Thanks I find the 2:3 more comfortable than to try to stay with than 1:1 unless I really need air.

I am amazed how many I talk with who use just the standard 1:3. When that is all I had in my tool kit, I cannot believe how many swims at the start I would panic attack at.
Had the wife tell me to start out slow, but never worked. Once I watched the faster swimmers, I sure changed my tools quickly. No air, no speed.

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Dave Campbell | Facebook | @DaveECampbell | h2ofun@h2ofun.net

Boom Nutrition code 19F4Y3 $5 off 24 pack box | Bionic Runner | PowerCranks | Velotron | Spruzzamist

Lions don't lose sleep worrying about the sheep

i'm always 1;2 racing. I can do bilateral but I haven't seen much difference oxygen wise and i'm slower cause I don't practice that way all the time so it just makes to stay at 1;2.

http://www.theraceclub.net/.../breathing-patterns/

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Running is a gift.

1:2 myself...I train bilateral, but race day I go back to old reliable in a crowd

2:3 revolutionized my ability to swim faster. Yea you may look like a dummy for awhile I sure did. If you just make up your mind that you will only breath 2:3 that particular day by the end of one session you will feel huge strides. I toyed with it for a few 50's and instantly felt SOOOO much better. It took about half a dozen sessions b/f I didn't have to concentrate on it and then the ability to 'turn up the volume' came into play.

FWIW I agree big time with a bit shallower breaths simply b/c you won't have time to exhale a typical full inhalation with this pattern on the consecutive breaths. If I can make this work anyone can.

Tried it this am during my long workout and felt like I couldn't breathe when I tried to go back to 1:3. I need to clean up my technique a little with the 2:3, but I can tell it's going to make a huge difference.

Oh my stroke felt like poop when I first started, but the extra O2 was pure heaven so I knew I was gonna stick with it. I just said to myself 'the sooner I make this priority number 1 the sooner I can get on with being able to put this extra O2 to use!'. I always defaulted to right side 1:2 breathing with really hard efforts, but easier stuff was 1:3. Now I don't have different patterns for different efforts it's 2:3 all the time.

Picking up 50 percent more oxygen off my 1:3 is just huge.

It has been a great help for me also, but I have used my 1:1 in a number off situations. Usually when I start a race and have gone out full tilt, I need the 1:1 to calm me down, then I get back into my 2:3 once I am into steady state. Just so nice to have the different tools. The folks with a 1:3 only just really have not put focus on improving swimming since no way can you race fast for very long only with a 1:3 for most folk.

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Dave Campbell | Facebook | @DaveECampbell | h2ofun@h2ofun.net

Boom Nutrition code 19F4Y3 $5 off 24 pack box | Bionic Runner | PowerCranks | Velotron | Spruzzamist

Lions don't lose sleep worrying about the sheep

when breathing every two in open water, i start to drifting the opposite way to where i breath, so i'll breathe every two for something like 6-10 strokes, then i'll switch to the other side and repeat. Doing this i can keep a straight path and see who and what is on both sides. Breathing on both sides is a must or you'll wear out one side of the body in a race. There is my 12 cents in the matter (it's worth more than 2 cents)

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THIS IS SO WIZARD

today it worked...I can't say it is my preferred breathing pattern yet, but I was able to maintain a stroke rhythm
while breathing in a 2:3 pattern. I'm not convinced I am getting more air in - it seems more like puff-puff than the bellows action
I get with my 1:2 or 1:3...but I'll keep working at it. Maybe some 300 repeats will be long enough to measure a
difference in.

Another tool in the bag is always good to have. Now I just have to grow a foot and get some really bad teeth
and I'll be ready to challenge Sun.

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" I take my gear out of my car and put my bike together. Tourists and locals are watching from sidewalk cafes. Non-racers. The emptiness of of their lives shocks me. "
(opening lines from Tim Krabbe's The Rider , 1978

Once you get the timing down, then you can take fuller breaths. If you get it in your head that you are going to get to breath right away like you would in running, then you will be able to exhale fully while your head travels from side to side, and you will get big breaths in.That is the real payoff with the pattern, just use the puffs to get the rhythm first, and then you can blast it in and out.. Until that point you are unsure about big breaths because it feels like you will swallow water, but that will pass with practice.

Wow, he teaches swimming with your head under water...

Not as a general rule he doesn't as in 'you HAVE to do this', but that is indeed how he swims in many of his vids. If you hit TheRaceClub site and watch his vids he has one on tweaking body position with variations in head placement. No one size fits all is essentially the message, find which one gives you the best body position, but not at the expense of raising it up adding drag. In point of fact 'drag' is the only singular theme you hear in all his instruction. 'Drag trumps power' and once I got that through my head swimming became a lot more fun.

I've been reading this thread with interest, and I tried 2:3 this morning. I can tell that I will have to ease into it. First, it was very chaotic. It was difficult to hold my stroke together and swim straight. Heck, it was tough to remember to breath all the extra times I got to breath. I think I got a little dizzy going side to side so quickly.

