Generally, you’ll get more air breathing every 2 strokes, and most are faster breathing every 2 vs 3.

However, this is something that you really need to determine for yourself. You might be faster breathing every 3rd. Also remember that in a tri, you generally aren’t going to be swimming all out (well, I’m not anyway) so I don’t need as much air as I do in a swim race. I kick less, which also reduced the demands for air.

Play with it and test it out.

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If you look at any distance swimming event or triathlon, the top swimmers are breathing every stroke (look at youtube videos of the ironman or an olympic 1500). There are really two reasons to learn bilateral breathing as a triathlete:

1. Stroke improvement: Knowing how to breathe to both sides helps even out your stroke (lots of folks naturally over rotate to the breathing side and under rotate to the non breathing one). Personally I think swimming with center mount snorkel is a better way to address this, but opinions vary.

2. Sighting: In open water your preferred breathing side may not be a good option at any point in time. Chop may make it hard to breathe that side without getting a mouthful of water. The rising sun might be right in your eyes making sighting difficult. The buoys might be on the other side. The swimmer you are drafting off the hip of may be on the other side.*


Overall bilateral breathing is a good skill to have, but it wouldn't be my first priority.


*Drafting off someone's hip is evil, since it actually slows them down. Draft behind them.

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ECMGN Therapy Silicon Valley:
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I breathe on every stroke and have never seriously considered bilateral.

I agree with the breathing every 2 strokes.

But I do practice being able to breath to both sides so that it ensures my stroke is balanced and that I can breathe to the "other" side if I have too.

So instead of breathing to both sides by taking a breathe every 3 strokes. During sections of my swim I will breathe every 2 strokes to the right on Odd lengths and to then every 2 strokes to the Left on Even lengths. I find this focuses a whole length to breathing to the "other" side and I can feel the difference more in stroke and adjust.

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This. And do it a different paces. And practice sighting on your weak breathing side. Better prepares you for what may be thrown your way in a race (sun/other swimmers/waves).

As others have stated, many people won't race using a 3 stroke breathing technique and will often default to breathing every 2 strokes to their preferred side. However, it is important to have the ability to breathe to both sides as there are times you can predict (and many times you cannot predict) when you may need to favour one side or the other in a race.
For instance, I find on a course that is mainly left hand turns my natural desire to breathe to the left works nicely, whereas a mainly right hand turn course I can struggle more with sighting. Ditto for if there is a swell and you are swimming side on to it, often much easier to breathe away from the swell which may mean breathing more to one side heading in one direction and then reversed on the way back.
Also, you never quite know when you go to breathe to one side if something is going to stop you taking that breath (ie another competitor, wave etc) so you need to have the ability to breathe to both sides.

Additionally, it will take about a week to learn so might as well. I did this summer. It was very easy

I'm an adult onset swimmer (age 25). In ~30 years of triathlons, I was rarely beaten by anyone in my at-the-time age group out of the water. I could probably count on two hands the total number of breaths I took on my right in all those races, and all the masters swim races I did. Mostly lake swims, but a decent number of ocean triathlons and races in very large lakes/rivers with chop (a couple of Eagleman races in the Choptank River, for instance). My breathing was never threatened by waves or other swimmers.

Did you coach happen to indicate how you would benefit by learning bilateral breathing (at the cost of reduce oxygen)? A good coach should be able to describe why he/she tells you to do anything. If your key flaws are related to breathing on your left side, then learn to breathe correctly on your left side. See how it is done correctly by others, get video (or at least a good description) of you doing it, observe the difference, and focus on eliminating the difference.

Oxygen is critical to swimming fast, and unless you have a beyond-the-curve cardiovascular system and/or huge lungs, breathing every time on one side is called for (I know a swimmer whose lung capacity was, literally, 50% greater than mine, so *he* could breathe every three or even five strokes without penalty).

Sighting shouldn't be an issue, either. The sun may be on your left, but your eyes rotate so you can look away from the sun when you breathe. You know where the sun will be before you move your head to breathe.

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"Go yell at an M&M"

It's helpful to breathe to both sides occasionally because it helps you maintain a good balance and hip rotation.

