Me neither!

yet nearly no elite swimmers or triathletes do this at race pace

I think you mean nearly no MALE elite swimmers. There are plenty of elite women who bilateral breathe.

for example, check out Manaudou

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6GmflekO_g

Dear Schroeder,

You are right. He did not do it regularly or with any pattern i could detect. But he did it a couple of times in the middle of the pool. I had never seen it done before that. The point is that if you can do it sometimes, why not do it regularly. Breathing every stroke is too much, but this is the next best thing....though maybe you need to be old like me to appreciate its benefit.

Yours,

Gary Sr.

Dear Gary,

You have excellent advice, but I have a small question about your view regarding head placement. Of course you don't want to lift your head high in the water, but I have noticed in my swimming and coaching that a slight head tilt allows for a lot easier breathing if you are able to swim at a good clip. But the real clincher is watching the technique of elite male and female swimmers competing in 800m and 1500m events (there are tons of these videos online): nearly 100% of them have their heads slightly tilted back (i.e., their faces are not facing straight down to the bottom of the pool). Your thoughts?

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Where would you want to swim ?

Yay! Magic!

Now, I'll be the first to admit that I'm not an Olympic medal winner, but just a middle-of-the-pack, know-nothing drowner. However, the logic and the anecdotes in your post, don't prove or even offer evidence to support a hypothesis that might be tested.

Just as distance runners and distance cyclists have differing techniques than sprinting runners and sprinting cyclists, for longer swimming applications, say 2.4 mile iron distance, giving examples from 400 meter techniques might not be pointing the right direction.

If you gave me the option of getting through the swim leg with 27% more oxygen, my taking it or not would depend on the cost of the oxygen. Why not breathe every stroke and get even more oxygen? If I gave you the option of getting through the swim leg with even more oxygen, would you take it? Would you take two breaths per stroke for even more oxygen? Ten breaths and a margarita per stroke?

Liquid oxygen has a freezing point of -222.65 °C and a boiling point of -182.96 °C. I don't think you're putting that under anyone's tongue. Though you call it liquid oxygen, that's not what you're writing about. Oxygen can in fact be toxic in many liquid forms, and under pressure. We know what Hydrogen Peroxide does, and it's only H2O2. HO4 would have the same toxic effect. We need not worry though, because this HO4 would quickly dilute in saliva. You're shilling an expensive bottle of water. Even that doesn't matter though. Our lungs are good at absorbing oxygen, but there's no evidence that our mouths or stomachs are oxygen uptake organs. Why don't you take this quackery even further? Instead of just drinking 30 drops of water before the race, we're swimming in water. It's 1/3 oxygen. Drink it all, or if drinking doesn't work, why not breathe water? It's got more oxygen than air.

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C
Purveyor of Crank!

Dear Jacknine,

You bring up a really good point and one i often forget to mention. Some of the best underwater slow motion video ever taken was in a DVD we produced last summer entitled The Three Styles of Freestyle (http://www.theraceclub.com), in which Mike Bottom describes why you need different techniques for different distances (I fully agree). Anyway, you see only a trickle of bubbles coming from the mouth or nose until the expulsion of air at the last second. Keeping the air in the lungs as long as possible is the idea. I would also think that the added pressure in the lungs of a full breath would help with the transport of 02 across the alveoli, but not sure on that.
Best thing about the video is to watch the head positions (low) and elbow positions (high) of these world class swimmers.

Regards,

Gary Sr.

Now we're talking.

As you said, not the best quality, but I didn't see a single instance of him breathing to his left with the possible exception of into one turn. He did switch to breathing every four on the last 100 for a bit.

One would think that if this were truly beneficial, you'd see it more. Especially if someone like Perkins did it fifteen years ago.

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"Go yell at an M&M"

Dr. Hall, thanks so much for the tips. Its great having you participate on our forum. I've done 3 IM races, and the swim is where I really need some work. I'll make sure to incorporate your tips in my workouts.

Also I wanted to tell you my wife speaks fondly of you. When she was younger, she has some eye problems and you treated her and even to this day she still mentions how appreciative she was for the treatment. I hope all is well with you and your family.

Peace,
Rob

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"Your Attitude Determines Your Altitude."

Thanks again.

I am convinced that anyone can be become a MOP swimmer by primarily focusing on technique, rather than lots of distance.

Getting beyond that is another issue however.

Dear By Crank!

I too was a skeptic, as were our World Team swimmers in 2000, until they went to Flagstaff for an altitude training session. By the middle of the first workout, they were putting the liquid O2 under their tongues after every set. It works. This product does not use or contain hydrogen peroxide in any form, as some products do. It contains 1.2% chloride, .8% sodium and some trace elements. The rest is concentrated activated stabilized oxygen.
The reason I don't recommend breathing on every stroke is that it is too much. One needs some pause to keep from getting totally dizzy. Keep your semicircular canals moving all of the time and you will see what i mean. Getting two breaths in one stroke...unless you swim like Esther Williams, forget about that.
Here's to the doubting Thomas!

Regards,

Gary Sr.

Dear Schroeder,

You are right. One sees this done by more female distance swimmers than male...yet few of the American swimmers. Not sure why. We are all creatures of habit to some degree.

Gary Sr.

