"You got no lungs and you got no legs."

RE: "You got no lungs and you got no legs."

Former Member — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 16:01:19 GMT

I'll tell you what I'd do if I were you to work on lung capacity: work on trying to take a minimum of six dolphin kicks off each wall. Since you're pretty new to swimming, this is the perfect time to work on great underwaters. You'd be killing two birds with one stone, too. Lots of races are won and lost these days based on who is best underwater. Ya, I need to work on those as well. A problem with my SDK is that I kinda lose momentum after about 2 kicks so I surface and start my stroke.

RE: "You got no lungs and you got no legs."

Former Member — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 10:50:59 GMT

For increasing your lung capacity I recommend you try the following: - Train yourself to offload carbon dioxide. Try a set of 50 repeats where you do 3 exhales at the wall before the next 50. After you try this and see if you get any changes try increasing the exhales to 10 and do them as you plunge your head under the water. - Relax your breathing as you swim. Try swimming with an open mouth at all times and get the feeling of managing air in nose and mouth as you breat. These two have been very helpful to me.

RE: "You got no lungs and you got no legs."

Former Member — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 15:44:12 GMT

I smoke a cigar every so often but I used to run a lot before I picked up swimming. In my mind I think it's the whole "plan when you have to breathe" thing that kills me. I'll have to devote some sessions just to doing sets that vary my breathing patterns it seems. My head is rather up but not to the point where I can see out of the water. I try not to look at the bottom because then I feel like I'm going really slow:cane: It's weird. I am not a big believer in breath control training. Just breath every other for the bulk of your workouts, and only worry about breath control during short sprints with lots of rest. As long as your are breathing hard frequently during practice, you are pushing yourself to improve your VO2 max no matter how many times you breath. Sounds like adjusting your head position is just a mental game for you. You will figure it out eventually.

RE: "You got no lungs and you got no legs."

Former Member — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 14:27:27 GMT

Is the coach you talked to the coach of your college's swim team? If by 'no legs', he means your kick is not propulsive, you'll need instruction from a swim coach, as the proper kick is not intuitive and difficult to learn. He apparently used to be the coach of my college team but then stepped down. As for my kick, I think propulsion is the issue. My legs are pretty strong from skating and running all my life. I have days where my kicking is spot on then there is days where I can't keep them in rhythm. There is usually a huge time commitment to being a competitive swimmer: 5 hours a day for training six days a week, weekends for meets, Christmas vacation in FL for training and missed days of class for the bigger meets. It is very nice to be recruited, which was the only reason I even considered swimming in college, but in the end you really need to decide if you define yourself as a swimmer, or swimming is just something you enjoy doing. I didn't enjoy that level of training any more so it wasn't worth the time commitment to me. I would discourage you from joining the college team as a Jr. with your lack of training background. I would take it as a very nice compliment, and consider joining USMS Ya, I definitely take it as a compliment. As much as I'd want to I don't think I could devote a lot of time to it with taking 18 credits and working part-time during the week. Unless you have damaged your lung, they will come along on their own as you increase yardage and pace. For some reason, swimming seems to develop the lungs at a slower rate than running. If you just want to increase your lung capacity, take up running, but this will not improve your VO2 max for swimming. I think frequency is key to rapid improvement. If you are swimming 6x/week, you lungs will adapt faster than 3x/week. Since you are waiting for your body to adapt, I do not think swimming 3 days of 6k workouts will help you as much as 6 days of 3k workouts.I smoke a cigar every so often but I used to run a lot before I picked up swimming. In my mind I think it's the whole "plan when you have to breathe" thing that kills me. I'll have to devote some sessions just to doing sets that vary my breathing patterns it seems. Sounds like you have a lot of neck arch. Can you see the bleachers while you are swimming freestyle? Your neck should be in line with the rest of your spine and you should be looking almost directly down at the bottom of the pool.My head is rather up but not to the point where I can see out of the water. I try not to look at the bottom because then I feel like I'm going really slow:cane: It's weird.

