Firstly, fitness is specific; so you're not 'swim fit'.

Are you exhaling under water and only inhaling when your head exits the water?

How is your stroke? Do you have a history of swimming in your past?

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Yes it does !

As a starter (until better qualified than I chime in) I'd question whether its the way you're breathing (or not !) that is leaving you gasping.
Particularly - are you breathing out whilst your head is in the water ? You should be. You should be breathing out constantly when your face is in the water. Then you only have to suck air in when you turn your head to the side to breathe.
My understanding is that its the CO2 that makes you want to gasp for air before you're actually short of O2.

Also - how often do you breathe ? Every 2 strokes ? 3? 4? (No right answer there - mostly I'm every 3 as it helps other aspects of my stroke - will drop to 2 if sprinting. But sometimes go 4 when in Open water and waves from one side if I'm going steady-eddie). But just curious.

We must have been typing at the same time - but you were quicker..reassuring we've both asked about breathing.

How long have you been at it, and how much are you swimming per week?

My experience it takes at least a month of swimming at least 2x/week and 1,000 yards per session to get into a groove. At the start, you will probably struggle to just make it 1/2 mile. But after a few weeks, you should start to feel more comfortable.

Cycling uses quite a small selection of muscles when compared to a quadrupedal sport like swimming. Also, if you haven't been weight training as a cyclist, your upper body (everything except your chest) is in for a shock. Not being able to breathe whenever you damn well please might be a trip as a new swimmer.

I'd be willing to bet what is happening is that your technique as a new swimmer is incredibly inefficient and you are trying way too hard, thrashing about trying to get to the other side. I see it all the time at my local gym pool. Have you ever noticed that (within reason) most of the fastest swimmers are super smooth, and you're left thinking that there's no way they're on WR pace?

How are you measuring your HR? If it's underwater optical, I wouldn't put too much stock in that being super accurate.

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"The person on top of the mountain didn't fall there." - unkown

also rule 5

Swimming is totally different than cycling. It takes a lot of time and volume..........10,000's of meters to build real endurance and get fast.

Swimming could care less about watts on a bike.

December 2019 is when I started really swimming again. I was only a runner, mainly half marathons. But I used to recreationally swim a lot, so I thought I knew something about swimming.

In my first swim I was like you. I couldn't swim more than a couple of lengths and my "speed" was 3:15/100y. Having swam some years ago, I knew my technique was super inefficient and that I could improve a lot. So, I did what everyone does today and started watching a lot of YouTube videos. I found several different techniques and suggestions. For whatever reason, I found and started focusing on the Effortless Swimming channel. Technique fit me.

As far as I'm concerned, for a triathlete this is probably the best channel for technique improvement (YMMV). I started practicing the technique they use (what I would call a standard technique), concentrated hard while swimming and improved what I would say dramatically. In October 2020 I did my first 70.3 and swam the 1.2m in 41 minutes (1:50ish, wetsuit legal) and finished at the bottom of the top 25% of everyone in the race. I could have swam it faster, but because it was my first tri, I was only focused on swimming smoothly and saving energy for the other 69.1 miles.

I only swam three times a week in an indoor pool about 2k-2.5k per workout (not counting the three months I missed when the pool was closed for the virus). Now I only swim two times a week, because I need to focus more on cycling and I'm satisfied with my swim time.

If you have the time, I recommend binge watching the channel. They're generally short videos and almost always are videos analyzing great, good and poor form swimmers.

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Not a coach. Not a FOP Tri/swimmer/biker/runner. Barely a MOP AGer.
But I'm learning and making progress.

Does it get easier? Yes and no. No, you just get faster, but that's super cliché. Yes, the action of swimming gets easier once you've properly built up your stroke. IMO once the "fear" of gasping for air goes away it's a lot easier to concentrate on the actual swimming and less on the not drowning fastly. At least that's what I found. I'm by no means a good swimmer but I do remember that "gasping for air" stage and it will eventually subside.

Rest assured everyone feels like garbage in the water if they haven't swam in a while or are just starting. I've been swimming competitively since I was 8 years old and I still feel awful the first time back in the pool after a break from swimming. The first 150 feels great and then I quickly start flailing and gasping. This is true even if I'm carrying a lot of cycling or running fitness into the pool. For me, swimming requires a specific type of aerobic fitness and a specific type of muscular fitness that can only be gained through swimming. It takes me at least 15-20 workouts of 2.5K-3K yards before I start feeling OK, start getting on top of the water and start being able to hit reasonable intervals.

