any input on expanding lungs

E.M. Forster in his book The Art of the Novel said that you can violate all the rules as long as you "bounce" the reader along. Some_Girl, are you by any chance the comedian Lauri Kilmartin in real life. Or somebody Kilmartin?

No breathing sets are probably most benefical as a percieved effort placebo. You think you are working harder so you think it's better. I have seen NO data on any measurable benefit of those breathing restrictors. I guess no breathers may help confidence for SDK and breaststroke pullout. There are many things coaches have you do that may have more of a macho effect than anything else. At the risk of goring a sacred cow how about the "don't breath from the flags in" idea. OK if you swim faster without breathing this makes sense at the finish and in sprints,but it is important to get past the flags on the pushoff and I have seen many people come up too soon because they didn't breathe enough on the way into the turn. It is my understanding that since we are hoizontal while swimming that cardiac output and lung capacity are not nearly as important as capillary perfusion,which is improved by repeated exertions.

You don't need to build up your lungs. There have been Olympians in various sports with only one lung. It's not the volume of air you can breathe in that's important--it's the amount of oxygen your blood via hemoglobin can extract, how fast this can then be circulated to your tissues, and then how good your muscles have become adapted to extracting the oxygen for use. Training at altitude can increase your red blood cell counts and hemoglobin levels; I suppose (but don't know for sure) that hypoxic sets where you hold your breath while training might have a similar effect, though it can be a bit dangerous, and I have heard conflicting opinions on how useful this actually is. Training hard, however, will get the muscle fibers used in swimming to produce what are, in essence, additional oxygen extractors. One other thing: you might not be inhaling deeply in the first place, or perhaps you're not emptying your lungs sufficiently to blow out the stale air so more fresh air can replace it. Oh, and the last item: it's the build-up of CO2, not the depletion of O2, that drives that horrible hunger for air during a breath hold. I once did an experiment where I held my breath for 1 min 30 seconds, and using a pulse oximeter, got my blood ox down to 94%. (Normal at sea level is 99 to 100 percent; I was at Boulder, CO, where normal is 98 percent.) I felt really, really starved for air. Then I entered this engineer's hypoxic chamber, and went up to a simulated base camp at Mr. Everest altitude--18,000 feet. I could breathe in and out at will, blowing off CO2 before it could accumulate in my tissues. I may have felt slightly light headed, but I didn't feel the slightest bit starved for air. The pulse oximeter at this point measured my ox level at 85 percent-- enough, the engineer assured me, to put me in an ICU if I showed up in such a state at an ER. Training can help you tolerate the feeling of built up CO2 as well, as those free divers who can hold their breathes for 7 minutes plus clearly show.

You might find this article interesting: www.findarticles.com/.../ai_n9270380 Generally, I don't think hypoxic sets do anything but train you to be more comfortable with discomfort. That isn't nothing, but it isn't physiological either.

Breathing 101: 1- The urge to breathe comes from an increase in partial pressure of C02 in blood. C02 is a by product of complex metabolic systems involving fuel burn and oxygen, at the celular level. Elimination of C02 is necessary to maintain normal pH (acid-base system) of blood. This urge can be dimished by "mental control" and other factors such as opioid (morphine and similars) presence. The mental control part is the one you can train while swimming and snorkeling. You won't make your lungs "better" or your system " better", but you will be able to hold your breath longer with mental training, which would be subsequent to physical training. The danger of mentally being able to hold your breath longer is that somewhere this breath holding will actually cause your oxygen offer to be less than ideal. A not so rare accident in apnea divers is that they stay longer than they should under water and pass out either deep or shallow on the way back when the pressure changes causes a shift in the oxygen content of their brain. This is not usual while swimming on the surface. So the main way to increase your holding your breath capacity is to train for it and thus get mentally able. 2- If you have a lung problem or some disease that has done damage to your alveoli, or if you are trying to increase your alveolar capacity, then you may exercise your lung. The increase in capacity in a normal lung will be minimal. The exercise most commonly used is to blow air out through some resistance device, or Peep (positive end expiratory pressure). Interestingly, while swimming we expire against a slight pressure under water which on its own causes an increase in alveoli capacity and/or efficacy. Exhaling slowly through your lips will also help. 3- All this above is in accordance to what Jim and Fortress posted. The oxygen usage and carbon dioxide elimination systems are complex and involve many variables, the least of which to us normal healthy swimmers is the lung part of the process. Happy breathings, billy fanstone P.S. Jim, I was at 5,000 meters altitude and stayed around that altitude for about a week. My pulse oxymeter read about 86. I didn't die, nor did I feel much, except for the occasional longer than usual sigh and light-headness. My red blood cell didn't have time to increase but my physiological system started to adapt as my heart rate came down about 20 beats from 30 beats above my expected heart rate for any given effort. I was hiking in the Everest region. I had a polar and altitude watch turned on most of the time. When my patients breathing air and with some narcotics i.v. drop their oxymetry to below 90 going towards 80, I just watch the curve, or how long they stay low until they start climbing back to the 90s. No big deal. They don't even start to turn blue, which was the older method used to determine oxygenation. Hypoxic training would work out for endurance swimming, not for the usual pool swimming competition. You find blood doping (EPO) in endurance runners or Tour de France type guys. Swimmers have other variables in getting faster or lasting longer than the oxygen part of the problem.

Well, I can sing better than I can swim, that is for sure! Working on Mozart's Requiem for a choir I am in, and it is really hard! I need all the air I can get to reach that high B flat.

On the other hand, your diaphragm DOES take up energy in its own right, I suppose that resisted breathing training could make your diaphragm more economical at what is does meaning it requires less blood supply to do what it is doing. . This is why I said sing. To learn to sing properly, you have to learn to use your diaphragm properly. Swimming has helped my swimming quite a bit. Not sure if the reverse is true, since I have been singing all my life and only swimming 6 years.

I don't hold my breathe when I swim, I do a slow controled exhale.

Some_Girl, are you by any chance the comedian Lauri Kilmartin in real life. Or somebody Kilmartin? Ha. No. You can tell because of my feelings on breastroke. I am Laurie Kilmartin with FLY. (Even better.)

thank you all so much. I've been reading alot of your posts & learning so much from this forum. My holding my breath had been in the water, swimming underwater for as long as possible, thought that would help.