Enjoy this well-detailed account from Matt, an Army soldier faithfully serving our country.   He and a fellow soldier recently took TI lessons. 
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I’m a soldier on Fort Bragg and I recently was given some motivation to improve my ability to swim.  I found out about Total Immersion swimming, liked what I heard, and called up Brian Barndt in Raleigh, to get a couple of lessons.  I convinced one of my buddies to go with me.  We had two lessons from Brian last week and then this week I swam about 5 hours, 4 of them just working completely on TI drills that he taught us.  I definitely made some progress and developed some competence in the first few drills but I started getting frustrated as I tried to progress to switches and other drills that lead to a full stroke.  Things just weren’t coming together right.  So I decided to forget the drills for a while and just swim. 
 
While I was swimming, at least tried to incorporate some of the things I had been practicing and Brian had taught us like keeping my head down, being relaxed, and swimming with my arms on a wider track.  I know my form is still somewhat awful, but I was surprised to find that I did around 500m with only a 1-2 breath break in between each length.  Prior to studying with Brian I would swim a lap, take a 5-10 second break on the wall and then continue.  I think the furthest I had swam freestyle was about 300m.  So I took a 5 min break and decided to try to swim 10 laps again.  This time I placed my watch right on the edge of the pool so I could keep track of my split times.  When I finished my 10 laps, the results surprised me.  From the first lap to the 10th, there was not more than a 6 second difference!  These were my split times:  1:26, 1:25, 1:26, 1:27, 1:27, 1:31, 1:29, 1:29, 1:27, 1:31. 
 
So, bottom line, even though I’m only in the beginning stages of TI, my form is not yet great, and am truly a novice swimmer, I was able to swim 10 laps freestyle at a relaxed pace with only 1 to 2 breaths between each length (of course I’m breathing while I’m swimming as well) with barely a time difference between the 1st and the 10th lap.  That was encouraging.  Thanks, Brian!