Do you guys have a “preferred” side and a “backup” side (as I do now) and is that acceptable or should I be equally comfortable breathing from either sides?
I know the ideal is to be equally comfortable on either side, but do folks find that realistically attainable?
you should work towards being comfortable bilateral breathing.
let’s say you swim 3,500 yds 3x a week, 25 yd pool, (420 laps) ~18 strokes per lap = 7,560 strokes,
breathing every left side stroke is ~3,780. call it 3,500 to account for turns. times 52 weeks = 182,000 times.
this will only cause imbalances/problems to get worse.
if you had a problem with your right hamstring and couldn’t get an even stride when running, would you igonre it and focus on pushing harder with the left leg?
or try to fix the problem?
everyone has imbalances and favorite sides, that’s natural. but don’t train in such a way that it makes it worse.
train your weakness, race your stregnth. train to bilateral breathe, if you are not comfortable enough don’t do it in a race.
but don’t ignore it.
Thanks for the feedback. Comparing it to a running imbalance clarifies my strategy for me. While I don’t ignore issues in my stride, I don’t train to get rid of them to the point of excluding other training. I just stay mindful and work it out as part of my overall training and it usually works out.
Re: bilateral breathing - actually, moving away from bilateral breathing is what made the imbalance apparent. I went to a swim coach (not tri) a couple of years ago when I was first learning and she taught bilateral breathing and that’s what I’ve done all along without a problem (that I was aware of). Recently I had a conversation with a tri swim coach and he spent a few minutes explaining how bilateral breathing wasn’t appropriate (and berating ineffective/mis-informed swim coaches), rather that you should be able to breathe from either side (rather than alternating). That this made more sense from an open water perspective where the chop may be on one side, etc. He also had other reasons. His reasoning made sense so rather than bilateral breathing I tried alternating sides each length or lap. That’s when I noticed how imbalanced my stroke was.
As long as you aren’t having shoulder problems, I wouldn’t worry about a stroke imbalance too much. It’s an adaptation to high stress swim training. If you look at a lot of the top guys like Phelps, Hackett, Prilukov, etc. they’ve got a decided lope to their stroke where one side of their body does more of the work than the other side.
Bilateral breathing- do enough of it to be comfortable breathing to other side, and once you hit that point, breathe however feels most comfortable and whatever fits the conditions.
First of all, I would highly suggest you get to a point where you are very comfortable bi-lateral breathing. If you are learning to swim, then it is an important aspect to ensuring your stroke is balanced.
With that said, once you reach a certain level in swimming and you are very comfortable doing bi-lateral breathing doing longer aerobic efforts, it might not hurt to breath on one side when doing high speed stuff and when racing. I swim faster when I breath to my left. In fact, there is a very slight hitch in my stroke, and for whatever reason I am more effecient this like. I have had many teammates who were on various levels of the USA National team for swimming, and the vast majority of them had a preferred side to breath on. Michael Phelps has an obvious hitch in his freestyle, and it is not uncommon at all.
Its really hard to say without knowing how fast/slow you are and without seeing you swim.
I’m extremely slow! 
If I can open up some time I’m going to find a swim coach again. The first time I had a coach it was to get from not really being able to swim (1 length was a struggle) to the point where I could do laps and complete an Oly (nevermind how poorly I did in the swim). Now that I’m more comfortable in the water I think its time to go over my technique again. I have the feeling there are very basic things I’m doing wrong but I can’t really see them, even through reading and DVDs.
While I’ve made some gains/improvements I personally find the swim too technical to improve through trial and error and self analysis alone…
First of all, I would highly suggest you get to a point where you are very comfortable bi-lateral breathing. If you are learning to swim, then it is an important aspect to ensuring your stroke is balanced.
Yes, this is the most important aspect: that is, to be able to breathe on both sides as little or as much as you want or the situation dictates.
In training, both sides should be used to maintain balance (as mentioned above), but in racing, you need to be able to adjust your stroke to whatever comes your way. Given that you are new-ish to swimming, Ezl, I’d work more on breathing properly on both sides rather than worrying about breathing every 2 or 3 strokes. Do both as you feel, and eventually you’ll instinctively know which suits you better.
Bilateral breathing, for example, can be useful in racing at the start in order to keep an eye on your competitors: most importantly, which feet to draft from. After that some people might maintain bilateral, or might change to unilateral as they wish.