I'm completely with you and quit doing these years ago. With hyperventilation they can be extremely dangerous, as evidenced many years ago when a fellow good swimmer passed out without even realizing it while doing breathe holding. Luckily we yanked him out before it was too late, but ever since I know the dangers and also the non benefits breathe control provides. I think it's a very old school method that some coaches keep using along with some other myth based techniques. Educate the coach. I'd actually prefer walking around the pool on my toes.

25 on one breath is stupid.

Hypoxic pyramids have some limited use:
200's as:
50 breath every 3 strokes (bilateral)
50 breath every 5 strokes
50 breath every 7 strokes
50 breath every 3 strokes

BTW, most technique tips after only 3 weeks of swimming are useless.
Technique comes after fitness.

Personally I would remove my child from having anything to do with that swim coach
Very serious and no pink

Btw I was a high school swim coach of that matters

Punishment for failing to achieve an athletic standard is never acceptable. With regards to breath holding sets: USA swimming has a document guiding this practice.
https://www.usaswimming.org/...raining-protocol.pdf

Your take is right. Shallow water blackouts are a real thing.

---

They constantly try to escape from the darkness outside and within
Dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good T.S. Eliot

I think that there is definitely a place for hypoxic work in swim workouts, but it sounds like doing 25s all out with no breath was not the right way to go about it. Perhaps a better approach would have been to ask them to do a 25 and count their breaths (not give them direction how many to take, just so they each have a starting point to go from). Then challenge them to take one less on the next lap, then two less, etc. (Or just let them play sharks and minnows once in a while, since they can only get tagged when they're at the surface!)

You mentioned they were doing a lot of drills, but had not had any feedback about their stroke? Generally, the whole point of doing drills is to work on stroke technique, so it sounds like the coach needs to do a better job of explaining the purpose of the drills (as well as giving individual feedback).

I disagree about the fitness aspect coming first. The more laps you swim before you learn correct technique, the harder it will be to break bad habits later. (That's one of the issues adult onset swimmers have in triathlon.) It's easier to not build bad habits in the first place.

Cheers,
Ginger

---

https://www.instagram.com/gingerhowellracing/
If you find yourself thinking "What if I can't", instead think "What if I can!"

I've heard this before, too -- but that explanation makes no sense to me. I would assume that the body senses the concentration of CO2 (at least relative to the concentration of O2)(not sure how it would be possible to measure actual quantity of CO2). There is no way to selectively exhale only CO2 from your lungs -- if you exhale you will exhale the mixture of gasses in your lungs at that time -- so in addition to CO2, you will be exhaling O2. In the meantime, you will still be producing CO2 in the same quantities, so the CO2/O2 ratio will be even higher than it would be had you not exhaled.

It seems to me that the relief you get from exhaling is that your body gets the signal that you are breathing, so it backs off the panic button triggered by the CO2/O2 ratio.

As with all of my posts, I could be completely wrong here -- who is an expert???

BTW -- I hate hypoxic sets and invariably invoke what is known in our club as "masters option" and just don't do them ;)

Also, you need to get that coach cued up to organize some sharks and minnows, etc. Kids can probably learn more about being comfortable holding their breath while they are having fun like that.

Olympic Trials qualifier here - and coach of over 30 kona qualified athletes

Don't do them. MO' Oxygen is MO' Bettah.

---

36 kona qualifiers 2006-'23 - 3 Kona Podiums - 4 OA IM AG wins - 5 IM AG wins - 18 70.3 AG wins
I ka nana no a 'ike -- by observing, one learns | Kulia i ka nu'u -- strive for excellence
Garmin Glycogen Use App | Garmin Fat Use App

"I think that there is definitely a place for hypoxic work in swim workouts,"

For what purpose(s)?

---

"Good genes are not a requirement, just the obsession to beat ones brains out daily"...the Griz

Breath control is very valuable in swimming. How to build this skill is debatable. I don’t think 1 breath per 25 yds is crazy. Swimming underwater for a length & holding your breath is a different story.

OF course the more you can breath, the faster you are going to swim, however. It is quite possible( I dont really know) that there is a training effect to holding your breath. Just like there is a training effect when you go to altitude. Not necessarily the same thing mind you, but just an example of doing something slow, that will make you faster later.

