Essential Swimmer

I wanted to learn how to swim better. I tried a few other books, worked hard, and got nowhere. I began to believe it was impossible to learn swimming from a book. Swimming books tend to be lists of little things which can make you swim better. These lists are addressed to people who already know how to swim and do not add up to instructions for a new swimmer. Tarpinians book is different. It told me in a simple fashion what I needed to do, how to do it and why. Reading just a handful of pages from this book has been the single most effective thing I've done to improve my swimming.

The brevity of this effective, perfectly edited swimming manual is sweet indeed. Not one word too long, it will teach you to swim better than you ever have before, teaching you the fundamentals of freestyle, improving your freestyle, and then using a goal-oriented drill program, developing the four main strokes of swimming (freestyle, breastroke, backstroke, and butterfly). It touches on strength training and the brief nutrion chapter, which basically says, if you eat garbage (empty calories) insteady of health food (fruits and vegetables) is better than a lot of popular nutrition books I've read. Practical, resourceful, and knowledgeable, the books is truly like having a coach right there.

It is a book you can count on just like if it was your coach! It covers every point involved in training and improving your swimming, from techniques to food... A great book for all ages!

This book is the best book on the market for anyone who wants to improve their swimming skills. From the basics to the advanced stroking,this helps you step by step. By reading this book, I improved my swimming dramatically and brought my times down by at least ten seconds. Like it says, this book is essential for the essential swimmer.

Finally a book that blends new and tried and true swimming principles together in a straight forward and usable fashion. I found the chapters on technique and training to be the best of any swimming book available. Chapters on flexability, strength training and goal setting have sent me on the path to hyper improvement. I made a strength training swim bench from the instructions that rivals $800 swim trainers.