Breathing

Did you run your first half marathon after only 2 month of training? Swimming uses very different muscles. It will take time. Stick with it.

Is there anything I can do to improve my breathing technique? Work on it frequently. I too was a runner before I was a swimmer. As land creatures, running comes much more naturally to humans than swimming does. There's a lot more 'technique' involved in swimming than there is in running. Dan

Freestyle Breathing is very difficult to master. Takes time, practice, feedback, drills and rhythm. You may want to video yourself to actually see what you are doing wrong. Get an experienced swimmer to feedback you

Breathing is counter intuitive. You do NOT hold your breath. You breathe IN through your mouth when you rotate, pretty quickly, and then you meter your exhalation as necessary. Slowly when you are pacing, but you'll do it more quickly as you tire. Look straight down with your head. When you rotate to breathe, look kind of behind you, about 3/4 of the way, and look for your elbow as you recover. One goggle should be pretty close to staying in the water.

Ditto what 67King said - And, another way to think about it, when your face is in the water, you should be exhaling. When your face is out of the water, you can inhale. To put a finer point on what 67King said, the exhale process is longer and can be slower, while the inhale process is fairly short. In other words, focus on exhaling and not much on inhaling. Contrary to what your teacher told you, breathing while swimming does not come naturally. Novice swimmers want to hold their breath until their head is out of the water which does not work. They also like to lift their head to breathe instead of rotating your head to the side (as 67King suggested). Talk with a learn-to-swim instructor about learning to breathe. if they are any good, they will have you holding onto a kickboard and learning how to time your breath with your arm motion (one arm at a time).

I still have a lot of trouble with freestyle breathing. I found that some breathing exercises for singing have been helpful for freestyle breathing, you might look into those too. Breathing works on negative pressure - inhaling is the contraction of the diaphragm (among other factors), expanding the chest cavity and automatically filling the lungs with air. Exhalation is the reverse process. One exercise is to take as deep a breath as possible and then exhale all the way - absolutely until you can't do breath out any more (and then even more) and the inhale. It helps you get used to a) the feeling of being out of air and how much it actually takes to get there and b) what taking that deep breath feels like.

Ditto what 67King said - And, another way to think about it, when your face is in the water, you should be exhaling. When your face is out of the water, you can inhale. I knew there was something not exactly right when I was breathing :banana: can finally ditch this snorkel

I hope that I am not hijacking this thread with this question: Freestyle breathing: alternating sides, or one side? It seems that the experts push one or the other in my readings. There does not seem to be a consensus. Or maybe I need to do more reading? Whatever is comfortable. I was a bilateral breather for years and years. Then as a post-grad I had a coach tell me I should try just single side breathing. Took me a few months to get the hang of it, but it actually improved my freestyle races (especially 400/800/1500 and the yards equivalents) drastically. A key thing here is to pick a side that feels most comfortable. Since I was learning it for the first time I just chose the side that felt most natural (I breathe to my right, so when my left arm is extended out to start my catch). That has caused me to have minor shoulder soreness at times in my left shoulder, but ice and prehab take care of that for the most part. Also it is still important to work the opposite side. I usually do this when I am doing a hypoxic set, and will just single side breathe to whichever side is where I break out. Also when I swim easy (and sometimes in warm up) I will mix in single side breathing to the opposite side as well. But when it's time to go fast, I am sticking to my strong side.

I hope that I am not hijacking this thread with this question: Freestyle breathing: alternating sides, or one side? It seems that the experts push one or the other in my readings. There does not seem to be a consensus. Or maybe I need to do more reading?

Many thanks for the replies, I plan to stick with it, it's just frustrating to have to stop after each length on the pool... I do not hold my breath, I can't do this because if I do water gets into my nose and my lungs, so every time my nose is under water, air is coming out, there's no other option for me... (I know some people can put their nose under water and no water will come in, but it's not my case) I would look into those singing excercises.