Many swimmers think that to improve, all they need to do is get in the pool and swim an ever increasing number of laps. What they fail to understand is that swimming is a technique sport. Unless they incorporate skill development, refinement, and maintenance into their workouts they won't become better swimmers, just better conditioned thrashers."Fitness Swimming" is designed to help recreational and competitive swimmers, as well as triathletes, improve both their swimming technique and their conditioning. The book shows how to step by step build a more effective and efficient freestyle stroke using simple drills; then it guides swimmers through a structured conditioning program that emphasizes continued development and refinement of that technique.The heart of "Fitness Swimming" consists of 60 color-coded workouts that challenge swimmers according to their fitness level and swimming ability. The workouts are distributed across six color zones and get progressively longer and more intense as swimmers move through the zones. The book begins with green workouts, which are the easiest, and ends with red workouts, the hardest.The book not only explains how to set up an effective training regimen using the color-coded workouts, it also provides 16 sample training programs. Swimmers can follow these sample programs as they appear, or they can be used as a starting point for designing individually tailored programs. "Fitness Swimming" also offers advice on stretching, warming up and cooling down effectively, and choosing the best equipment.

Author Biography

Emmett Hines is one of only nine coaches to hold the Level 5 Masters Certification-the American Swim Coaches Association's highest adult coaching certification. He has been coaching in some form since the age of 14. Since founding his company, H2Ouston Swims, in 1982 he has concentrated his efforts almost exclusively on adult swimmers, from beginning swimmers all the way up to those with Olympic pedigrees. His wife Peggy runs the youth side of the swimming program. Hines is also a teaching pro at the prestigious Houstonian Club and travels the country as a senior coach and instructor trainer for Total Immersion Adult Swim Camps, the world's most widely known and respected adult swimming instruction organization. Hines is a regularly featured writer for "Swim Magazine," the official publication of United States Masters Swimming (USMS). He has had over 150 articles published in swimming and triathlon magazines and newsletters. He has spoken at the ASCA World Coaches Clinic and Pacific Coaches Clinic-two of the largest professional swim coaches gatherings in the world. Swimmers under his guidance have won numerous team and individual National Championship titles and have set several national and world records. Hines has served as the Assistant USMS Editor for "Swim Magazine," editor of the Masters Aquatic Coaches Association newsletter and editor of Gulf Masters Swimming Newsletter. He is also an active United States Senior Olympics volunteer.