I’ve been breathing with a bilateral stroke for years (both in the pool and racing) And I thought I read somewhere that you shouldn’t do this in a race due to the fact that you rob yourself of precious oxygen early on… Thus going into oxygen debt early and elevating your HR. I thought it said that you should breath on every second stroke and switch sides based on other racers or waves. Is there any truth to this… Or is this just BS. Thanks
Yes, this is correct. The less you breath, the higher your heart rate, which is not beneficial in a long race. Even top swimmers like Dave Scott preach to bilateral breath in practice, but only one side for most of a race.
Good luck,
i did bilateral for the second half of my half IM swim and I think that’s probably the most you should do it, if at all. you need everything you got to break out of the pack at the beginning. once I got moving and settled in, I started breathing on both sides to force myself to slow down and relax just a tad. (I have a history of going too hard in the swim) Did the swim in 30 minutes and came out of the water feeling really good. no 02 debt at all. I guess what I’m saying is maybe bilateral is good towards the end of the swim in a distance tri, keeping yourself from overexerting.
I use mostly bilateral breathing in my training but when we r talking about a short course triathlon u shouldn’t use it. Even in training, when u do tasks such as sprints of 50, 100 or 200 meters u should breath one side only and switch it at the “half-pool” mark. If you only breath one side, you should switch at one point in order to not overload your shoulders muscles.
I’m a short course guy so I don’t have much of experience in long swims but I think when we r talking about 3 K of swiming you should go easy on the breathing and do it bilateral…
Thanks for clarifying that everyone… I’ll give it a go this weekend at a local Sprint.
“I started breathing on both sides to force myself to slow down and relax just a tad.”
I find this statement a little confusing. Personally, I would be more likely to turn to bilateral breathing if I wanted to push myself harder, sacrificing a little oxygen for increased speed. At least, that’s how I do it in the pool; in races, I breathe to one side only (I’m equally uncomfortable breathing on either side–lol). But then, I’m definitely not an expert swimmer. So what’s wrong with the way I’m looking at this?
If you look at some of the best swimmers in the world, like Selnikov, you will find that many of them breathe to one side only. However, there are plenty who do bilateral breathing as well. In a race in the pool, bilateral breathing is a big help because you can see where your competition is from Lane 4. 
(I’m assuming you are all Lane 4 freestyle swimmers.)
I’m not convinced it matters as long as you don’t go hypoxic.
-Robert
yeah, let me clarify, because it definitely sounds counterintuitive. for me, I can only keep up an extremely fast pace if I breathe every stroke. well, that’s not exactly true either. breathing makes you very un-hydrodynamic, so in a very short sprint (pool race of 50 - 100 meters) you only want to breathe when you absolutely have to. in a swim meet 50 yard sprint, you’d breathe maybe once or twice on the way out and 4 or 5 times at most on the way back. the head roll to the side slows you down considerably. triathlons are different, but it’s important to remember the effect head rolling has on your speed. you get past a very short distance sprint and then you really have to start dealing with O2 issues. keeping your head down and straight is much faster than rolling it around all over the place, but you gotta have air eventually. swim coaches will hammer you to quit breathing every stroke and make you do drill after drill of breathing every 3rd, 5th, and even 7th stroke to force you to develop the lung capacity to not need to breathe every stroke. of course, at the beginning of a tri you need to get out in front at all costs and will find yourself in O2 debt and will need to breathe every stroke to recover and keep moving. but once the sprint out is done, it’s back to a comfortable stroke you can keep up for a distance.
breathing every other stroke doesn’t make my heart rate go up. it does the opposite. I simply cannot keep up the high rpm without breathing every stroke, so the breathing bilaterally in turn forces me to slow down, which drops my heart rate. after recovering from the initial sprint out, getting into a nice bilateral breathing pattern soothes the heart rate some and gets you into a nice calm pace that will take you to T1 without having lots of trouble when you stand up to run to your bike.
to prove my point, watch a distance swim event (heck, probably any swim event) in the olympics this summer. they take very few breaths because they know that rolling to the side to breathe will cost them big time (in drag). so, they’ve trained and trained to swim fast with as few breaths as possible. a swimmer that breathes every stroke is the sign of work that still needs to be done. on a high school swim team, a freshman would breathe every stroke to desperately keep up with everybody else in practice, sophmores are trying to drop the habit and can breathe every other stroke for a short distance, juniors can do it almost the whole practice but still might do it in the occasional race, and seniors never do it unless it’s the most important race of their little careers and they’ve only got 15 more yards to go and they’re about to get beat.
in short, you really don’t need to breathe every stroke. the twisting to the side actually caused more drag than the benefit the extra O2 gives you. practice it long enough and you can do it. watch the olympic swims this summer to see it in action. or just go ask your local high school coach. you don’t breathe with every step in the run or pedal stroke on the bike, do you?
