I've been wanting to start this thread for a while-- we have one about flutter kicking, SDK, and speed. If I may be so bold, I'd like to see one on how to improve your capacity for hypoxic sets.
After getting back into swimming about 4 months ago, I have noticed a decrease in my ability to handle hypoxic sets, and in general, in my ability to stay underwater for any significant length of time. I find myself trying to get to the surface as soon as possible after turning at the wall so I can get some air. I know this is slowing me down significantly.
As for breathing while actually swimming, I seem to have no problems-- I am pretty much a bilateral breather (every three strokes). It's when I'm coming into the wall or leaving the wall where I have problems, as I can't seem to hold my breath and am always breaking the cardinal rule of not breathing while in the "red zone."
We do at least one hypoxic set per day, and not surprisingly, I usually have problems (although I do try to make it).
Any tips for how to improve, or does this just come with practice and increased aerobic capacity?
I think JH is right about"hypoxic capacity",at least as far as he swimming literature is concerned.Two things though,first,train like you want to race.If you are oing to do 8 SDKs/length,then do that in practice.Second,does anyone know how the deep free divers train?
I'm in agreement with Jazz about this. I'm sure there are ways to "increase capacity," but I think most of this is in our heads. As we practice this type of training, we just become more efficient at breathing out CO2 and breathing in more O2 - and as Jazz points out, more tolerant of the pain of CO2.
Well, as a purely unscientific matter, I certainly feel this way lately. I have been unable to "increase capacity" and stay underwater kicking longer. Thought maybe it was age. But I just can't seem to get any further kicking underwater. It's likely that my SDK just has not improved, or even gotten worse. And I'm not all that fond of CO2 pain. I'd rather practice kicking at a high intensity level and/or do lactate pain.
As for freestyle, I never do any hypoxic work whatsoever.
Yeah, I know everyone is looking for scientific evidence on this topic, but all I've got is personal experience.
Fort, I have the same distance problem - I come up at 14M no matter how hard (or not hard) I try.
You can just read the original thread that Fortress linked; I don't believe JH's thinking on the subject has developed much since then.
My thinking? There's very little thinking involved, actually. I found fairly recent and comprehensive review of hypoxic training studies, read the relevant section, and came to the same conclusion as the authors of the review: It doesn't do a damn thing.
Since there's absolutely no evidence that hypoxic training reliably increases aerobic capacity in any way, your subjective opinion that you can somehow train yourself to not go into oxygen debt is wrong. There are two ways to avoid oxygen debt: breathe more and become more aerobically efficient. Holding your breath obviously isn't the former, and there's a ton of evidence that it doesn't affect the latter. Not useful.
So, Jazz, when you're practicing no breather 50s, that's just breath holding practice so you'll be used to not breathing at race time? You don't think you're training your body to tolerate oxygen debt better? Or is there really no oxygen debt on a 50?
I actually don't do those anymore. I had a bad experience holding my breath at Nationals this summer.
Anyway, as I said, oxygen isn't really the issue. It's just the psychological tolerance of the carbon dioxide. If you want to get better at underwater kicking, underwater kicking would be a great way to do that, but it's total bullshit to say that there's some "hypoxic capacity" that must be developed. The evidence for that just doesn't exist.
Here's something I noticed about the hypoxic sets in the other thread: they are way way way too long and slow. I think this about most sets, but holding your breath is a situation-specific skill, and the situations you want to be prepared for are race situations: high power output in a short period of time. If what you want is to make it halfway underwater on each length of an all-out 200 back, why you would swim thousands of yards breathing every 7 strokes or whatever? Does anyone really think that's adequate preparation? It's just a total waste of time.
My thinking? There's very little thinking involved, actually. I found fairly recent and comprehensive review of hypoxic training studies, read the relevant section, and came to the same conclusion as the authors of the review: It doesn't do a damn thing.
Except unlike both you and the authors of whatever review you are talking about, I have personal experience on the matter. And I've observed many other swimmers attempt this: If you train to do two kicks per turn in practice, and then try to do 10 kicks on every turn in a meet, IT DOESN"T WORK very well and you die like a dog.
And please don't regale me with tales of how you used to do 3-5-7 hypoxic drills when you were young and got nothing from them (I don't do such drills either, BTW). You swim 50s; it isn't the same as training to take 8 kicks underwater on the 7th turn of a 200.
You can call it a psychological or a physiological adaptation: the effect is exactly the same. If you practice it, you are able to go further underwater in a race.
So I'm not going to wait for the science to catch up with what I know is true from my own personal experience, which is pretty extensive on this topic. And there are other reasons I like to do hypoxic training besides adaptation, which I won't repeat b/c I said them in the other thread.
Except unlike both you and the authors of whatever review you are talking about, I have personal experience on the matter. And I've observed many other swimmers attempt this: If you train to do two kicks per turn in practice, and then try to do 10 kicks on every turn in a meet, IT DOESN"T WORK very well and you die like a dog.
And please don't regale me with tales of how you used to do 3-5-7 hypoxic drills when you were young and got nothing from them (I don't do such drills either, BTW). You swim 50s; it isn't the same as training to take 8 kicks underwater on the 7th turn of a 200.
You can call it a psychological or a physiological adaptation: the effect is exactly the same. If you practice it, you are able to go further underwater in a race.
So I'm not going to wait for the science to catch up with what I know is true from my own personal experience, which is pretty extensive on this topic. And there are other reasons I like to do hypoxic training besides adaptation, which I won't repeat b/c I said them in the other thread.
Well at the beginning of this thread I thought we were talking about the useless 3-5-7-9 drills because when most people say "hypoxic" in the sport of swimming, that's what they mean. I do endorse SDK's and I try to train just like I compete. My SDK count has slowly crept up over the years, indicative of some adaptation.
Hypoxic stuff is good for warmdowns... we have a couple of coaches who will give us a set of 50s at the end of workout, working our way down 1 breath at a time until we get to 2 breaths per 50.