I mean when you are doing super hard intervals, you are breathing like a drowning victim. You body is demanding more O2 than your lungs can deliver, and it is causing a training effect. Just maybe, not breathing as much as you can all the time, limits that training effect? Certainly if you are going to be a pool racer, you will need this type of training, but for us long distance OW swimmers it may not be that beneficial.

I would get your kid away from that coach though. Making kids that age cry, and hate to swim, and do anything other than make sure they are having fun, while learning and progressing at the same time, just seems a bit to advanced and maniacal to me for a kids program...

No comment on hypoxic swim sets.


From researching scuba re-breathers, which remove the CO2 from the air you breath, the body reacts in a hypoxic nature from an increase in CO2 concentration - not from a lack of oxygen. A re-breather scrubs the CO2 from the air. You can completely run out of oxygen, pass out and die while never feeling 'out of breath' if the CO2 concentration does not rise.

I find that incredibly frightening.

Hypoxic training helps build aerobic capacity, which for many people is a limiting factor. Training your body to use oxygen more efficiently helps not just with swimming, but across the board.

I coached one masters swimmer whose backstroke was as fast as his freestyle. I noticed he did a 6-beat kick on backstroke, and a 4-beat kick on freestyle. When I asked him about this, he said "Well, on backstroke, I can breathe!" We realized that aerobic capacity was his limiting factor, and we able to improve his freestyle times by doing some hypoxic work.

Also, swimmers are generally able to go faster when they have the ability to take fewer breaths. A girl I used to swim with went 23.63 in the 50yd freestyle. She would only take one breath per lap during that race. It only saved her a fraction of a second, but at that level, it makes a difference.

For kids and recreational swimmers, fractions of seconds don't matter so much - but on the flip side, they can lose much more time. Coming back to stroke technique, many of the biggest issues stem from breathing. Most beginning swimmers lift their head up too much. Which makes their legs drop. Which creates more drag. Which slows them down. Another common mistake is pausing the arms and legs during each breath. Swimmers like this can obviously go faster if they breathe less often. Of course, I would argue that the technique issues should be addressed first, and the hypoxic work added in later, especially for really young swimmers.

Other benefits include (for pool swimmers) underwater streamlines. Streamlining off the wall is (or should be) the fastest part of each lap, and oxygen is the most common limiting factor with this.

For open water swimmers, streamlines aren't as relevant, but there is the very real possibility of being smacked in the face by a wave (or another swimmer) when you're trying to breathe. If you have a few hypoxic sets under your belt, you are less apt to freak out if this happens!

Cheers,
Ginger

---

https://www.instagram.com/gingerhowellracing/
If you find yourself thinking "What if I can't", instead think "What if I can!"

Also, swimmers are generally able to go faster when they have the ability to take fewer breaths.//

Yes, at 50 meters and under, above that any breath holding is going to slow you down. Only have to look at championship races in the 100 races now, best the world breath every stroke until the last few to the wall...

That swim coach is a dumbass and you should talk to your YMCA aquatics director and/or BOD about his/her dumb assedness. For the most part hypoxic shit should have gone out the window in the 1990s. Fucking stupid ass swim coaches.

It's most relevant for sprinters, and for the other strokes to enable them to stay underwater longer after each wall. A 10&U program should not be including this shit in unless the kids are already well past the intro to swim stage and even past the casual swimmer stage. Wait until they get into the I want to dedicate more time to the pool every day stage.

1. For kids that young you don't want to start with negative punishment for doing something the kids may not even be able to do. Positive rewards work much better than negative rewards. Hey all you coaches out there, this works for adults as well.

2. If you go through the history of swimming you'll find that hypoxic sets were originally used to simulate training at altitude, wrongly. There are numerous studies on pubmed and elsewhere, (craig 1978, Stager et al 1985, Van Ness & Town 1989) that show that this doesn't work and that tissue o2 levels tend not to drop with this type of training

3. Which leads to beneficial effects not being seen (van Ness & Town 1989) bc swimmers just slow down to make the breathing pattern. It's old school mentality that it must be doing something good bc swimmers are suffering. That's bullshit.

4. if you really want to increase difficulty and breathlessness have them swim faster not slower. Same thing but now they are swimming near, at or above race pace. Again that coach is a dipshit. Also specificity of training.

5. the only benefit that I can think of is that hypoxic training may cause an increase in the resistance to breath bc of co2 levels being built up.