What are my arms doing? High elbow? Am I looking up? Who knows? I've got to take a breath again! (lol)

Anyway, I'm going to go 4:7 for awhile as I ease into 2:3. 4:7 is similar to 2:3 but instead of swinging your head around immediately to breath you do three strokes and then breath. I'm used to 1:3 so I actually am getting way more oxygen still. I'm don't want this to sound negative on 2:3 -- it's just going to take me awhile.

It took my whole 6k workout to really get it, but had it by the end. Did a bunch of switching between 2:3 and 4:7 too, and some 1:1 to get the head motion down. The comment earlier about having a bunch of tools in your bag really made sense to me too.

Yep, tools in the bag for the swim, bike and run are the weapons.

I do smile when I see some posts that some folks tried it once, it was hard, and that was that. Improving swimming skills is a NEVER ending game. When I started 16 years ago racing, I used a scuba snorkel for my first races.
Then I learned how to breath on one side. It took me a LONG time to learn to breath on my "bad" side, which is my strong side now. Took me a while to learn 2:3 but now it is a no big deal.

Bottom line is I am always trying to learn to improve my swimming. Now I am trying to keep the head down to reduce drag, but it is not easy. I continue to try and get a good catch from my left arm, but it wants to always be lazy. I try to stroke all the way through but again a work in process. I never am going to be a great swimmer, but I will continue to put in the time since at the shorter races I do, I see many who basically lose because they have a poor swim. So for the folks in my AG, swim training is a waste of effort.

When I do my ladder swimming for breathing, I sure quickly see when I am doing the 1:3 how I wasted so many years failing in swimming with this pattern. NO way can I do a 1:3 and be fast. On the other side, I have used the 1:1 a lot when I sprint at the start, or try to get back on the feet of a faster swimmer. No air, no speed.

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Dave Campbell | Facebook | @DaveECampbell | h2ofun@h2ofun.net

Boom Nutrition code 19F4Y3 $5 off 24 pack box | Bionic Runner | PowerCranks | Velotron | Spruzzamist

Lions don't lose sleep worrying about the sheep

I am not a fish nor an expert but I have gotten much more comfortable in the water swimming distance since I started working on cross breathing.

Oddly, working with a center snorkel and thus not "breathing" on either side seems to have helped me to learn to breathe on either side and to use different breathing patterns as needed - 1:2, 2:3 and 1:3.

Practicing "sneaking" each breath and the feeling of placing my chin on the recovery arm shoulder seems to help.

Lastly, the opposite approach assists as well - working on heads up water polo style swimming and sighting.

David K

Hmmmmm... now that Ithink about it the correctcount had to be 3:7.

Not sure where you're getting this from as I've watched 3 YouTube videos of Sun Yang's WR swim and he generally breathes to right on every stroke cycle, which would be "1:2". He occasionally breathes to the left to check on his competitors on that side. In his last 50m, which he swam in 24.2 (!!!), it was very obvious because he was really pulling hard and it was absolutely clear he was breathing every time on his right side until of course the last 7-8 m when he just gutted it out with no breathing.

So, I have yet to see any video where Yang consistently uses 2:3 breathing.

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

Sun Yang does not seem to cross breathe as he swim up and down the pool but I have observed him (on video) cross breathe into and off the wall at least half the time.

I imagine that it may be slower to cross breath but if it allows him or others to work the wall (the fastest part of each length) a little harder then it has to be a nice a net gain.

(Watched a Youtube clip and saw that he was taking 3 consecutive breaths off the wall...Right, left and right.... during his world record 1500.)

David K

Not sure where you're getting this from as I've watched 3 YouTube videos of Sun Yang's WR swim and he generally breathes to right on every stroke cycle,//

Like i said, he is so good at it that most do not even see it, even if they know it is happening. Funny when he set that world record, not even Rowdy Gains saw what he was doing. I only did because i'm so familiar with the pattern. HE does it into and out of just about every turn, the place where you need that extra air..

I looked at that video. Yang does whatever he feels like. Seems like he breaths 1:1 going into turns and coming out -- at least two breaths going in and three going out. Then he predominantly goes 1:2, throwing in 2:3 whenever he wants.

The amazing thing is that his stroke never waivers and his head is on a swivel. His head moves so little that, with the low resolution, it is difficult to see exactly when he does breath.

Ah, now I see the extra breaths into and out of the turns. Generally though, he's a committed right-side breather.

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

YA, he is a right side breather, but i think he gets 4 to 5 extra breaths a lap from a standard 1;2 pattern. It is just about what i have evolved to myself, into and out of turns, and maybe once in the middle, but that is a yard pool. It is funny that old conventional wisdom always said do not breath our of turns, and that is all he does for several strokes. Back to my theory, it is more important to get extra air than it is to stay completely hydrodynamic. This now begins at a 100m and gets more useful the longer you go. Sun is just so good at it that his breathing drag is probably as close to zero as you can get too..

Ya, I was thinking exactly the same thing, about how the coaches always yelled at you if you breathed on the last stroke into or the first stroke out of the turn, and now the 1500m WR is set using exactly the opposite rules!!!

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