My recommendation: keep hitting the pool, you'll slowly gain fitness. After you have a good baseline, get some coaching.

I was in the same position when I started. Very fit on the bike but couldn't get across the pool. Back then, Total Immersion was really popular so that was recommended to me and it helped a lot. You need to focus on form and learn to swim smooth and relaxed. You're fighting the water. If you're like I was when I started, I couldn't swim super easy across the pool. If you can't do that, you have form issues you need to work on. I did a lot of drills and focused heavily on form for the first year and my times dropped significantly.

Swimming is difficult for me because I want to just power through and push hard to go faster like I do on the bike or run, but it doesn't work for me in the pool. My form goes bad and I swim slower or the same pace on more effort. Working harder and digging deep is rewarded on the bike and run, but not necessarily in the pool because swimming depends so heavily on form. If you can't hold good form, you're just wasting energy. I wouldn't worry at all about HR when starting. I would worry only about form and watch your times. As form improvements come, your times will drop. I always tell myself to swim fast, not hard. It's semantics, but swimming hard is sloppy for me but swimming fast is smooth. Fast is relative, but it keeps me focused on form and being smooth rather than effort and trying to plow through the water.

How are you getting your HR? Are you wearing a strap or taking it on the side of the pool? I tried the garmin swim HR strap for a while years ago and if I remember right my HR dropped really fast when swimming so I was getting my HR up higher than I thought. I think it would drop almost 40 beats in a minute on the side of the pool, so if I ever took it after a set it was lower than it was during the set so I didn't think I ever got my heart rate up while swimming but actually wearing the strap showed that I was getting it as high as other workouts, but it would drop really quickly once resting.

Look - I don't want to toot my own horn or anything - but I wrote this for the front page a couple years ago, maybe something I said will help you on your journey. Good luck and have fun.

https://www.slowtwitch.com/...n_Swimming_6700.html

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I wrote this, you should read it:
https://www.slowtwitch.com/...n_Swimming_6700.html

IT DOESN'T GET EASIER, YOU JUST GO FASTER

Swimming is very different than cycling or swimming. I also came from a cycling background. You can't just try harder and go faster like in cycling. Swimming is more like golf . a lot of it is technique, body position and relaxing . Watch swim videos on Youtube. Your legs are probably sinking when you swim. I would start there .

I like to breathe every stroke.

I feel your pain! Yes - it does get easier, much easier. My top tip is to listen to the advice of better swimmers, it just isn't one of those sports where you can "figure things out for yourself" and one good nugget of advice can save hours and hours of frustration.

I just recently took on a strong runner turned strong cyclist that now wants to turn triathlete in Oct.

1st time he ever came to the pool, his legs were dropping he was hard diving his arms into the water with no extension, etc etc. Quickly noted poor balance/position in the water which is totally expected. He couldn't swim 1 25 without having to wait on the wall for 1+ min later. Being that poor of a swimmer, really easy body adjustments can create quick time drops, by evidence that in the 3rd swim that week we did a "time check" of 50 in 56s.

Oct/Nov/Dec he did no more than 1200yds a set. 85% of the set was 25's just focusing on body position (tighter kick), getting his cadence down from 29 strokes per 25 to around 22. Eventually I'd like to get that down to 16-17 per 25. The rest was 50's. This is a swimmer that needs to learn how to swim, needs to learn how to drive the hand to full extension before getting that high elbow catch. I dont care about volume currently, because he's too weak of a swimmer to only swim like garbage if he did more volume.

Lots of swimming with fins, and I also once a week forced him to work on flip turns. Not while swimming so much, but on the odd days where I worked on streamline. I forced him flip turns for 1 reason really- to improve his breath control / relaxation. Maybe some coaches will say that's too soon, but this athlete I got in the water 4 days a week, so 1 day a week I would give him a "play" swim and just focus on streamline + flip turns. I then had him only flip turn in the warm ups currently. Again for me, I think it's easier to put it in the program now because it's like "baby steps".....You learn it now, then it's easier to learn vs in 1 year when "habits" have been engrained.

I should add- for the 1st month I didn't even have this athlete swim. He learned to kick and breath w/ rotational breathing. Kickboard and streamline work, over and over 4 days a week. Better kick keeps you up in the water and allows the arms much easier time at swimming.

