Five Ways to Boost Your Swimming Breathing Mechanics

Ideally, your breathing mechanics when you swim will be fluid and unnoticeable – you’ll want to be so well-trained to breathe well during a swim that you simply don’t think about breathing that much. But if you’re going to train with this kind of single-mindedness, you’ll also want to make sure you fully integrate your breathing mechanics into your overall skillset. Here are five ways to boost your breathing mechanics without losing your skills.

1. Make sure you’re exhaling some air out of your nose. Because your mouth has a larger cavity for bringing in and holding air, you’ll want to use it for most of your breathing. But in order to keep water out of your nose, you should keep some pressure coming out of it – some people recommend exhaling out through both your nose and mouth in order to keep water out of your nose. Once you get the hang of it, you’ll never need to worry about water in your nose again.
2. Push the last bit of exhaling air out faster. You’ll want empty lungs to help create a vacuum that sucks in air when it’s time to inhale. Don’t try to starve yourself of air, but get used to pushing out all of the air you’ve inhaled so that you can get ready to breathe in some more. Part of being efficient means using all of the air you get.
3. Roll your body, not just your head. If you have proper swimming mechanics, much of your body will roll with you as you go to exhale air. Doing this for your breathing will also strengthen your core and help you move quickly through the water. Don’t strain your neck; roll the body to the side.
4. Don’t hold your breath. If you’re breathing smoothly and efficiently through the water, there should be little reason to hold your breath between strokes. Instead, you should almost feel so efficient that you can breathe almost like you’re above water – almost.
5. Consciously practice your mechanics until you don’t need to think about them anymore. There should be an adjusting period as you adapt better breathing mechanics to your game. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. If you train yourself to breathe automatically, you can focus more on speed and cutting through the water and less on how much your lungs feel like they will explode.

Photo Credits: Daquella manera

Originally posted 2009-08-06 03:24:47.

This post involves:

cavity, lungs, mechanics, neck roll, skillset, strokes, vacuum

... and focuses on:

Swimming

Posted by Bike Swim Run on January 12, 2010 in Swimming. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.