In recent years I have greatly improved my breathing technique, and last season became very comfortable swimming 1500 - 2000 meters at a time, breathing to the same side (left and right on alternate lengths) with no sense of being out of breath. But I felt in a bit of a stroke length and speed rut.
I have always found bilateral breathing a lot faster than breathing to one side, but I usually feel desperately out of breath after about two or three hundred meters.
So my experiment for this season has been to incorporate bilateral breathing into my long practice swims. To retrain my body, I quit same-side breathing altogether. I started by alternating 50m crawl lengths with 50m easy breathing backstroke lengths. On the first few swims, I was desperate for air before and after the flip turns, and gasped as I surfaced in backstroke.
But a few swims later, I was not feeling so bad after the turn, and stroked hard on the backstroke. By about 600m, bilateral breathing was feeling like the right and proper way to swim. Moving to the outside 25m lanes last Sunday, I swam three lengths of crawl for every one of backstroke. Due to a sprained ankle I was doing open turns, which gave me an extra breath, of course, and I felt no air desperation at all. I knew that flip turns would be more challenging.
Tuesday I swam a full 1500m of crawl and 500m of backstroke. I was able to manage flip turns with tentative pushoffs. I found that extra breathing just before the turn tended to mess up my flip timing, and I had to tuck a lot to make the rotation. For about the first half of the swim I stuck with bilateral breathing, but gave myself extra breaths before and after the turns. I even tried breathing on successive strokes, like Sun Yang, but I don't exhale fast enough to be ready for the next inhale. For a few lengths I tried breathing twice to the right and once to the left, and eventually settled into breathing twice to the right and twice to the left—which seemed to be enough air.
About three quarters of the way through I remembered to spread my fingers, though I forgot again in backstroke.
Parents
Former Member
I think there are two basic reasons that most great freestylers above 100M choose during a length to breathe on the same side, virtually every stroke cycle: oxygen and rhythm.
For the same reason that flyers are now breathing more often, the benefits of more air usually outweigh the inconvenience of briefly positioning your mouth above the water's surface.
As far as rhythm, it perhaps isn't pointed out enough that freestyle is the only competitive swimming stroke with a built-in longitudinal asymmetry, because of side-breathing. The question is whether to embrace the asymmetry, and even try to exploit it, or instead try to minimize the effects of the asymmetry, by emphasizing bilateral (aka switch-side) breathing.
You still see the latter strategy widely coached, often supposedly to avoid neck and shoulder problems. On that score, a proper logroll during breathing should avoid injury. Improper breathing on both sides might simply result in twice the number of physical problems.
The competitive problem with switch-side breathing is that it usually interrupts the stroke rhythm. Sometimes you can even see the loss of momentum in switching sides, as the stroke is flattened and stalls.
The best freestylers seem to actually exploit the asymmetry. Their non-breathing-side arm acts a little like a catchup stroke, with a big reach, grab and scoop during the breathing body roll, followed by the breathing arm making a more over-the-top piercing stab forward, burying the head slightly, with a greater glide moment as the non-breathing arm catches up. The largest flutter kick is usually concomitant with the dominant arm stabbing forward, to combine propulsions. There are a lot of variations on this embrace of side-breathing asymmetry, but the different mechanics between the two sides of most great freestylers is obvious.
Park Tae-Hwan is a good mechanic to study in this regard. He's a sub 6-footer who uses an unusually low stroke count, and an obvious asymmetry. He has a favorite side, which he will sometimes reverse during a given length to keep an eye on his competition. The repeated, regular above-water glances give a more accurate measure of relative pace than below-water glances, which can subtly push a swimmer off-center.
Bottom line IMO: for most of us, other than strict splash-and-dashers, freestyle breathing should occur on one side the entire length, breathing AOAP, while looking for ways to exploit and groove the asymmetric side-breathing rhythm.
I think there are two basic reasons that most great freestylers above 100M choose during a length to breathe on the same side, virtually every stroke cycle: oxygen and rhythm.
For the same reason that flyers are now breathing more often, the benefits of more air usually outweigh the inconvenience of briefly positioning your mouth above the water's surface.
As far as rhythm, it perhaps isn't pointed out enough that freestyle is the only competitive swimming stroke with a built-in longitudinal asymmetry, because of side-breathing. The question is whether to embrace the asymmetry, and even try to exploit it, or instead try to minimize the effects of the asymmetry, by emphasizing bilateral (aka switch-side) breathing.
You still see the latter strategy widely coached, often supposedly to avoid neck and shoulder problems. On that score, a proper logroll during breathing should avoid injury. Improper breathing on both sides might simply result in twice the number of physical problems.
The competitive problem with switch-side breathing is that it usually interrupts the stroke rhythm. Sometimes you can even see the loss of momentum in switching sides, as the stroke is flattened and stalls.
The best freestylers seem to actually exploit the asymmetry. Their non-breathing-side arm acts a little like a catchup stroke, with a big reach, grab and scoop during the breathing body roll, followed by the breathing arm making a more over-the-top piercing stab forward, burying the head slightly, with a greater glide moment as the non-breathing arm catches up. The largest flutter kick is usually concomitant with the dominant arm stabbing forward, to combine propulsions. There are a lot of variations on this embrace of side-breathing asymmetry, but the different mechanics between the two sides of most great freestylers is obvious.
Park Tae-Hwan is a good mechanic to study in this regard. He's a sub 6-footer who uses an unusually low stroke count, and an obvious asymmetry. He has a favorite side, which he will sometimes reverse during a given length to keep an eye on his competition. The repeated, regular above-water glances give a more accurate measure of relative pace than below-water glances, which can subtly push a swimmer off-center.
Bottom line IMO: for most of us, other than strict splash-and-dashers, freestyle breathing should occur on one side the entire length, breathing AOAP, while looking for ways to exploit and groove the asymmetric side-breathing rhythm.
