism rates, race pacing, swim nutrition, race starts, flip turns, training schedules, swimming history, etc. Everytime I open this book I'm amazed that someone studied this or measured that and Ernest has worked the explaination into an easy-to-read, informative text. Highly recommended... BTW - I'm strictly a distance swimmer, 7 miles per week at a little over 3 hours. Looking to join a rely team swimming the English Channel.

Every little meticulous detail of the stroke adds up to a faster time. Maglischo knows every trick in the book--he WROTE the book--to improving a swimmer's technique. As swimming philosophy changes, Maglischo adapts and is open to the new scientific discoveries that shape the winning techniques of swimmers like Michael Phelps and Ed Moses.Were you ever taught to swim with your head up? Coaches used to teach swimmers to crank their necks so that the water breaks right over the goggles, on the forehead, because they saw that the fastest swimmers rode very high in the water. Maglischo points out that this is an illusion. The fastest swimmers are going so fast that their heads raise slightly, like a jet ski with its nose out of the water. Instead, you should keep your head in alignment with your spine for more efficiency and less strain on the neck.This is the kind of ingenius revelation that Maglischo offers in Swimming Fastest.Note: this is NOT for the beginning swimmer. It is dense, mathematical, and technical. It is not a "how-to" book.With that in mind, buy Swimming Fastest and expand your understanding of the sport.

This is the third edition of the 1st (1982) "Swimming faster" book. Professor Maglischo wrote again an improved "version" and with this one he occupies the position of the best writer, scientist, coach and instructor in the one volume swimming books ever written. If I were to give a name to this book and to his scientific effort I would call this one a "Landmark" work. This book is indeed advanced but at the same time it can serve the less advanced student of the sport since it can be used even as a one volume encyclopedia of swimming. The dedicated enthusiast and the passionate beginer will also find this an atractive and excellent work. Also this book can be used by non swimming specialists who search for a very good scientific handbook of training. Unfortunately in running books we do not have a similar all in one book. We must also mention that the book offers important help to the problem of drag or lift dominated propulsion and Dr. Maglischo explains his thesis (the one we saw in ASCA periodicals in 1999 and in some of his lectures/interviews). We can only thank and congratulate Doctor Maglischo for his effort and encourage him to produce more fine work and the next edition.

-Swimming theory has advanced significantly since Dr. Ernest Maglischo wrote Swimming Faster 1982 and Swimming Even Faster 1993. He opens Swimming Fastest with an acknowledgement that his views on propulsion have changed significantly with each successive book. He writes this book in a more personal voice than the 'third person authoritative' style of the previous weighty tome, and I find it much more readable.In the largely rewritten and well-illustrated section on Technique, Maglischo describes his latest beliefs on effective swimming technique. In some cases, he allows for differing techniques or styles of swimming, but general favors one method.Although he generally agrees with the drag-reducing fundamentals and front-quadrant stroke timing of the very popular style coached by Bill Boomer, Emmett Hines and Terry Laughlin and exemplified by the efficient, long-reaching front crawl styles of Alex Popov and Ian Thorpe, he offers much criticism of what he calls "Stretch-Out" swimming, in which he says that the emphasis is on stretching forward too long, and swimming a catch-up style, to increase stroke length rather than speed. His less-revised section on Training includes improved illustrations and sample training routines used by Janet Evans, Susie O'Neill, Brooke Bennett, Kieren Perkins, Mike Barrowman, Alex Popov, Penny Heyns, Tom Dolan and Summer Sanders. It includes the most thorough look at breathing strategies I have ever read.His brief Racing section presents numerous splits of races by the swimmers mentioned above, at various distances and strokes.Essentially, Maglischo has vastly improved what was already the most thorough and highly-regarded book in the field.