I have been a right side breather for over 50 years. Last year, I tried for a full year to breathe on the left but encountered a lot of problems and I am a patient person when learning something new/different.
Here are the problems:When I breathe on the left: I get a headache quickly; also, I get extremely dizzy, and finally, I start seeing spots optically. I also don't swim straight which I am famous for doing and that is because my non-breathing arm is probably traveling to the left.
I can breathe on the left for about 10 to 20 strokes before these problems start occurring. Today, after I came home from swim training, I started thinking about why all this is. The one thing I did do was, as I was sitting, was I turned my head to the right and my chin goes beyond my shoulder. I tried this to the left and it wasn't even close to my shoulder. So now I am thinking that muscles/tendons in my neck are not lengthened and flexible when turning it to the left thereby the problems I may be encountering when I try to breathe to the left.
So, if anyone has any ideas, or knows of any exercises I could implement to get my neck to turn to the left, let me know. I truly don't think that swimming 19 miles breathing only to the right is the way to go; it may even cause me to abort the swim.
Breathing to the left is almost impossible because once my vision starts to go, I get nauseaous. Ideas?
Donna
Parents
Former Member
I'm feeling relieved that even accomplished swimmers such as yourself reports troubles with the bilateral breathing. I feel like I don't get any air breathing on the L side and feel like a non-swimmer despite decades of competitive experience. My turnover rate is very slow and if I try to breathe every 3 I feel distressed. One thing I can say is that when I am pulling with paddles and pull-buoy I don't have nearly as much trouble seizing up on the "wrong" side. I don't know if having my L shoulder surgically reconstructed in 1987 had anything to do with it. Bottom line is that coach yells a lot at me for not breathing both sides and it really conflicts with my "enjoyment of swimming".
I'm feeling relieved that even accomplished swimmers such as yourself reports troubles with the bilateral breathing. I feel like I don't get any air breathing on the L side and feel like a non-swimmer despite decades of competitive experience. My turnover rate is very slow and if I try to breathe every 3 I feel distressed. One thing I can say is that when I am pulling with paddles and pull-buoy I don't have nearly as much trouble seizing up on the "wrong" side. I don't know if having my L shoulder surgically reconstructed in 1987 had anything to do with it. Bottom line is that coach yells a lot at me for not breathing both sides and it really conflicts with my "enjoyment of swimming".
