Alright, so I have been swimming the last few months with the “3 stroke - breathe - 3 stroke - breathe” pattern and it has been great except I get very tired, very quickly. But the breathing is starting to feel good. Today at the pool I stopped and asked the Masters coach about my stamina and he said get away from that pattern and go to “2 stroke or 1 cycle” pattern. So I did. It was odd but I felt like I had more energy until…I started to get water in my nose and couldn’t get it out.
So, the coach gives me a nose clip to wear. I have never worn one and so this was really new to me. But after 25 yds I couldn’t get a clean breath. Water kept getting into my mouth and I couldn’t get it out before I needed to breathe again.
My questions are:
What might I be doing wrong and need to do to correct it?
What is the “more” suggested stroke pattern for a triathlete?
I just did an indoor sprint with a 500 yd swim that took me almost 10 minutes. In three weeks I have another sprint (outdoor) that is 550 yds and I would really like to have a better idea of what I am going to do before then.
Blow all your air out underwater, then when you come up to breathe all you have to do is suck air in, not spit it out. THen 3 strokes to a breath should feel absolutely fine.
For 500yds, breathing every 3 is fine. I go every 2 on long swims and switch sides every certain number of laps 'cause I’m an evenness freak.
Your stamina could be improved by adjusting your head and hip position in the water if it isn’t optimal. If you’re not kicking the entire distance, that might be another thing. Not turning enough on your side is also a very common faux pas. If none of these things, then work on your reach. Get those extra inches naturally ; ) If absolutely none of this helps after 2 weeks or so, then just struggle through longer workouts. It’ll come.
Blow all your air out underwater, then when you come up to breathe all you have to do is suck air in, not spit it out. THen 3 strokes to a breath should feel absolutely fine.
x2. What kind of a coach hands out nose clips??
You should be perfectly fine breathing every 3, even every 4, 5 6 or whatever depending on your effort level and speed.
Do whatever it takes to stay comfortable in the water. If you were better off breathing every 3 strokes, stick with it. But, that’s kind of like running while holding your breath. Try a 2 breaths right, 3 strokes, 2 breaths left and see if that works. Bilateral breathing is great and can help even out your stroke. But, if you don’t feel like you can maintain your speed while doing it, or if you get out of breath while doing it, then breathe more and save the bilateral breathing for warm-up and pull sets. You’ll get the arguments for bilateral breathing…more even stroke, open water it will allow you to breathe away from the waves or an aggressive swimmer, etc., etc., etc.
I don’t know that there is a more suggested breathing pattern for triathletes. I would almost say pick whatever side you are most comfortable breathing on and stick with it. Or better, do some hard open water swimming and find out what works best and use that in the pool…assuming your only tris are not in the pool. Finding out what works best for you is going to be better than any of the reasons that someone tells you to do it a different way.
Nose clips are kind of a fashion no-no in my opinion and shouldn’t be necessary if you are swimming and breathing properly.
Sometimes breathing ‘all’ of your air out when your face is in the water can be confusing or at least make some swimmers worry about getting enough air or at least running out of air while their face is in the water. You might try holding your breath until right before you turn your head to breathe, then let out a bunch of air so that when you do breathe all you have to do is inhale.
I breathe on 3. I also have done 3, 5, 7 exercised. Knowing how to breath on both sides without screwing up your stroke is important in open water. If you can’t breath comfortably on both sides and switch easily you will inevitably swim next to someone who is choking you with their splash.
Relaxing is key to this. You are probably taking fairly shallow breaths, not fully exhaling which doesn’t allow you to get a good dose of oxygen with a full in breath. Once you start to run out you likely get a little panicky which doesn’t help the situation.
Noseplugs are a no-no. Talk about messing up your breathing!
Get away from your Masters workout and spend some time swimming easily and practice your breathing. When in a workout you are probably working too hard to get good breathing technique.
Not to be too repetitive, but I advocate breathing as much as you need to. At the start of the race I may swim 25 to 50 yards every 3rd arm stroke (left, right, left: breathe to the right.). The purpose is to establish a good clean stroke at the start of the race. How long I hold this pattern depends on the distance of the race. For a 500yd race I may only do this for 15 to 20 yds. After that it is primarily every two stokes (right, left: breath - to the right). I will reverse the patterns every so often so that I breathe to the left to balance things out or to sight or check out competition, but I prefer the right.
On top of that every once in a while, if I am swimming really hard, I will sneak an extra breathe (right - breathe, left - breathe, right breathe) and then go back to my pattern. As far as taking in a bit of water in a race see below.
