If I am right handed, should I be breathing to my right side? I know bi-lateral breathing is better, but it’s easier to get into a rhythm if you only breath to one side.
I’m asking this because I find I get into a better rhythm if I breath to my left, but maybe I would be going faster if I breathed to my dominant side? My left arm does tend to get a little more tired than my right, but if my right arm is stronger, maybe I’ll go faster if it did more work?
I’ve always breathed to the right - as a high school swimmer and now that I’m getting into triathlons. There is a significant strength difference - my left arm is stronger - from swimming this way. Lately, I’ve been trying to force myself to try alternating my breathing. It’s incredibly difficult for me to consistently breathe bilaterally. Is it worth the trouble of learning to do this effectively? I’m assuming that the strength in my right arm would improve, but who knows. Maybe the awdwardness is slowing me down enough to negate any benefit.
what say the swimming gurus?
I breath to one side on the way down the pool, the other side on the way back. I’ve always breathed on two’s and find I can get into a good rythim. However, I breath to one side, on BOTH sides. Most of the time down the course one side, and back on the other. Don’t cheat yourself and get “lop-sided” strength. If you want to breath on one side at a time, make sure you practice it on both sides.
-bcreager
I am right handed and have always gone for air on my left side. I think it is because I have more strength and control on my right arm and get a better stroke that facilitates breathing.
That being said, I now breath on both sides because my right arm gets tired from the extra work over long distances. I use it as a pacing benchmark, breath right - Three strokes - breath left. if I am getting too tired to alternate I know that I am working too hard in most cases. In sprints I will breath only on my left because i feel faster and more comfortable on that side.
This is a really interesting question. I breathe to my left, and kind of ‘lean’ on my stringer right arm if I don’t balance my body. My mechanics have gotten a lot better because, with all the long-distance swimming we do, I had to make my stroke more symmetrical: the old stroke, which was ok for sprinting, put a lot of stress on one shoulder, and I got a lot of pain.
I’ve often wondered about whether I should take advantage of my stronger (stronger being a really dubious descriptor) right arm by breathing on the other side, but not enough to experiment.
I’m so comfortable with mono- (uno-? homo-?) lateral breathing that I don’t run into problems at a start, with waves, whatever, and the gains I get from other drills I think probably give me more efficiency than solving that problem.
My advice would be to develop a long, smooth, balanced stroke, at least, that has worked for me. The problem, as I experience it, with breathing to one side, is a tendency for my feet to trail off to one side, creating drag, and a problem getting my right shoulder out of the water on the off-breathing side. I do lots of drills to counter these problems.
Andrew Moss
I’m right handed and breath on my left, but I think that most people tend to breath on the right.
I think it’s a good idea to be able to breath on both sides, but most real swimmers do not breath bilaterally in races or during practice unless forced to do so by their coach.
If for no other reason than ergonomic balance and injury prevention, you should become comfortable with bilateral breathing.
All the other benefits have been stated here.
If you can breathe bilaterally in training but have a faster dominant side established, you can one-side it for race day (if it works out wind chop wise) and then go back to spreading the muscle stress out by bilaterally breathing in training.
I know bi-lateral breathing is better, but it’s easier to get into a rhythm if you only breath to one side.
Bi-lateral breathing is not “better.” Bi-lateral breathing is a great skill to have because it will help you navigate but for most swimmers, it is not the fastest way to swim (unless it is keeping you from going off course in an open water swim). In fact, the worse you are at swimming, the less likely you are to be able to pull off bilateral breathing and still swim up to your speed potential.
The best way to breath is the way that makes you fastest.
**I’m asking this because I find I get into a better rhythm if I breath to my left, but maybe I would be going faster if I breathed to my dominant side? My left arm does tend to get a little more tired than my right, but if my right arm is stronger, maybe I’ll go faster if it did more work? **
An assemetrical stroke is actually pretty normal.** **Some of the fastest swimmers in the world favor one side and it is not always the side one would assume should be “dominate.” While if you are right handed, you might reasonably assume you’ll go faster if your right arm did more work. But, it is also possible that you’ll end up evening out your stroke not by increasing force applied by the right arm but by decreasing the force applied by your left. You’re stroke will be more even but you’ll be slower.
There are no pat answer to these questions. Get in the habit of using the pace clock to time every single repeat you do in practice. Do some “time trials” every so often too. The clock will tell you what is working for you and what isn’t.
If you came from a decent high school program and were quick enough to make USS A/B or better time standards, it’s not worth changing your stroke now. IMO. As STP said, a certain amount of assymetry is perfectly normal among good to elite level freestylers. Check out the Yuri Prilukov footage here:
http://www.kurtz.se/swim/index.html
Guy’s a sub-15 1500M guy and is healthy enough to show up and swim well at every big meet out there the last couple of years.
As long as you’re comfortable enough brearthing bilaterally to sight when you have to, nothing wrong with sticking with what you’re comfortable. Only time I ever really breathe bilaterally is when I’ve got ti sight during races, during warm up- my warm up pace is low exertion enough thatt it’s actually kind of uncomfortable to breathe every two, so I’ll mix it up every 3, 4 or 5, and one in a while I’ll throw in some left side breathing while at triathlon race pace because I want to remind myself how it’s supposed to feel. Outside of warm up, I’m probably a 90% right side breather.