Dear GregX,

I have noticed that most of the distance swimmers do have their heads lifted slightly, but never a lot. Remember that you are really trying to achieve alignment of the head and body in the water. Swimming a slower speeds we are lower in the water and therefore, the head has to drop lower. At race speeds we elevate our bodies in the water and the head doesn't need to drop as far.
Popov was one of the first swimmers i noticed who really maintained a low head position. Look at the underwater shots of our DVD, The Three Styles of Freestyle...Gary Jr, George Bovell, Salim Iles, Nathan Adrian, Mike Cavic etc....they all have their heads down. I always thought one can learn the most about efficiency from the sprinters as there is no room for inefficiency. However, depending on the distance and the strengths of the swimmer, the techniques must change.
I have not noticed that the lower head position hampers breathing (only the view to the front). I teach breathing to the side and back slightly, so when the head goes back down t stays low. Breathing to the side and front tends to cause us to keep our heads too high when we rotate back.

Regards,

Gary Sr.

Okay, this isn't exactly what he's talking about (and it's not an olympian either), but it looks like this female NCAA swimmer (the girl who wins, Menezez) takes two or three breaths on the right, then two or three breaths on the left and then grabs an extra breath on the opposite side before she hits the wall. I guess that's what you have to do to swim 1,000m in 10:26.

http://www.floswimming.org/...scy-free-final-ha-d1

(There's a close-up at 5:30)

Imagine that: you'd finish your 4,000m workout in 42 minutes.

Finally, try starting your tri (30 minutes before race time) with Liquid oxygen and Thunderbolt (ATP), which you can find on our website. Should help your VO2 Max and reduce lactic acid production. Our swimmers (50 in the past 3 Olympics) have used it successfully and swear by it. The combination of both products is key. Take two capsules of Thunderbolt and then 20 drops of liquid oxygen under the tongue, hold for 30 seconds, then swallow. Then, off you go.
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Dr Hall
I'm a little challenged in understanding how these supplements would work exactly and if you could direct us to some studies that would enlighten us as to how your oxygen "drops" and ATP pills taken orally would give us this proposed boost. Since you're a physician, I would expect you could easily explain that and not use anecdotes. They do seem pretty spendy on your website. ;-)
Dave

Understood...I am just speculating here, but I think that it may come down to cadence. There is only an advantage to breathing faster up to a certain rate and then there's just not more air to be absorbed (perhaps because it takes X amount of time for diffusion across the alveoli?).
Elite 1500 swimmers have a stroke turnover that I could only mimic for a 50 or a 100. With the slower turnover that I can sustain through say 1500 meters, I might benefit from this breathing technique.
I sometimes find myself in the middle of a middle distance swim race cutting my strokes short because I just HAVE to increase my respiration rate (single-sided breathing every 2nd pull).

Dear Jacknine,

Please don't mistake my recommendation for breathing in the race with aerobic training. Practice the breathing pattern i recommend before you ever try it in a race. But in practice, we still do a lot of breath holding sets....the purpose to improve the cardiopulmonary system. Racing...you will need all the O2 you can get.

Regards,

Gary Sr

Hi,

Just a point of fact. The % of O2 in the air at altitude (even Mt. Everest) is exactly the same as the % of O2 in the air at sea level -- about 21%. However, since the pressure at altitude is so much less, there are fewer oxygen molecules per volume of air, hence the "lack of oxygen".

Thanks for the helpful tips, and welcome to ST.

Ciao,
Sharon

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Festina Lente

Dear Docpeachey,

Thanks for the clarification. It sure hurts a lot more at altitude without the O2!

Regards,

Gary Sr.

Hrm.

Not to be a nudge, but...

You joined today. 14 posts. In those 14 posts you've mentioned your oral ATP and liquid O2 5 times, your swim DVD three times, your camp twice. You've pointed to some videos that don't show the breathing technique, and when pressed, you say "Oh, I saw it once or twice in a race, they don't do it regularly."

Masterful advertising, sir. Well done. Welcome to ST.

John

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Top notch coaching: Francois and Accelerate3 | Follow on Twitter: LifetimeAthlete |

I guess that's what you have to do to swim 1,000m in 10:26.

It is 1000 yards, not meters. You're right, she does it much more often than Perkins appeared to. It looked like she wanted to see both sides of the pool and instead of throwing in a 3, she threw in a 1. Then she takes the extra breath at the wall. She did it very smoothly but for your typical ST swimmer, it might add one more hitch in their get along.

Whoops. Does this mean I have to renounce my Canadian citizenship?

Yeah, the guys don't seem to do it as much. I just saw a few seconds of the guys race, and the leader there was doing one-sided breathing the whole time (and I believe he finished sub-10:00).

http://www.floswimming.org/...scy-free-final-ha-d1

Your swimming advice is great.

Your chemistry knowledge is, ummmm, dubious at best. Maybe even comical.

Take the knowledge, not the "supplements".

Dear Devlin,

Point well taken. Selfishly, we have held some of our products close to the chest because we know they work and they are legal. There are too many athletes taking substances that are not.
Gary Jr officially retired from swimming in November. We decided to let the world know about the products our swimmers take and market them. But it is our business to help others swim faster legally. There are many other products we recommend...just that these two are a bit harder to find.
Expensive? perhaps....but they work, particularly when used together. Only you can be the judge of their value for you. But you should try them first. Then critique.
If you are looking to maximize your ability in Triathlons, you need to work on all five disciplines, not just swimming, biking and running.
Those are swimming, biking, running (1), strength (2), mental training (3), recovery (4) and nutrition (5). Neglect any one or more of them, and you will not be as good.
We are learning a lot more about nutrition in athletic performance. We have yet a lot to learn. I am just offering something we believe in and in our repeated (though anecdotal evidence) performances, have proven to work.

Regards,

Gary Sr.