I've watched a lot of swimmers in elite competition in for instance 1500m who breathe every stroke. However when I swim distance I still have to use bilateral breathing. I've tried breathing every stroke like they do, but I find myself getting light headed. What's the best way to learn to control your breathing to do long distance well? Thanks,
David
I am not an expert swimmer like many of you, not having grown up as an age group swimmer. I think at least in part for that reason, breathing to my off-side has never worked. I might as well just breath every six strokes and stick to breathing right.
That said, for me it seems the fewer strokes I take the better, not just in a distance-per-stroke sense. The second time I did the 10k postal swim I believe I dropped about seven minutes from the year before (3:13 vs 3:20 sticks in my mind, though MyUSMS doesn't seem to care about postal swims). I credited part of that improvement (perhaps erroneously, who knows?) to taking one or two dolphin kicks off each wall. I wasn't doing any sort of Phelpsian kick of course, but it probably saved a stroke on each 50m.
I am not an expert swimmer like many of you, not having grown up as an age group swimmer. I think at least in part for that reason, breathing to my off-side has never worked. I might as well just breath every six strokes and stick to breathing right.
That said, for me it seems the fewer strokes I take the better, not just in a distance-per-stroke sense. The second time I did the 10k postal swim I believe I dropped about seven minutes from the year before (3:13 vs 3:20 sticks in my mind, though MyUSMS doesn't seem to care about postal swims). I credited part of that improvement (perhaps erroneously, who knows?) to taking one or two dolphin kicks off each wall. I wasn't doing any sort of Phelpsian kick of course, but it probably saved a stroke on each 50m.