Thanks for your detailed response.
“You don’t breathe with every step in the run or pedal stroke on the bike, do you?”
No, I usually settle into a 2-2 breathing pattern when running, or a 3-3 pattern in a slower endurance run. Toward the end of a race, I need to throw in some extra breaths (relative to my leg cadence). Come to think of it, that agrees very well with your observations about swimming and breathing, which helps me to understand your point.
I think there are two things that make bilateral breathing more stressful for me: (1) For an otherwise highly fit person, I have a rather mediocre lung capacity (it was tested by a physician once); and (2) I’m a pretty poor swimmer anyway and have a slow stroke rate. Despite these factors, I have occasionally swum a long distance breathing entirely bilaterally, but it feels quite a bit harder. On the other hand, at a recent one-mile OW event, where I was breathing to one side only, I realized about halfway through that that breathing pattern felt a little TOO easy. I was tempted to throw in a little bilateral breathing, thinking that it might cut my drag and help my pace, but I decided that it was more important to conserve my O2. As it turned out, my finishing time was terrible, so now I wonder whether I should have used some bilateral breathing after all.
Your observation that good swimmers have “trained and trained to swim fast with as few breaths as possible” is intriguing. Do you think they accomplish this by training their lungs to provide more oxygen per breath, or are they actually learning to get by on less oxygen?
rob, those are very good questions/observations. my opinion is that it totally depends on the *current *ability of the swimmer. if you need to breathe every time on the right side, then you need to do it. I’ve seen hundreds of swimmers develop from needing to do that to not needing to, so it’s definitely a thing you can change. I’m guessing that most AG triathletes don’t have a swimming background, go to the pool and crank out laps to achieve a distance. that’s totally the wrong way to do it. Besides the obvious need to have harder and easier days, here’s a general workout that will make you significantly better over time-
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stretch a little before your swim. think about hydrodynamics and how it + power will make you faster. think about how you’re going to glide through that water, but also how a swim workout is supposed to be HARD. you want to come out of the water completely spent (swim recovery is fast, so it’s ok).
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300-500M warm up. make one of the 100’s backstroke or breastroke to limber up.
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10x100s (or water is your equivelant), breathing every 3rd or 5th stroke on every other 25. use the 25s inbetween as a recovery.
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10 x 100s on an interval
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4 or 6 “underwater 25s”
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4 or 6 sprint 25s or 50s
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300 warmdown.
#1 and #2 are obvious, so let’s look at #3. Basically, you’re swimming 100’s with every other lap focused on holding your breath for several strokes. the 25’s inbetween, you can breathe all you want, but you can’t stop. (It’s important in swim practice to overexert yourself and then learn to recover while still moving.) this will be difficult at first, but will become easier over time. pretty soon, you can do the first 5 100’s breathing bilaterally, then someday soon the whole set. THEN, you can do it throughout your workout and forget the drill entirely. congratualions, you’ve really stepped up a notch.
#4’s purpose is extremely important, and is the core of getting faster. time yourself on a medium-fast 100. add about 10 seconds to that time, and that’s your interval. let’s say it’s 2 minutes. do 10 x 100’s on a two minute interval today and for the next two weeks. today, it’ll be tough to do all 10 and make the interval every time. if you have lots of rest time, take 5 seconds off til you find the interval that you can barely complete by lap 10. after a couple of weeks, you will find that you can do all ten and the interval is a little slow. drop it by 5 seconds and start over. do this religiously. this is the essence of becoming faster. you’ll find THIS is the tool that makes you improve the most. in a matter of a few months, you’ll go from doing 100’s on 2 minutes to doing them on a 1:40, and that is getting scary-fast. that’s 20 seconds per 100. in a 1500 meter race, you’ve just dropped 5 minutes off your time with a few months practice. never ever stop doing this type of drill. you can vary it with distances and strokes, but the concept should remain the same: fast intervals that you can barely complete, always trying to shave seconds off of the interval every few weeks.