6. Hypoxic training and occlusion training are not the same thing

Bottom line is that coach doesn't seem to be a very knowledgeable coach and is having a negative effect on their swimmers by using negative reinforcement which, as you're seeing, may cause them to want to quit that sport and may inhibit their desire to do other sports as well for fear of having other dumbasses as their coach.

fwiw I didn't read the rest of the thread before posting bc I almost blew a gasket from your post

---

Brian Stover USAT LII
Accelerate3 Coaching
Insta

But getting back to the OP's question -- at that age it is super important for the coach to make swimming fun. Challenge for coach is to figure out how to make hypoxic training fun (I am assuming the coach thinks it is important to do). Sorry I don't know the "fun" approach to this (maybe others have ideas). But if the coach can't figure out how to make it fun (or at least make it comfortably fit into an overall session that the kids walk away from smiling), the coach shouldn't do it.

Ok now that I've read through the thread I think some things need to be mentioned.

Also fwiw I was a year round swim coach (how I got started in coaching) and had a ton of kids in your kids' shoes as well as 10-12 that went on to swim in college on either a full or partial scholarship

First RBR, Dimples, MarkyV, Monty are all spot on, especially about removing your kids from that coach. At the very least someone needs to sit that coach down, if they are serious about coaching, and give them a pathway to become a better coach. I am forever grateful to the head & assistant coach at the club I swam & coached at for asking me to justify just about every damn thing I wrote on the board. Thanks you two!

Next a few people mentioned that there is a place for hypoxic sets. Sure, for pure sprinters and there is some benefit for the other strokes coming off the wall by being able to streamline as far as allowed. That's going to take 2-3 weeks of training to teach and hypoxic sets may or may not be (most likely they are not, especially at that age) the best way to teach that.

There is no training effect other than helping the kids resist the urge to breath due to rising co2 levels. Again see my points about pure sprinters and coming off the walls.

Anyway if you want more info PM me. It's a tough situation to be in. Do you say something to the coach, the Aquatics director the BOD or just remove your kids & switch? If you humor me a bit more, my sister was in a situation like this with her kids. Here's how she handled it.

Their coach was young and dumb. The coach used a lot of negative reinforcement and had unreasonable demands. Her 12yo daughter has 1:18.something LCM PB. The coach would routinely give her sets such as 15x100 hold 1:25 leave 1:35. That 1:18 is from a dive. Now you're asking the kid to swim within :06 of her lifetime best when she's pushing off the wall? Come on. Or it would be 8x200 on 2:40 leaving 2:55. Which is even more ridiculous. Then the coach would scream at the kids about not trying bc they weren't making the interval & threaten to relegate them down a lane often using derogatory terms to describe lessor swimmers. WTF?

Anyway sis rang me to chat about that. The kids hated going to practice, the BOD president was the coach's Dad, Secretary was the mom and they started the club. After she talked to the coach, BOD president and saw no change over the next few weeks they switched clubs. While I was visiting them (they live in AUS) I watched about 12 minutes of practice & was blown away at how poorly that coach coached.

---

Brian Stover USAT LII
Accelerate3 Coaching
Insta

http://www.shallowwaterblackoutprevention.org/how-it-happens/


It's dangerous and stupid. I always ignore any direction to use hypoxic breathing when given in any practice.

All of this makes me sad. Twelve and under should be about fun, learning technique, and a little bit of endurance. There really is no need for hypoxic sets, though I can understand very restricted breathing sets for top level high school/college pure sprinters. Drills and stroke feedback should be commonplace at 12 & unders, some endurance type sets, and lots of fun! Sharks and minnows, relays, fun relays-corckscrew, tandom, backwards, etc.

It's not always bad for your kid to learn to go through a range of experiences. Yes, sports should generally be fun. But you're not doing your kid any favors if he can't navigate through a mildly bad/unfair experience or two.

If I had to come up with a defense for that coach's set, I'd say that all out 25s with one breath can prepare your kid for an all out 25 where he would probably want to take one breath or less. Do they swim 25 yard races?

UPDATE:
Thank you all for the replies -- quite a range of responses.

I did end up getting to talk with the coach on the phone. Not surprising, but some of what my son reported was accurate and some was not. She clarified that yes, the kids were threatened with walking around the pool in streamline position (arms extended up over the head, walking on tip-toes) -- but only if they didn't hold a streamline all the way past the flags coming off the walls after a turn -- this was for the entire practice. Apparently, most of the kids were not listening or focusing on streamlining off the walls -- she was trying to get their attention. Most kids that age usually break out about 3 feet from the wall -- no real streamline. No one had to walk around the pool deck in streamline position.

