It is the race, so no one will be holding their breath. they may switch sides from time to time, but they will be getting as much air as possible. Bi lateral is for working out, not for racing..

Bilateral breathing = o2 every 3strokes
unilateral breathing = o2 every 2 strokes

Why on earth would you want LESS oxygen? Even swimming unilaterally, you are still probably breathing less often than you want.

The *ability* to breathe on both sides is important, because sometimes sun/waves/etc. make it hard to breathe on one side during a race. But nobody I know breathes bilaterally during any regular training, and certainly not during racing. If I'm going to breathe "bilaterally" in training, that means 50m to one side, then 50m to the other. But I'm always breathing unilaterally. I just will switch which side I breathe unilaterally to.

It's an aerobic sport. More oxygen is more better.

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Lance only breathes every 3rd pedal stroke, and has been known to climb Alp d'Huez breathing every 9.

Geb has been known to breathe every 12 steps in training, and has been spotted doing hill repeats wearing a snorkel to cut down on the amount of oxygen available just in case he "cheats".

Phelps duct tapes his mouth closed and then does 50's.

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I agree with what you are saying, but some people have stroke flaws that can be improved by bilateral breathing. It *may* be more beneficial for someone to use a bilateral pattern and get less o2 if it fixes their stroke.

Also, at the start of a fast race (i.e. Olympic), I'll breath less in the first 200-300 meters as I can keep my stroke rate higher without breathing.

In my experience, you are correct that bilateral breathing is not necessarily smart for most, but there are times where it makes sense or is even necessary.

Great watching you race in LA last week.

Drew

Jordan,

So if you are doing hard 50s or 100s, are you still breathing unilaterally, ie, 25 or 50m per side?

You don't race in Kona?

Depends. With paddles, I do a lot. When I'm just swimming, I prefer to breathe to my left. According to Monty, I'm the only swimmer he's ever known who's gone from being a preferential right-side breather to a preferential left-side breather. <shrug> It just happened. For a while there, I was more diligent about breaking it up by 25 or 50, but now I breathe probably 90% to the left. But when I swim hard with paddles, I find I can switch the side I breathe to more easily, so I try to.

If I am swimming (no paddles) hard, then I will occasionally switch the side I breathe to so that I keep in touch with being at least "good enough" on both sides to be able to pick the side I want based off pack/waves/sun/etc. In LA, for example, I started a bit left, and breathed to the right to make sure I stayed as close as I could since I could sight the pack during the course of each normal stroke. But then once I was solo, I switched to my left - which is the side I prefer.

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But, if you're breathing every two strokes, wouldn't you technically be losing speed? In a perfect world, your stroke while you were breathing wasn't any different, but I feel like it is a little bit slowed down while you breathe. I breath bilaterally sometimes every 3 strokes or unilaterally every 4 strokes and feel much faster and that I'm getting a more efficient/ faster stroke this way during training.

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I think that this is very true. In fact, I have seen some seriously fast swimmers, like a guy going under 9:15 for 1,000 yards throwing in relatively frequent "double-breaths", i.e a breathe to the right immediately followed by a breath to the left.

r.b.

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I feel like people give in to the bilateral thing like a bandwagon- I have breathed bilaterally for the last six months to see if it will help me swim faster by "evening out my stroke". Nothing doing. No benefit- in fact, believe it or not I've slowed down by a ridiculous amount. When I was breathing unilaterally in practice, sure I was breathing 95% to my right side (like Jordan said about breathing to his left), but I was so much faster.

I'm sure the bilateral breathing is supposed to improve your physical conditioning so that you can swim faster but I think for the most part swimming is form-related and I'm guessing that everyone just needs to find their individual fast form. Hence why the guy who has a beer gut (low "fitness") can trounce the six foot muscular 6% body fat guy any day if he has better technique, and it happens all the time at Masters.

After reading this post I'm going to go back to breathing unilaterally and do what works for me- transition period begins this week. Heartening to see that not everyone is jumping on the bandwagon, no offense to those who choose to use bilateral breathing.

I am a MOP swimmer so I am definitely NOT qualified to give swimming advise, but for me, bilateral breathing helps me keep all my back / neck muscles balanced.

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I would say this to clarify - bi-lateral breathing is a "tool", it may indeed have the outcome of keeping balanced muscularity, but that does not mean that it is a successful competitive "technique".

One can, and perhaps should, use it in practice in order to reap the outcomes that it produces, but for the majority (overwhelming in my experience) it is simply not an effective "technique" in competition.

r.b.

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But nobody I know breathes bilaterally during any regular training, and certainly not during racing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BasWYJtEnks&feature=fvw

watch Ziegler

That Ziegler video is instructive, i that it raws a distinction between breathing "bi-laterally" and breathing every 3rd. She is employing a bi-lateral approach, whereby she is overwhelmingly breathing every 2 strokes, with a 3 stroke breath to switch sides. She seems to be doing 3 breaths to the left, switch, 2 breaths to the right, repeat. So, 5 breaths for every 12 strokes, 2.4 strokes per breath.

Perhaps she is using this to balance her stroke, or perhaps to keep an eye on the two gals flanking her. Neverhteless, a far cry form breathing every 3, which is what I think is the oxygen issue, not necessarily breathing bilaterally per se. Folks often use the two terms interchangeably, but I suppose we should not for precisions sake.

r.b.