#5 has two purposes. the first is to pump up your lung power. you’ve just worn the hell outta yourself with that interval swim, and you’re breathing really hard. take a break for a couple of minutes. now try to swim all the way to the other side underwater. do it calmly and gliiiiiiiiiiiiide. your lungs should feel like they are going to explode and you’re gonna black out. if you have to come to the surface, take a breath and go back under and swim the rest of the way underwater again. take a quick break to recover and do it again. by the 3rd or 4th try, a tranquil state will come over you and your body will relax. you’ll come to realize that slow, powerful gliding movements will take you farther underwater with less O2 than lots of fast pulls and kicks do. the second purpose of this is to give your limbs a break because you’re gonna finish them off next.
#6 - sprint your ass off. you’re tired and your form looks like crap. throughout the sprints, try to keep your form together and to not breathe every stroke. you should be barely able to keep it together. when done, you should feel like a noodle in a stew pot.
from warmup to warmdown, you should constantly be trying to breathe bilaterally. integrate it in occasionally, then more and more over time. I do not know of a single factor in swimming that someone can tell you to do and you can just do it. every improvement is awkward at first. you have to integrate it at first with some drills, then try to carry it over to some of your other stuff (warm up and warm downs are perfect for that), then soon enough you’ll be doing it all the time. The exact same method can be used to learn to do flip turns, butterfly, and much more. very simple and easy to achieve, and will make you SO much faster.
Sounds like a tough workout. I’ll definitely plan on using it as a model, combining it with some suggestions from my own swim teacher. If I could realize even a fraction of the progress you suggest, it would be better than the piddling progress I’ve been making over the last couple of years. Thanks!
it looks tough, but if you add it up it’s not very long. quality over quantity. definitely ask your coach, cuz you have to modify these things to fit your level and what you want to accomplish. i practically grew up doing those, so I had to change it up and add in major distances to help me in triathlons (vs. swim meets I used to do). to change it up to get more distance training in, I sometimes do the following-
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warmup
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4 x 500s, the last 100 of each 500 extremely hard muscle effort, but not high rpm (speed through strength, not windmilling your arms)
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10 x 100’s on a 1:40
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some underwater swims
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a few short sprints
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warm down
you can also throw in a good curve by doing a “pyramid”. a 50, followed by a 100, then a 150, then, 200, 250, 300, as far up as you want to go and then back down again. it’s a good way to get in a big chunk of distance without realizing it. it really adds up. make sure to do something creative on every other 100 or so. (some kinda drill, no-kick, breathing every 5th stroke, whatever). personally, I don’t believe in spending lots of time doing kicks. they only provide about 10 percent of your forward motion and your time is much better spent learning to coordinate kicking for balance instead of making them kick faster (and sucking up lots of O2). kicking more than a minimal amount is the oxygen black hole of freestyle. you’re much better off putting a pull bouy between your legs and doing some sets that improve your upper body strength instead.
good luck.
WFO - These might be some of the most informative posts I have seen on this forum regarding swim training. Thank you.
Nice post. I’d agree with everything except the hypoxic sets. They are a waste of time. No data supports their efficacy. Unfortunately, they’ve become part of the rite of passage for all swimmers since the '70’s.
-Robert
It depends on you and your fitness. For me, I try to bi-breath as much as possible as it allows me to concentrate on my form (stretch, catch, pull, roll, and glide) get into a rhythm and relax - as another has stated. Often times, I’ll need to hurry scurry and breath every stroke in order to pass a group. But then, I’ll get back to bi-breathing and back into my rhythm. My times have fallen since I started bilateral breathing - from a 30 minute 1.5K to 23 minutes. Plus, I don’t anerobic early in the race which helps me to settle into transition and hammer the bike and run.
Generally, most races are not lost in the swim.
only time you should breathe as less as possible in a race is when the race is a 50m sprint or in the last 5-15 m of a race. watch a 100m race at the olympics. you’ll find that most of the top guys will breathe every 4th or so stroke down the first 50, and will then begin to breathe every 2nd stroke (on their best side) towards the end. they will continue to breathe every 2nd stroke until the last 5-15 metres where its put your head down and ago.
reasons for this:
kicking hard burns up lots of oxygen, you need to breathe regularly to keep kicking hard. this isnt an issue in a 50 m race. you need lots more fitness to do well in 100m than in 50m.
all the top 100m guys do this. so do most of the top 200m guys, as you are still kicking pretty bloody hard in a 200.400m you’ll find more bilateral swimmers there. some people mix it up at times to view the opposition.
if you watch the swimmers who breath bilaterally, you’ll usually find theyre not kicking as hard or dont have as strong a kick. they usually have faster stroke rates as well.
people like grant hackett and kieran perkins will breathe on one side for most of a 1500m race. they are the worlds best over this distance. they do this so they dont lose much of their kick and can keep kicking fairly hard. they’ll have a 4-6 beat kick for most of the distance. the people who dont kick as hard breath bilaterally. lots of female distance swimmers do this.
