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?
Hello, Strong:
Thanks for taking the time and trouble to reply. You've obviously given breathing a lot of thought. As a beginner, I've concluded that breathing is the front door...if you don't get it down, nothing else follows very well. Your advice about practicing it, doing "breathing laps" is one thing I wouldn't have thought of. I'll be trying some of your techniques. and looking for the book.
I got cut off by the midnight threat before I got some important stuff off my chest. So, here goes...
Somewhere along the line, it occurred to me that as a swimmer or as a French Horn Player, both of which do best when breathing from the diaphraghm, that if I did so all the time, I'd be the best I could be from that standpoint all the time. Thus it was that I taught myself to do so early in the morning and to check it out from time to time during the day.
I wish that I had been told about the dog panting trick a few decades earlier!
The breathing stages, again, are in order: belly button, ribs-back expansion, ribs-sides expansion, throat expansion, culminating in con tutta forza exhalation. These are my stages and perhaps there are even more subtle divisions that I have overlooked. Each stage includes automatically all those that preceded. So we thereby achieve something like building up steam in a boiler by increasing the speed of stoking the fire. (Picture the old timey movies with the train's fireman throwing logs into the locomotive's furnace finally at breakneck speed).
Each day I swim I put these into practice, from two to four sets of 10x50 yards or meters. I start out at an easy pace and don't increase the effort, but merely change the breathing stages in order, and note the increase in speed achieved, as well as the reduction in the number of strokes per length as I progress. I go with the pace clock on 65, then 61, then 59, and finally, if I stay with it that long, on 55.
Set your own pace, but try it, you'll like it.
And since we're obviously working with a military notation, how about
22:22 22/22 2222
Personally I think getting my odometer to flip over from 199999 to 200000 will be a bigger rush.
Dunno - hasn't happened yet - I'll try to be aware and report back. More than likely, though, I'll be trying to figure out which is more cost-effective, to try for 300K miles or to break down and buy a new truck and start from scratch.
And Modern Pentathlon allows one to demonstrate mediocrity in FIVE sports!
I agree breathing fully is the key to fixing "out-of-breath" problems. I am a fairly new swimmer (coming up on a year) and I found at first when I was nervous, I was concentrating so hard on breathing at the right time and breathing out underwater that I was just holding the air almost in my throat and not really breathing! I ran out of breath fast. As soon as I started bringing the air "fully into my chest" (as they say in yoga) I could feel the difference. It was like I was suddenly getting three times as much oxygen with each breath. The feeling also made me calmer and more relaxed in the water.
An added bonus is that when you pull the air all the way down and fill the whole chest cavity to the bottom, it helps the body posture in the water. When I was holding my breath high in my chest and breathing shallowly, it forced my head and shoulders up higher. When I breathe correctly, my body stays flatter. It sort of moves the proverbial "chest buoy" down a little and makes it easier to push.
I can tell if I'm getting lazy with breathing because I am panting during the breaks between laps. If I breathe right, I am still aerobic and breathing normally while waiting to take off again - even on fast sets. Your runner friend will relate to the difference. Most distance runners aren't really out of breath when they finish running. They stop and running and start breathing normally again. Since I'm not out of breath, I can do 300m reps just as easily as 50s, because it doesn't matter if I get a chance to stop and "catch my breath."
Hope this helps those newbies out there.