My son incorrectly thought that the punishment also applied to the last rep of the hypoxic set (all-out 25 with 1 breath). She then clarified that she did threaten a different punishment -- that the kids would have to repeat the final rep if they didn't make it (smack forehead - Ugh). They were doing a set of 25s starting with 4 breaths per length, rest, then 3 breaths, rest, then 2 breaths, then the final one was to be all-out 25 with 1 breath. I asked why she would have 7-9 year old kids doing a competitive hypoxic set -- she replied that she "wanted the kids to test their limits and see what they could do." I'm fine with pushing the kids to test their limits. But dumb idea to use hypoxic anything at that age - especially with a competitive challenge. Some kids will literally kill themselves trying to rise to a challenge. She did not seem at all interested in moving away from hypoxic sets -- she mentioned that earlier in the practice they did a set of 'breathe every 3/5/7 strokes' -- I have never understood those sets -- no benefit. My 9-year-old even said that "all I do is slow my arms waaay down" in order to be able to do those sets. Great! Let's slow the stroke rate down and throw in some gliding before initiating the pull. Nice! We'll make a crummy triathlete swimmer out of him yet.

I did thank her for her time and interest in coaching kids and finished by suggesting that she find ways to make practices more fun -- or she will likely lose several kids along the way. Some of those kids might walk away from swim team for a long time. Again, I'm all for pushing and making things hard --- but at the proper age with the proper background (context/ability/skill) with the proper (internal) motivation. I encouraged her to give lots of individual stroke technique tips -- even 1 tip per swimmer per practice would make a big difference. The other night there were 12 kids that she and her assistant coach were supervising. Finally, I encouraged her to find other ways of having the kids testing their limits.

As I mentioned initially, I've never been to practice or met the coach. But I'm quite unimpressed so far. She seems about 15 or 20 years behind contemporary swim coaching methods. It feels like she is applying a rubber-stamp one-size-fits-all coaching method to 7-9 year-olds that probably would be better applied to high school age kids?!? Should we save the poor coaching for older kids too? Unfortunately, not a lot of other swim club options at those times at doable locations - to get the kids to a pool.

I'm friends with the director of the entire area league (her boss). I REALLY don't want to be one of "those parents". We'll see...

I'm still hung up on the idea of doing hypoxic swim sets. They just are not beneficial at all -- at any age group (other than College/Elite - with very specific and limited goals). Certainly not for rec league, endurance-types, Masters, kids -- pretty much no one should be doing hypoxic sets.

Good discussion. I'm still curious to know if there has been any research/position papers on hypoxic training. I can't think of a single other sport where one intentionally reduces oxygen intake to improve aerobic ability. Training at altitude just makes you go slower -- now sleeping and living at altitude is a different story. "Train Low, Sleep High".

I believe a previous response stated, "Mo air is Mo better." Agreed.

Good discussion. I'm still curious to know if there has been any research/position papers on hypoxic training. I can't think of a single other sport where one intentionally reduces oxygen intake to improve aerobic ability. Training at altitude just makes you go slower -- now sleeping and living at altitude is a different story. "Train Low, Sleep High". //

You seem to be really hung up on this hypoxic thing, maybe take a break from that and look at the bigger picture. Of course you go slower at altitude, but then you race faster. Do you want your kid to race faster?? I assume so, otherwise they should just be doing rec swim. And sets of 3/5/7 do have a benefit. Maybe they do not for "YOU". Yes, the kids have to slow down their arms and swim slower, you know what we call that, pacing. Other than actual mechanics, pacing is the most important thing in swimming, without it you are either a 50 swimmer, or just someone that dies at the end of everything.


Try and not 2nd guess everything the coach does, you have already found out that you were wrong on many of your original assumptions. Give it a chance, so far not much of anything is sending me the red flags you originally posted. Remember kids see things very differently, and then communicate them always slanted towards their own perception and biases.

DD replied in his first post some studies. Having been involved in competitive swimming since the 60's, it's sad to see some of the old methods that have been completely debunked still used by some coaches. I would forward to that coach the above mentioned studies as well as the USA Swimming guidelines. Having seen so many gifted swimmers burn out, this type of stuff makes me livid.