Generally, most races are not lost in the swim.
Sorry, but this is my pet peeve. I submit that lots of races are lost in the swim. Not many races are *won *in the swim. Lots and lots of triathletes lose disproportionate amounts of time on the swim, often taking themselves right out of contention for placing in their age group.
Vitus979:
Can you have more than one pet peeve? And would it then become pet peeves or pets peeve? Let’s see …what is the difference between the two statements: “most races are not lost in the swim” and “not many races are won in the swim”? Now I’m confused. Yes, I totally agree with your statement when it regards the age groupers (me) and when it regards the shorter races.
Bottom-line: the swimmers always want a longer swim course, don’t they?
Can you have more than one pet peeve? What, are you new here or something? I got lots of pet peeves. 
**what is the difference between the two statements: “most races are not lost in the swim” and “not many races are won in the swim”? **The difference is that it isn’t usually possible to build a huge lead on the swim, then maintain that lead through the bike and run to win the race- the swim isn’t long enough to allow you to build up enough time. On the other hand, it’s plenty possible to take yourself out of contention by losing too much time on the swim. Let’s say your bike and run splits are both in the top three of your age group, but you were way BOP on the swim. Guess what- you probably lost your age group by 10 or 15 minutes, assuming you’re racing oly distance.
there will always be lots of debate over how to swim the fastest and how to breathe and kick. there are some immutable laws of swimming though:
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you need to swim different ways for different distances and also different ways for triathlon vs. non triathlon swims.
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kicking hard burns up lots of O2 and can be a quick way to wear yourself out. good at times, not at others.
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you need to be able to do lots of different things besides just swim to be a well-rounded swimmer and get through a race as efficiently as possible. you could have waves hitting you on one side and u need to breathe on the other, a swimmer causing all kinds of whitewater on your right so you need to breathe on your left, bouys on the left that you need to keep your eye on… the list goes on and on. also, breathing every stroke is probably a little much, but breathing every 4th is too little, and bilateral falls right inbetween. it’s a talent, not a totally necessary one, but the talented swimmers can do it and they use it when they feel like it. just like being able to ride no-hands on a bike isn’t necessary to win a race, but isn’t it odd that you always see the stage winners coming across the finish line with both hands up in the air? being able to ride no-hands is a skill that isn’t used often, but it sure is handy to be able to do (riding up right to get some more air, drinking fluid with the left hand and getting out a gel packet with the right.) swimming bilaterally is the same way. it’s cool and it’s useful. you come up on a turn in a pool swim and you need to breathe and you’ve only got one more stroke before you hit the walland turn. it’s the left arm that’s getting the stroke but you only know how to breathe on your right. you either take a horribly uncoordinated breath on your left and lose time or wait it out and go super-hypoxic on your return lap and lose time.
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doing the underwater swims may be a stupid idea from the 70’s (never heard of that one) but it does teach you how to hold your breath for a long time. it’s what freedivers do to learn how to stay under forever. it also teaches you to relax and how to swim efficiently and using as little 02 as possible. no one will be doing a tri swim underwater anytime soon, but the lessons learned from practicing keeping your cool when there’s a shortage of oxygen are invaluable. rescuing a drowner, diving after your chip if it falls off, catching about 3 waves in a row in the mouth and choking on the water… all good reasons to know how to hold your breath and keep your cool. As a surfer, you often fall off your board and pop up only to have a 6 foot wave crash on your head over and over again. the pros will practice for this by walking on the ocean bottom holding huge stones for as long as possible. this prepares them for the enevitable situation of being held under. same thing could happen to a triathlete being mowed over by a pack of swimmers in a group start. personally, the underwater swims keeps me aware of the fact that less movement uses less O2. do lots of movement, and you gotta come up sooner. teaches you to glide and be more efficient. could possibly not help at all in an outright swim in a pool race. helps in life, though.