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(where is Gary Hall Senior when we need him
I wouldn’t worry about the nose clips. There is a very legit story that explains the need for them that I won’t bother ya’ll with.
Okay, in my normal 3 stroke swim I breath very easily and I do blow out underwater. That was all coming along nicely. I have been told twice in the past week by long time swimmers that I am swimming a bit up-hill. I tend to look at my hands as they enter the water instead of looking down. I tried doing that during my swim today but I think that I was trying to adjust too much at once and that got me and my body frustrated. My kicks are very minimal and typically only during breaths.
I am doing the “Zero to 1650” swim program and I really like it but I can’t get past the 200 yd barrier without feeling completely wasted. I have been swimming at least twice but usually three times a week since November and I am still struggling.
Yep, nose plugs are bad. Not only do you need to be exhaling through your nose (at least in part) but you need to be inhaling through it too. Well, NEED is a bit strong, but you will benefit if you learn to inhale/exhale simultaneously through both nose and mouth. Makes for more complete respiration.
I can’t specifically say what you were doing wrong that resulted in taking in water…just that you will quickly learn not to. Your breathing was supposedly fine when doing bi-lateral, why should breathing to the same side suddenly be a problem? Just keep at it and in only a few laps you’ll probably be fine, the nose plugs were a bad idea.
I strongly recommend you breath more often…unless you are swimming along at zone 2 which is the domain of iron-distance races then you’re going to need more oxygen. Another thing that helps me is to take the breath in and hold my breath until just before the next one. I then exhale it all in one quick burst and suck in the next one. I feel like I get more oxygen from a lung full of air that way vs. slowly exhaling it all throughout the stroke.
Nix on the nose clips. Unless your intent is to some upside down synchronized swimming during the swim leg, there is simply no need for them. You just need to work on technique.
There’s more going on here than just breathing frequency. Overall body position & what your head is doing needs to be looked at by someone. Getting water in your nose from simple rotary/alternate breathing is somewhat atypical. You should be able to swim with your mouth wide open all the time simply by varying the air pressure in your lungs & mouth.
Breathing every 3 strokes, theoretically, helps balance out your stroke. It also allows you to be comfortable breathing on either side which is helpful come open water time (you won’t know what side the waves/swells may be hitting you, where the sun is & being able to sight). However, come race time most of us ditch the 3 stroke pattern until we settle into the race.
Swimming is a technique driven sport. Develop great skills first. Stamina will come while you perfect your stroke.
Sounds to me like you are breathing in/out too deeply. There is no need to take deep breaths when you swim, think about how you breath when you run or ride - are you breathing all the way in/out each time - probably not. The trick I tell people is take “sips” of air.
I personally breath only on the left every other stroke. I realize there is value in training with bilateral breathing (every 3rd arm stroke) for proper balance but seriously, in a race you will spend as much time lifting your head up to sight as turning it to the side so IMO not a big deal.
As for the nose plug, its probably not going to help you since, as TC suggests, you should blow bubbles out of your nose. That said, a teammate of mine at Tennessee won a silver medal at the Atlanta olympics wearing a nose plug.
The suggestions so far have been great. I have been working on my body rotation but I know I have a ways to go. I still need to lower my chin and my stroke is a bit inconsistent. I do want to try to at least incorporate the 2-stroke/breathe into some training sessions before I rule it out. Swimming long distance (200 or more) is rather new to me and so I still have lots to learn.
Most of my triathlons for the near future will be pool or small lakes that do not tend to get overly choppy so I am not too worried about waves. Other swimmers…yeah…I found out about that pretty fast last year in my triathlon debut. But I moved out of the primary line by a few feet and that helped.
I get what you all are saying about “just get going and then settle into your stroke” during a race. I lost my stroke and never really got it back during my initial race and ended up doing the back stroke a lot. But I would really like to try to do this years swimming as close to proper as I can get. I wasted a lot of energy swimming badly and it really affected me later on. I lost about 25-30 minutes in the bike/run because of the amount of energy I used in the swim. I really don’t want to do that again.
I just swam 2500 yards and I don’t feel tired at all. I did 100-100-400-400-500-1000 all freestyle and breathing every cycle. The other day when I first tried this I was breathing to the left. Today I went to the right and that made a HUGE difference. I cannot believe I did 1000 straight at the end of my swim. I hadn’t planned on it but I missed a session this week and I had the time so I said “why not” and went for it.
Only a few times did I get water in my mouth or nose unlike the other day when it was happening constantly. My only real issue today was the ring finger on my right hand got cramped. Any thoughts about that?