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If one of our problems in breathing timing (which is the problem for a large number of triathletes) breathing every 3rd will only make things worse because you are probably not as efficient in the non dominant side. So, like you realized it is probably better to perfect one side before starting to breath to both sides.

Bilateral breathing will not make anybody faster overall. I will help not slowing down when sitting to both sides during races when that is necessary. It will also help with muscle balance, but who knows what that is good for.

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Probably not a good idea to compare a world class swimmer, who does not have to bike and then run after her event, to a triathlete. Her oxygen needs are different since once she completes her event, she is done. Jordan was likely referring to triathletes racing, i.e, their open water swims, prior to their bike/runs, not world class pool swimmers.

I was answering Rapp's statement. How would Ziegler's oxygen needs be different? She is going to go harder than a triathlete and this would mean she would need more oxygen for her race than if she was doing a tri and not working her swim as hard. I do agree that bilateral breathing is not an advantage for the reasons Rapp said, but there are many people, especially women, who use it.

You are splitting hairs. I refer to this as bilateral breathing because this is how many many people bilateral breathe. She doesn't do this to see her competition as you don't need to breathe to the side to see your competition. She does it because she believes it is faster.

I'm am not advocating bilateral breathing although it is a good skill to have. I'm saying that people use it contrary to what Rapp said.

I'm sure there are examples - and Zeigler was actually one I remember as doing left-left-left-right-right-right now, because Gaines commented on it during a meet. But she's easy to forget because Phelps, Lochte, Thorpe, Hackett, etc, etc do not breathe bi-laterally.

I am sure Zeigler does it because - for whatever her personal reasons are - she believes it's faster. But do you want to follow the 1/100 or the 99/100?

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"Non est ad astra mollis e terris via." - Seneca | rappstar.com | FB - Rappstar Racing | IG - @jordanrapp

No, In my mind, I am making what I regard to be an important distinction between bi-lateral breathing, which is loosely defined, and may be used with only minimal O2 implications (such as in sighting in OW, or in my opinion the way Ziegler was using it) and breathing every 3rd, which is a specific case of bi-lat that has substantial O2 implications. The reason that I think the distinction is important is because it is my belief that most people think "breathing every 3rd" when they see/hear "bilateral breathing".


You may be right, but unless she told you this herself, it is speculative.

Now, you are right that bi-lat is used by some probably more often by females, who are also more likely to employ a 2-beat kick (for example, Ziegler), which will likely lead to lower O2 requirements.

I understand that you felt that Rappstars comment was over-generalized, but at the same time, I think that your rebuttal was too general as well, as it ignored his point about O2 -- at least if he was thinking that most people/theOP equate bi-lat with every 3rd.

regards,
r.b.

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I'm not one to be giving swim advice either as I'm self taught at 40 years old (still managed a couple of top-10 AG swims this year so I get by on my limited technical ability). I had someone tell me to breathe bilaterally. I did it for a little while and thought "I'm breathing 50% less, why the hell would I want to do that?" Been breathing unilaterally to my right side ever since.

I'll echo Jordan's sentiments that you need to be able to breathe to both sides if necessary. The Texas 70.3 was a perfect example this year. It was pretty choppy when we made the first left turn at the buoy to swim parallel to the shore. Breathing to my right meant I'd eat a wave. I had to breathe to my left. That's not my preferred method and I'm slower going to that side but it beat swallowing a gallon of salt water.

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But do you want to follow the 1/100 or the 99/100?

Actually, I want to be leading. :-) BUT, I DON'T BILATERAL BREATHE. When I switch to the other side in a race, I usually do it in one stroke. 2-1-2

This thread is confusing because two different issues are being mixed together. I really don't think there is much debate that

1) If you OWS it is advantageous to be ABLE to breath both sides.

2) For most people breathing to one side (unilateral) is faster.

For me personally when I do long swims training I have to mix it up because I am old, my necks starts hurting, and I have a click in my shoulder that starts getting sore if I don't.

I have a weird situation where I really like my stroke when I breath right. Hate my stroke when I breath left but it seems like a I am a little faster breathing left. I don't know why but I think I expel more energy breathing left. Wish we had a swimming power meter so we could measure efficiency.

I highly recommend everyone pull up videos of 2008 Beijing freestyle swimming.
You will find mostly this:
50m no breath
100m mostly 3 breaths total
Everything else, most swimmers, all of the fastest including Phelps, freestyle from 200m up, breathing is every other stroke to one side only. I did not see a single swimmer over 400m breathing bilateral in any free race.
I still observe many coaches (including on the team I coach), enforce bilateral breathing in racing. Witnessed many age group swimmers being debriefed on that item. Why? I think a stereotype, left over from "old school" days.
Maglischo has a good chapter on breathing in racing, advocates for anything over 100, breathing every other stroke.
Bilateral swimming, I think, has it's place in training, working and developing balanced stroke. At least, that is what we do with our developmental swimmers.
Keep in mind that most adults in Age Group triathlon, in my text book fall under developmental group by bio-mechanical level of proficiency.
Just my 2 cents, no expert at all, here.