RE: "You got no lungs and you got no legs."

Former Member — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 12:26:48 GMT

so I kinda laughed at the idea of me being a college (D3) swimmer. I was a D3 swimmer for about a week. You would be surprised at the range of abilities. The surprising part is not that there are fast D3 swimmers, but just how many D3 swimmers suck. There is usually a huge time commitment to being a competitive swimmer: 5 hours a day for training six days a week, weekends for meets, Christmas vacation in FL for training and missed days of class for the bigger meets. It is very nice to be recruited, which was the only reason I even considered swimming in college, but in the end you really need to decide if you define yourself as a swimmer, or swimming is just something you enjoy doing. I didn't enjoy that level of training any more so it wasn't worth the time commitment to me. I would discourage you from joining the college team as a Jr. with your lack of training background. I would take it as a very nice compliment, and consider joining USMS knowing that you might do really well competitively, and not need to increase your time commitment to much more than 5 hours a week. I haven't found much on how to increase lung capicity Unless you have damaged your lung, they will come along on their own as you increase yardage and pace. For some reason, swimming seems to develop the lungs at a slower rate than running. If you just want to increase your lung capacity, take up running, but this will not improve your VO2 max for swimming. I think frequency is key to rapid improvement. If you are swimming 6x/week, you lungs will adapt faster than 3x/week. Since you are waiting for your body to adapt, I do not think swimming 3 days of 6k workouts will help you as much as 6 days of 3k workouts. the back of my neck bothers me Sounds like you have a lot of neck arch. Can you see the bleachers while you are swimming freestyle? Your neck should be in line with the rest of your spine and you should be looking almost directly down at the bottom of the pool.

RE: "You got no lungs and you got no legs."

knelson — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 10:35:12 GMT

RE: "You got no lungs and you got no legs."

Former Member — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 09:50:51 GMT

Is the coach you talked to the coach of your college's swim team? If so, ask him what you should do. He'll probably be excited about having a motivated swimmer and have lots of suggestions. If by 'no lungs', he means aerobic capacity, then a spin class will add it quickly. If he means anaerobic capacity, you'll pick that up with anaerobic drills - swims where you breath every 4, 5 or 6 strokes instead of every 2. If by 'no legs', he means your legs aren't strong, then a spin class or jumping rope or Nautilus-style workouts will help. If by 'no legs', he means your kick is not propulsive, you'll need instruction from a swim coach, as the proper kick is not intuitive and difficult to learn.

RE: "You got no lungs and you got no legs."

orca1946 — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 01:44:36 GMT

It might be hard to join a college team now, but what do you have to lose ? try to keep one eye/goggle lens in the water when you take a breath so that will keep your head DOWN & IN LINE WITH THE SPINE. . JOIN A MASTERS TEAM ALL WINTER SEASON & YOU WILL GET COACHED & HAVE FUN !

RE: "You got no lungs and you got no legs."

Former Member — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 13:45:56 GMT

I've been doing hypoxic breathing more and more lately. I've been limiting myself to breathing every 5 or 7 strokes depending on the distance and pace. Starting bilateral breathing (every 3rd) after you've been breathing every stroke can be rough for a couple weeks but you get used to it and don't notice it much if you work at it. I'm now working on breathing every 5 more frequently, and it feels just a bit more difficult than switching to every 3rd was. I'm sure with a few more weeks of religiously training the every 5 I could handle that also for an extended distance. Some people say hypoxic sets don't do anything at all, while some people swear by it. My own experience is the more I train myself to deal with less oxygen the easier it is. The benefit of breathing less is you are in a more streamline position for longer, reducing drag and keeping up momentum. The downside is changing your oxygen flow, depending on what distance you're competing at one particular breathing pattern would be better than another. For example in a sprint ideally you take 0-2 breaths total. In a distance event you may want to breathe every 2-4 strokes.