He did a 100 on Monday in 1:51 (no fins). That was the 1st and only 50yd + effort so far he's not swam with fins. He has no endurance at the current time, but that's not even a concern. Learning how to feel water, learning how to understand balance, taking lots of rest to swim with great technique is key in this particular part of the journey.

Fins imo give you better movement in the water to actually feel like what a swimmer is doing.

This is also the "weakest swimmer" I've ever worked with personally, it's been a fun journey to actually see how they develop. He's the actual first "non swimmer" that I have helped down this journey, every other athlete I've coached even if not growing up swimming, atleast could "swim" more than 1 x 25 without stopping. So it's been interesting.

Jan will be only long of 100's. When he breaks 1:30, which I think will be close in a month I'm going to progress to 1 weekly "endurance" set of 200's. Rest will simply be 50/100's over and over and over....."boring" but that's what it's going to take to get him to his goal of KQ ability. This is long term process for sure, at min he sees 2 years of good "swim training" and then year 3 actually put it in a race setting where he can really give it his best go at KQ. Obviously we'll be doing racing in the mean time, this is an former D2 collegiate runner who post college turned to cycling (stronger cyclists than he is a runner).


Enjoy the journey, dont sweat the ups and downs that your bound to have. Embrace "the suck".

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Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II

I also started swimming straight from another sport (soccer). I was super fit (for land), but I could barely swim 25 meters before having to hang onto the wall for a break.

The biggest thing for me was letting my body adapt to not being able to breathe whenever it wanted to. I wouldn't even really call that gaining swim "fitness" ... just getting used to a breathing pattern and not having the anxiety that can come with having to wait to breathe (that gasping for air feeling).

Once I was able to breathe calmly while swimming, then I could start to work on all of the technique and form things that others on here have already mentioned. So yes, it gets better as your body gets used to it.

Good luck; swimming is a lot more fun when you don't feel like you're drowning! :)

The most important tip in my opinion is that you need to get someone to watch you swim and give you specific things to work on (e.g. breathing technique) and then watch to check you are doing it correctly. Ideally this would be a coach on deck (can you join a master's swim programme?) but it could also be a friend who knows how to swim. You need to establish feedback because otherwise you might spend hours practicing the wrong technique and unlearning bad habits is a real pain in the arse.

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I have had many a discussion with people who have used that LeMond quote and my message is always the same.

I have been fit and first and fat and last and let me tell you,once you get fit,everything gets easier.
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This plus if you aren’t swimming 3x a week, add at least 2 upper body lifting sessions. If you are, still lift at least once a week.

I’ll just add to the chorus of people suggesting you have someone watch and give feedback on your form. Back when I was swimming I thought I was doing OK till one day I finished a lap and an old guy sitting on the pool bench said “you’re doing it all wrong” and proceeded to critique my form. Turns out he’s an instructor and he gave me a couple free lessons, made things much better. One thing I will add is how important it is to get your hips up and feet straight. I always struggled with that. My ankle flexibly is so bad I go backwards when using a kickboard...

Consistent execution over time. There is no magic or secrets . . . just swim regularly (sort of like riding a bike :-))

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David
* Ironman for Life! (Blog) * IM Everyday Hero Video * Daggett Shuler Law *
Disclaimer: I have personal and professional relationships with many athletes, vendors, and organizations in the triathlon world.

Yes, it does get better.

After a bit of training and instruction you will get fit enough and fast enough that you can swim at a pace that is not red zone effort. In the beginning the problem is that the effort needed just to be "swimming" is really high (due to lack of swim-specific fitness and unrefined form). In a month or two you will have an "all day pace" that you can maintain, and also be able to go faster during intervals/sets.

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ECMGN Therapy Silicon Valley:
Depression, Neurocognitive problems, Dementias (Testing and Evaluation), Trauma and PTSD, Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI)

If you can only go a length, there maybe a gross error in your stroke. The easiest fix is head position. If you look forward, your legs sink and it's incredibly inefficient. You should be looking down at the bottom of the pool. Or just a few degrees forward.

You might be relying on your kick too much. I've seen some runners start their swimming journey with a lot of kicking. If you can put out 350W with relative ease, you probably have strong legs. It's good to have a good kick but can drive up your HR quickly. It's not as easy as kicking less...you might be kicking that much because your arms aren't efficient yet.

In terms of breathing, you should be exhaling almost completely under water. It's a constant, controlled exhale over the time between breaths. When you turn your head to breath all you should be doing is inhaling. You want the breath in your lungs to help with buoyancy but you need to slowly exhale it to discharge CO2 and be ready for the next inhale.