Leisel Jones is rightly regarded as one of the greatest breaststrokers ever. At just fifteen, she won two silver medals at the Sydney Olympic Games in 2000; she went on to win gold at Athens and Beijing, and at London 2012 became the first Australian swimmer to compete at four Olympics. For the first time, Leisel candidly describes what it's like to be thrust into the limelight so young. She reveals the constant pressure she was under - from coaches, from the media and from herself - to be perfect. Despite the highs of her swimming stardom, she suffered depression, and at one time planned to take her own life. In London, criticised in the media for her weight, and appalled by the bulling and dysfunction in the Australian swim team, Leisel nevertheless handled herself with great composure. She has emerged with maturity and good humour, having finally learnt how to be herself and live with confidence. Body Lengths is the inspiring story of an Australian sporting hero, told with humour, optimism and style.

The author's reasons for writing this book were, first, to provide readers with some basic hydrodynamic tenants that will help them understand the reasons for the complex nature of the stroke mechanics employed by elite, competitive swimmers. The first three chapters on resistance and propulsion were included for this purpose. The second purpose was to describe, what the author believes, is the major propulsive mechanism swimmers use: shoulder adduction. A third purpose was to comment on some of, the many "fads" and misconceptions about stroke mechanics that abound in our sport. His final reasoning behind writing this book was to speculate on some theories about stroke mechanics he developed over the years. The efficacy of these theories have yet to be validated by research, but are worth considering nonetheless. These purposes were met by the individual chapters on each competitive stroke, plus a chapter on stroke rates and stroke lengths. This book is not a continuation of the Swimming Faster series, although it contains some of the same information. Therefore, the author purposely changed the title to reflect his purpose in writing it. It contains descriptions and summaries of the most important research on swimming hydrodynamics over the last several decades, in his opinion. The descriptions of stroke mechanics are supported by photographs of some of the greatest swimmers in the world, both past and present. They were made from in-competition videos where one can see how they really swim, as opposed to what they think they should be doing, which is what one often sees in pool demonstrations and out-of-competition instructional videos.