One of my coworkers took the weekend workshop a few months ago and was pretty happy with it. He is/was not a swimmer; he just wanted to learn how to swim so he'd be comfortable when he went on vacations to the Caribbean, etc. Most of the people in the class were triathletes. He feels like he knows how to swim now, but not well, and still isn't comfortable in the water like I am naturally, but he goes to the pool regularly and practices at least.

I watched the videos he got and the technique seems a bit odd to me. You twist your body completely to each side with each stroke, and use your feet to propel when you twist back to the middle. I attempted to do it once when I was swimming a week or so ago, and it was definitely something that would take work. I guess that's why they have you do so many drills. It seemed like it took a lot more energy than my normal swimming stroke.

I doubt that I'd ever part with the money for the workshop, but if I wanted to get faster it would probably accomplish that, based on what I saw in the video. (And it was funny, everyone in the video had bike shorts tans so I didn't feel like such a freak!)