Yup. You're creating too much drag when you breathe, and probably pausing to do it.

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Swimming Workout of the Day:

Favourite Swim Sets:

2020 National Masters Champion - M50-54 - 50m Butterfly

When I breath bilaterally my cadence goes up

This increase in speed works b/c you're only swimming 50s and getting 13-15 sec rest every minute. When you go to swim a straight 1500 meters, then you will prob not get enough air and slow down more and more across the 1500. Try wearing the ankle band with the pull buoy to eliminate your scissor kick; swim in this configuration all the time for 6 weeks and that should result in your being able to just let your legs flow along straight behind you when swimming, and then and only then, can you try to add in a proper flutter kick. However, even if you never achieve much of a flutter kick, you're much better off eliminating the scissor kick b/c this is likely slowing you down dramatically. There are a couple of guys at my club who have serious scissor kicks, and they both almost completely stop when they breath. Needless to say, this is not good.

To eliminate the crossing over issue, try to look a bit further in front of you so that you can watch each hand enter the water, and stop it, just stop the effing crossing over. That's all there is to it, you just have to stop doing it. Watch your hands/arms and stop it.

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"Anyone can be who they want to be IF they have the HUNGER and the DRIVE."

To be honest, the scissor kick isn't usually because of how the person kicks. It's because they over rotate and are probably breathing late, which causes a pause on the breath. The scissor is just a counterbalance.

Fix the breathing will usually fix the scissor

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Swimming Workout of the Day:

Favourite Swim Sets:

2020 National Masters Champion - M50-54 - 50m Butterfly

Well, understand your point and the scissor kickers at my club definitely "look at the sky" when breathing, but i still think using the band/buoy might help him fix the problem by eliminating the ability to scissor. I suppose you could just say don't over rotate and breath earlier but that might be easier said than done, plus he's already the crossover problem to correct by "just stopping it":)

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"Anyone can be who they want to be IF they have the HUNGER and the DRIVE."

I noticed this the other day.

I was doing 400s in open water playing with the Garmin HR strap. I would do a 400 breathing to one side, then a 400 6 strokes one side, 6 the other side.

While looking at the HR data in Garmin connect I noticed the cadence chart of the bi-lateral 400s was oscillating between 32 spm to 35 to 32...

I always knew breathing bilaterally was a bit faster for me but never realized it was probably because of the cadence.

Sorry for the late response:

I noticed it this season while swimming long course with a tempo trainer. I was trying to find out what my cadence was and was increasing the tempo trainer until it matched my stroke rate. I normally take a breath to the left every 4th breath, and when I did it I would get ahead of the trainer.

Going a little further, when I breathed every three I got way ahead of the trainer, from ~64 to 67-68 spm