As well, as your skill level improves you don’t work as hard to move a yard as you did previously resulting in greater speed and less effort. Skill adaptations and improved efficiencies will result in lower heart rates.//
**Have you ever swam before? Kind of joking here, but kind of not. What you say is true if you were to fix your pace and stay there forever, does anyone ever do that? You get more efficient, you move more water, and yes you can go an old pace with a lower HR. But of course what most of us in the real world do is go faster and jack that HR back up to where it ought to be. I wish you were right and my 50 years of swimming allowed me to be on some sort of cruise control, but I get in the pool and there it is, smacking me in the face again. **
And keep in mind that the only sport that has metered breathing is swimming, and when you deprive the body of O2 the heart beats faster to compensate. That is the reason that people that race hard from the gun will most often have their highest HR towards the end or beginning of the swim where they are trying to capture feet that are faster than they are, or sprinting in with a group and blasting T1 to get on the bike as quick as possible…
Yes I swam competitively from age 7 through college. I understand your points but would state that raising heart rate is not the sole purpose of training. Nor is raising your heart rate the only way one gets faster. If I can move faster without pushing my heart rate to very high levels I’ve become a better swimmer.
Metered breathing absolutely occurs in cycling and running. In fact, the harder you work the more metered your breathing becomes. Your heart wants to pump oxygenated blood so your breathing to oxygenate that blood is appropriately timed. That timing breaks down the more anaerobic and higher heart rate one becomes. There’s a comfortability that many people lack in the water and they associate it with not breathing whenever. Understanding you meter your breathing all the time when you exercise can hopefully change some people’s minds.
Understanding you meter your breathing all the time when you exercise can hopefully change some people’s minds.
I do not get this point. When I run, I do not try to stifle my breath rate. I breath as much as my body wants to (IOW, I do not meter my breathing). In the pool I absolutely meter my breathing because I know if I inhale while my face is in the water in will be most unpleasant (at best).
This does actually make sense, freediving background i assume
Does this positive pressure add up when wearing a wetsuit
Is there HR data available with vs without wetsuit
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