Years ago (now about 30 for me), all swimmers were taught to breathe bilaterally because it was thought it was faster. Taking a breath definitely slows you down - you create more drag while rotating your body and head to the side (which is why the best 50 free guys don't breathe at all). I swam distance events for years breathing bilaterally. Even butterfly was taught breathing every 2 strokes (1 down, 1 up) because breathing was "slower".

Somewhere along the line the thinking changed that getting more oxygen had a greater benefit than the small drag increase that resulted from lifting your head. Guys like Phelps started breathing every stroke in fly and even in the 100 free you see breathing every 2 now dominates.

Same thing goes for tri swim legs - you'll want to breathe every 2 to stay aerobic and maintain your rhythm.

HOWEVER, in practice it's generally good to breathe every 3 every once in a while, or breathe to your non-dominant side, to keep your stroke in balance. It's easier to do this in warmup or easier sets, because in harder sets you're going to want to do what is most efficient.

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Strava

I did not read the rest of the thread so you may have already been told this. Make sure to breathe out when your face is in the water. Not doing that makes swimming loads more difficult.

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I'm a competitive swimmer, and have always had the capacity to breathe to either side, but my go-to pattern, especially for anything slower than 100 free race pace, was every 2 to the right. About two years ago, i experimented with the every-2-strokes, alternating-sides-every-length method and found it helped delay the onset of fatigue in my shoulders and arms. There are minor variations in stroke path and load when you're breathing on a side compared to when you are not breathing to that side. Presumably, that means there are slight differences in the muscle recruitment. I speculate that changing the breathing pattern from one side to the other every length spreads the workload across more muscle fibers. So I started using the method in races, and swam a number of PR's in distance events that year. In the pool, I do it all the time now without even thinking about it. In open water swims, if the conditions allow, I'll alternate sides every 8 breaths or so.

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"They're made of latex, not nitroglycerin"

Practice breathing every third.
It helps to be comfortable breathing on both sides. In a race, you might have chop coming from different directions, or a splashy swimmer next to you on one side or another.

Bi lateral training will even out your stroke a bit too. I think, as a novice adult swimmer, you are more likely to develop form issues by only breathing to one side.

When you do hard intervals, try breathing every stroke, but alternating the side you breathe on every set.

Swimming is a skill, and you want as broad a skill set as possible.

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Long Chile was a silly place.

I always do a set of drills before and after my main set. I include bilateral breathing in my drills, but never do it in a race or main set. I think it helps with balance and it's nice to be able to do if absolutely required in a race, but I have never actually done it in a race in any kind of a sustained way. I'll occassionally sneek a peak to my weak side in a race to get my bearings. Practicing bilateral breathing can help me do that in rhythm and less awkwardly.

Just in terms of the 'form' and 'imbalance' issues - I thought it was interesting that in a interview this past year around Kona time with Lucy Charles (I think it was with GTN), she mentioned that she mostly in the past did not breath bilaterally, and while she said it's something that she now started working on since she can see her competition on the other side, she also noted that she was usually about 7sec/100 slower on her weak side.

So clearly, if she's crushing the swim competition while training almost entirely one-sided breathing in the past, makes one question how imbalanced a stroke becomes by breathing only to one side.

I've spent a decent amount of time training both sides in the past, but found that I am anywhere from 3-7sec/100 faster on my strong side, no matter what. And while I do like being able to sight bilaterally when needed, I also almost never use it during races, and as well, I've noticed zero benefit to my strong side, or any fixed 'imbalances' after getting my weak side stronger.

In fact, I did a 3-month experiment a few years back where I swim 80-90% of my time doing only weak-side freestyle swimming, in hopes of getting some technique gains that would translate back to my strong side. At the end of that experiment, my weak side was still not as strong as my strong side (expected) but my strong side had deteriorated some, especially at longer distances, which I was not happy with. I honestly didn't feel much translation from my weak side to my strong side, at least in my n=1 case.

pretty novice swimmer here, and I always try to breathe every two, but i routinely breathe one side going down, and the other coming back, so much so that its almost automatic. That way, I am just as comfortable breathing to either side, in case of swells or that one dude who is going your exact pace, swimming right next to you, and breathing so that he looks right at you...i can turn away.

While I no longer pretend to be a good swimmer, I have been swimming and racing for a while. And I may have a slightly different view about breathing.

Most of the advice you get is from good swimmers, fast swimmers and the pros. But before you commit yourself to a particular breathing style, do a little math.

