Sheila Taormina is just 5′ 2″ tall, yet she competed in four Olympic Games on the strength of her swim. The sport of swimming is generally dominated by tall, long-armed athletes, but Sheila overcame her height disadvantage by developing exceptional swimming technique.
In her book Swim Speed Secrets for Swimmers and Triathletes, Sheila describes the technique, the drills that develop it, and one of her favorite tools to develop and reinforce a high-elbow underwater pull: Halo™ swim tubing.
Halo swim tubing
Halo swim tubing is designed to simulate the swim stroke while out of the water, which is useful because it’s difficult to visually check your arm positioning when under water and sharing a lane with other swimmers. Sheila recommends doing tubing drills because they have a powerful effect on training the proper movement patterns for faster swimming. The tubing is also portable so you can practice your technique even when you don’t have access to a pool.
Swim Speed Secrets shows how to use Halo swim tubing both with and without a Halo bench (see below).
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- Halo swim tubing
Sheila demonstrates how to use Halo swim tubing in this video below.
Find new speed in the water with Swim Speed Secrets, available now in bookstores, tri and swim shops, and online.
- Amazon.com: Swim Speed Secrets
- BarnesandNoble.com: Swim Speed Secrets
- Chapters/Indigo: Swim Speed Secrets
- Your local independent bookstore: Swim Speed Secrets through IndieBound
- TriSports.com: Swim Speed Secrets
- SwimOutlet.com: coming soon
- VeloGear.com: Swim Speed Secrets
Photo 6 is the same as Photo 2 in Figure 5.18 on page 74 of the book. It seems to be clearly wrong, left arm hand was recovering for instance in photo 5 and now is directly under the body, right arm is higher than in photo 5 etc.
You are correct. This was a printer error. I’ll email you — and anyone who is interested — the corrected page.