When I was a kid, it was drilled into me to never breathe in and out of my turns - coaches were known to hand out sit-up penalties for any breathing spotted between the flags and the wall. Now that I don't have a coach, I've noticed that I tend to breathe going into the turn, though I take one arm stroke off the turn before I breathe. I was feeling sort of guilty about this, but I just watched the women's 800 free from London and I noticed that all the women (whose turns I could see) were breathing in and out of the turns.
Is not breathing in and out of turns something like bilateral breathing (i.e. preached by youth coaches but not actually done by most elite swimmers)?
When I was a kid, it was drilled into me to never breathe in and out of my turns - coaches were known to hand out sit-up penalties for any breathing spotted between the flags and the wall. Now that I don't have a coach, I've noticed that I tend to breathe going into the turn, though I take one arm stroke off the turn before I breathe. I was feeling sort of guilty about this, but I just watched the women's 800 free from London and I noticed that all the women (whose turns I could see) were breathing in and out of the turns.
Is not breathing in and out of turns something like bilateral breathing (i.e. preached by youth coaches but not actually done by most elite swimmers)?
This is an interesting topic and one that I've though about quite a lot recently because my 10 y.o. asked about it after getting conflicting messages from the coaching staff. We decided to look at videos of elite women. It appears that someone like Natalie Coughlin breathes on the last stroke going into the turn, but takes at least a few strokes after the breakout before breathing. Distance swimmers, on the other hand, pretty much always breathe every stroke. This makes sense to me. You gotta have air, especially if you plan on a long kickout. It makes sense to breathe going into the wall rather than at the breakout because you are going slower coming into the wall than at the breakout. Presumably breathing has less impact on speed when you are going slower. In distance events, by contrast, where most of the energy is from aerobic metabolism, the cost of lack of oxygen exceeds any speed benefit of skipping a breath on the first few strokes off a turn. So my advice to my 10 y.o. and in general, is: if you gota breathe, do in going into the turn, but don't breathe at the breakout. In distance events, just breathe.
When I was a kid, it was drilled into me to never breathe in and out of my turns - coaches were known to hand out sit-up penalties for any breathing spotted between the flags and the wall. Now that I don't have a coach, I've noticed that I tend to breathe going into the turn, though I take one arm stroke off the turn before I breathe. I was feeling sort of guilty about this, but I just watched the women's 800 free from London and I noticed that all the women (whose turns I could see) were breathing in and out of the turns.
Is not breathing in and out of turns something like bilateral breathing (i.e. preached by youth coaches but not actually done by most elite swimmers)?
This is an interesting topic and one that I've though about quite a lot recently because my 10 y.o. asked about it after getting conflicting messages from the coaching staff. We decided to look at videos of elite women. It appears that someone like Natalie Coughlin breathes on the last stroke going into the turn, but takes at least a few strokes after the breakout before breathing. Distance swimmers, on the other hand, pretty much always breathe every stroke. This makes sense to me. You gotta have air, especially if you plan on a long kickout. It makes sense to breathe going into the wall rather than at the breakout because you are going slower coming into the wall than at the breakout. Presumably breathing has less impact on speed when you are going slower. In distance events, by contrast, where most of the energy is from aerobic metabolism, the cost of lack of oxygen exceeds any speed benefit of skipping a breath on the first few strokes off a turn. So my advice to my 10 y.o. and in general, is: if you gota breathe, do in going into the turn, but don't breathe at the breakout. In distance events, just breathe.