How many strokes do you take in a 100m (pool or open water) distance and what is your time. Counting each arm as a stroke.

Competition swimmers (men) may take anywhere from 80 strokes up to 100 for 100m and they do that in less than 50 seconds. That would mean as many as 40 breaths (usually a bit less with start, finish and turn breaths). So in a minute that would translate to at least 50 breaths.

Many slower swimmers might do the same distance in 2 minutes and a similar amount of strokes. I am slower than "once upon a time" but I still use the same number of strokes as back when.

Even breathing every 2 strokes, that really means you are now down to 50 breaths in 2 minutes, which is less than half of what a competitive swimmer can expect.

Check your pulse after a few of those 100's and see what zone you are in. When you run at that same HR what level of exertion are you at compared to your top speed, same for the bike. And how many breaths do you take per minute in those disciplines.

Hypoxic training has been shown to be useless, except to make you less likely to panic if you miss a breath.

Being able to breath on both sides is a nice party trick after you have learned to swim.

Not having a heart attack because of stress in the swim leg...priceless. :0)

I think your SPL #'s and resulting math are a bit off. Typical respiration rate (breaths per minute) for elite sprinters is low-mid 30's.

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"They're made of latex, not nitroglycerin"

Hey guys thanks for all the super insightful replies above. Learned a lot from this, I appreciate it. For now I think it will be good for me to practice breathing to both sides in training to help balance out my stroke. However in races and hard interval efforts I think every two strokes to my strong side is best for me.
Thanks again!

Short version ...you should learn to breathe bilaterally (for a lot of the reasons other have posted). I am thankful I learned it from the beginning. Trust me you don't want to in open water and find that you breath left but waves are coming left and you get mouthfuls of water or not be able to sight due to blinding sunlight.

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"see the world as it is not as you want it to be"

I was being optimistic in my count. You're probably closer than I am on stroke count, and I did go and count some open water video to see if there was much difference and they were also around 35 breaths pm. It doesn't change my contention that someone who takes nearly twice as long (ie 1:30 to 2:0 minutes) for each 100, but takes a similar number of strokes would end up with only (at this lower stroke rate) 18 breaths a minute while putting out much the same energy (admittedly not as efficiently) as a top end swimmer. Their oxygen deficiency alone would limit them, and that's at 1 breath every two strokes, going to 3 and you may as well wear a parachute. By my count I breath 40 times a minute when running with any effort and certainly close to that for a 40K TT distance on the bike. Swimming isn't easier.

My 2c anyway.

You're assuming the only difference is Stroke Rate, and that the Distance Per Stroke is the same. In most cases, the FOP swimmer is faster than the mid-packer because the FOP'er has both a higher stroke rate and a greater DPS. Assuming the same breathing pattern, the mid-packer is taking more strokes per 100m and, therefore, taking more breaths per 100m.

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"They're made of latex, not nitroglycerin"

Or you could learn to breath in ocean conditions, and learn not to look at the sun.

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"Go yell at an M&M"

"because the FOP'er has both a higher stroke rate and a greater DPS"


That's what I get for using my own stroke rate, because my DPS is the same as it always was, but my stroke rate has dropped as I age. So my strokes over 100m are still around 80. But by nature I have tended to count others in pool training with a Tri Club, and even the slowest (2:20+ per 100m) tend to be no higher than 100 SP 100, even when they thrash about a bit, which over the 2 mins+ it takes them to swim 100m, means they still range between 21-25 breaths per minute, that is still below their rate for running or cycling. Most (if not all) AG swimmers don't breath enough., anything that reduces their rate, reduces performance.

I realize this thread tends to have higher level performers respond, but the poster is a new swimmer. They don't have the strength, or muscle to have a fast SPM or a long DPS. They sure don't need to be told to hold their breath as well as some well meaning but elite level swimmers have done in the past.

Fire this coach. Any coach that says you must bilaterally breath is full of **** as a teacher of triathlon swimming. Now I think learning to breathe to each side is good but it can be as simple as right side on the way down and left side back... in practice. But you should be breathing every 2 strokes in triathlon races if you are a novice. I could see a case for bilateral breathing for a select few and usually in the middle of a race. Come to ST for swim advice, there is a lot of bad swim advice coming from people who don't know how to coach (1) adults (2) triathletes.

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