Hypoxic Advice/Workouts--Not Your opinion of Hypox Efficacy

I really don't get the point of holding your breath for long sets. That's a completely useless skill for racing. A while ago I decided that I always wanted to swim the 50 free without breathing. All I had to do was swim a 50 without breathing every once in a while and I had the skill down. No need to do any long hypoxic sets. Let's forget the science of it all. ...It's the 150 mark of a 200 BR and you're hitting the turns, your mind and body are telling you to surface ASAP. Doing so cuts your pullout short. I want to do this to at least train myself to mentally handle it...please don't blanket it as being a useless skill for racing.

Perhaps it is my academic background, but there comes a time when one must realize that PhD = Piled Higher and Deeper and just go with one's own experience. Studies of the type described are all well and good but they are rarely conclusive. I think there is MUCH more quesswork in training than is typically acknowledged, though it is on far more solid scientific background than in the dark ages. It is nice to quote Maglischo but I also know of many very well respected college coaches who think there is benefit to hypoxic training. (And, no, hypoxic training does not have to be "3-5-7-9 breathing," something I rarely do becuase I find it somewhat boring.) Naturally I find it somewhat ironic that JH started this discussion, since it seems to me that the ability to control one's breathing is easily as relevant a skill to swimming as the ability to hoist very heavy weights, but what do I know?:weightlifter: (And, JH, before you object, I do lift weights too...just having some fun...) Chris

Sorry, amigo, a "quick Google search" following your post isn't gonna cut it. I don't believe you have the coaching or training background to make such assertions. If others on the forum with experience feel the way you do, then I will give it more credibility. Further you quoted only part of the article and the whole article is available for a fee. Did you pay the fee and read the whole thing or just pick and choose from the excerpt what you wanted? You can read the abstract yourself. I might be able to get the full artcle with my school login, but the abstract is clear enough about the conclusions. There are quite a few other articles on this subject if you want to read them yourself. They appear to agree with the conclusion that hypoxic training either has no additional training effect, or a negative effect. If you could find me some article that supports hypoxic training, I'd like to see that. I originally got my skepticism on hypoxic training from Maglischo's "Swimming Even Faster." This is what he writes: Hypoxic training refers to swimming a repeat distance with a restricted breathing pattern. Swimmers may breathe only once every second, third or fourth stroke cycle. The original purpose of this method of training was to simulate swimming at high altitude. Proponents thought that reducing the breathing rate would also curtail the oxygen supply and create the same kind of hypoxia that takes place at high altitudes. We know now that this assumption was incorrect. He goes on to cite several studies which support the idea that hypoxic training does not provide unique benefits. And I see that now, after having gotten a good scientific look at why long hypoxic sets are useless, you are asking about my experience. I told you, I don't breathe in the 50. I used to do it a lot, back in the day when I had expert coaches who told me to do thousands of yards holding my breath. All that ever got me was a headache. Now that I train myself, I specifically practice the skill of not breathing on a 50 free. Amazingly, I no longer struggle to hold my breath in that race.

From the above article.. The present study showed that high-intensity flume training significantly improved swimming performance in a pool over both 100 and 400 m. However, this improvement was not enhanced by performing such training under hypoxic conditions. This conclusion is strengthened by the carefully matched groups containing well-trained swimmers and by the randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled nature of the intervention. Therefore, our hypothesis that intermittent hypoxic training improves swimming performance more than training under normoxic conditions was rejected. I'll let the scientists on here discredit the methods and the results of the study. Perhaps some of our members here actually took part in this study.

JH - the way to state what you feel, given your lack of research, experience and knowledge on the subject should have been as follows: There are studies and coaches that don't support hypoxic training, along with studies and coaches that do support it. I have chosen to side with the ones that don't support it and it seems to work that way for me. I've actually done quite a bit of reading previously on this subject, and I've had many years of traditional hypoxic training. I don't know what else would qualify someone to say something about hypoxic training. What I do know is that I've never seen a study supporting added effects from hypoxic training. Can you find any?

It's not a "google article." I don't think you get the difference between Google and Google Scholar. Google Scholar is a search engine for scholarly articles. It works really well for finding the most relevant articles on a given subject, and I like to use it for writing research papers. It's not a general internet search engine like Google. I did a quick Google Scholar search because I knew that I had previously read multiple studies on hypoxic training, and Maglischo's book. I don't just memorize the URLs of abstracts that support all of the scientific theories I know about. That wouldn't make very much sense, would it? I have to search for them to find them. Another example of this would be Theory of Mind in young children, something I'm learning about in one of my classes right now. I know that ToM develops in several stages usually around the ages of 3-5. To give you any kind of research to support this notion, however, I would have to do a quick search on Google Scholar.

I'm in the I/T field and fully understand Google. I understand it well enough to know it isn't the be all and end all of research that apparently you believe it to be. God help us all if the basis of scholarly research in the US these days is based on google searches solely. Wow, you are really not reading what I'm saying. Google Scholar is not Google.

Noooo. It'd be nice to know if it has a scientific basis! Here's a prior thread. There are some others too. forums.usms.org/showthread.php It didn't seem to me like JH was holding himself out as a "learned" expert with his initial post. Seemed like an opinion. I'm just saying forget the science of it...even if it's mental preparedness it's a factor in racing... .

Well this article pretty strongly tells me theres something to gain out of hypoxic training. jap.physiology.org/.../733 Plus, I completely agree with Swim Stud, if your swimming longer events the more lung capacity you have to mentally and physically stay under longer off your walls in the 200 of any stroke the faster your going to be. And in a discussion with my pulmonary doctor and his team just recently, we were talking about the benefits of having better breath control in the pool--because I have had chronic lung problems and often breathe every 2-4strokes. It has shown that someone with better breathe control and breathing patterns in swimming tend to have a lower heart rate. The lower the heart rate the more apt one's body is for exercising/swimming at high intensities over longer periods of time. For example, Lance Armstrong has a resting heart rate of around 45...same as most elite marathon runners, and while its both a cause and effect of being in the shape they are in, on many levels their physiological make-up or altered makeup through proper training, that allows their heart rate to be so low, allows them to be such high caliber distance athletes. JH: you train low yardage anyways, so of course you wouldn't see the point in someone doing a hypoxic set thats longer than your entire workout, but criticizing someones training method seems to be quite hypocritical of you, since you found it so distasteful when others were criticizing your workout log. You clearly already have good breath control :applaud: and hats off to you--because I know I couldn't do a 50 no breath, probably ever, but certainly not as fast or comparably as fast as you can, but keep in mind that a lot of people here are asking questions and seeking advice because they know their own weaknesses and are seeking advice on how to better themselves as swimmers... Some people need hypoxic workouts, because they know they breathe way to much in ALL of their events (thats me.) others might not need that kinda workouts built into their training because they already are happy with how they are able to perform (breath control wise) in race scenarios. But until I am able to swim a full 50 freestyle in no breath whether that be in practice or a meet, I think I should probably keep doing these longer hypoxic sets and using the snorkel to build up some lung strength.

Morgan, I think you are misreading that article. Here's a key quote: The present study showed that high-intensity flume training significantly improved swimming performance in a pool over both 100 and 400 m. However, this improvement was not enhanced by performing such training under hypoxic conditions. This conclusion is strengthened by the carefully matched groups containing well-trained swimmers and by the randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled nature of the intervention. Therefore, our hypothesis that intermittent hypoxic training improves swimming performance more than training under normoxic conditions was rejected. Both groups improved equally. The hypoxic training didn't help.