In workouts I'm breathing every stroke and into and out of every flipturn. Even worse, once I am really gasping for air (in the middle of a hard set or on the 3rd turn of a 100) I am almost coming to a stop off the turn to catch my breath. I've been swimming 2000-3000 yards 3x/week for the last 18 months dropping intervals and increasing speed but I guess I am still just not in good enough cardiovascular shape?
Of course, it can't help that I have been constantly reinforcing bad habits. But can I just keep plugging away and eventually the fatigue from swimming the length will at least equal the fatigue from the turns?
The alternative I imagine is some kind of hypoxic training that is going to make me miserable. But I'm willing to do what I've gotta do at this point.
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Former Member
Yeah, flip turns have been killing me too. I'm finally "hiking downhill" in getting used to them, though. Back last summer I was continually reminding myself I needed to flip instead of do open turns off every well.
Meanwhile, I gradually did more and more flipturns last fall yet my swimming times suddenly came to this absolutely horrible crawl in my quest to lower them. Somewhere I had forgotten how much of a priority I had made flipturns and I just kept asking myself, "Why the downturn?" Heh.
Anyway, a couple weeks ago, I was swimming when I realized that flipturns are basically second nature to me now. I don't even think, "Okay, man, do a flipturn next, tough it out, don't do a weenie open turn!" when approaching a wall anymore. And since last month my times returned to a previous rate of improvement, I guess my body's finally worn off the shock of flipturns.
I agree with everyone else about the necessity of breathing correctly. I'm actually working on that right now myself. One thing I've noticed when I'm kickboarding is that I seem to kick faster when I'm consciously controlling my breathing with long, deep inhales, keeping it in for as long as I can, and then exhaling long. Someone told me it helps to breathe as much as possible so air gets to my legs which burn up the most oxygen, but I took that to mean I breathe in and out like a winded rhinoceros, no control at all. It's still just kickboarding (to say nothing of kicking when actually swimming), but it was a nice little epiphany for me about the importance of how you breathe.
My new big priority is kicking. My coach remarked I need to kick much faster, to my desperate protests that I thought I was already kicking pretty fast. He said, "Not from up here, it doesn't look like that!"
So, yeah, I can finally do flipturns but now I've got to get the whole flutter kicking part down pat, in addition to SDKing off every wall. Sometimes I find I'm able to hold pace with some of my teammates who have been swimming for years, but as soon as we get to the wall and turn, they zoom ahead.
Breathing will obviously be crucial.
Yeah, flip turns have been killing me too. I'm finally "hiking downhill" in getting used to them, though. Back last summer I was continually reminding myself I needed to flip instead of do open turns off every well.
Meanwhile, I gradually did more and more flipturns last fall yet my swimming times suddenly came to this absolutely horrible crawl in my quest to lower them. Somewhere I had forgotten how much of a priority I had made flipturns and I just kept asking myself, "Why the downturn?" Heh.
Anyway, a couple weeks ago, I was swimming when I realized that flipturns are basically second nature to me now. I don't even think, "Okay, man, do a flipturn next, tough it out, don't do a weenie open turn!" when approaching a wall anymore. And since last month my times returned to a previous rate of improvement, I guess my body's finally worn off the shock of flipturns.
I agree with everyone else about the necessity of breathing correctly. I'm actually working on that right now myself. One thing I've noticed when I'm kickboarding is that I seem to kick faster when I'm consciously controlling my breathing with long, deep inhales, keeping it in for as long as I can, and then exhaling long. Someone told me it helps to breathe as much as possible so air gets to my legs which burn up the most oxygen, but I took that to mean I breathe in and out like a winded rhinoceros, no control at all. It's still just kickboarding (to say nothing of kicking when actually swimming), but it was a nice little epiphany for me about the importance of how you breathe.
My new big priority is kicking. My coach remarked I need to kick much faster, to my desperate protests that I thought I was already kicking pretty fast. He said, "Not from up here, it doesn't look like that!"
So, yeah, I can finally do flipturns but now I've got to get the whole flutter kicking part down pat, in addition to SDKing off every wall. Sometimes I find I'm able to hold pace with some of my teammates who have been swimming for years, but as soon as we get to the wall and turn, they zoom ahead.
Breathing will obviously be crucial.
