I am an Age Group and Masters Swim Coach While I am very comfortable working with strong swimmers, sometimes I teach lessons to adults who want to do triathlons and are fairly new to swimming. Every so often, I find a swimmer who has problems breathing. I have already read previous discussions where breathing is a problem and all the suggestions recommend improving stroke technique. I am very aware of the benefits of TI and like to encorporate it whenever I can. I have a very fit runner who now has pretty good stroke technique but after 25 yards is too out of breath to continue. Being a life-long swimmer, and having 8 year old swimmers who can go 1000 yards without problems, I can't fathom how anyone can't "breathe". This sounds very basic but in order to get a good diagnosis, I will try to be very specific. He is exhaling slowly, continuously, and completely through his nose before he rolls to inhale through his mouth. I generally have him breath every 3 strokes, but sometimes vary it and nothing seems to help. Has anyone encountered this and if so, are there better drills than just simple bobs?
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Former Member
I have had the same problem when swimming with crawl stroke. While I a number of factors may obviously affect the stroke, some things I have found through trial and error to help greatly are:
1)Relaxing and letting the arms flow through the water, instead of trying to swim quite as hard of fast(this will minimize the number of FT muscle fibers being used, ruling out or at least minimizing fatigue due to lack of aerobic developement); 2) breathing slightly later or earlier relative to your stroke(try both); and 3) instead of attempting to put the chin just to the side to breath, move it DOWN and to the side.
Try this out! Tell me if it helps too!
I have had the same problem when swimming with crawl stroke. While I a number of factors may obviously affect the stroke, some things I have found through trial and error to help greatly are:
1)Relaxing and letting the arms flow through the water, instead of trying to swim quite as hard of fast(this will minimize the number of FT muscle fibers being used, ruling out or at least minimizing fatigue due to lack of aerobic developement); 2) breathing slightly later or earlier relative to your stroke(try both); and 3) instead of attempting to put the chin just to the side to breath, move it DOWN and to the side.
Try this out! Tell me if it helps too!
