Not really. After doing a bunch of reading on my own (Total Immersion books, tri-sites, swimming forums, etc), I felt that it would be advantageous for me to learn how to do bilateral breathing. I felt that learning this skill would help me in the case that I need to breath to my ‘weak’ side in the swim, and/or give me better control of my breathing rhythmn, and/or force my body to adapt to lower oxygen intake and certain swim efforts.
I made this decision with full intention of breathing to my strong side every stroke come race day.
I realize that it’s not comfortable now, and its messing up my rhythm, but I also believe that if I keep hacking away at it, one day it’ll become second nature to me, no?
Why the stroke change at this stage in the game? Did someone tell you that it was how triathletes were ‘supposed to’ swim?
Ditch the bilateral breathing. You can clearly breathe comfortably on both sides if need be; from that point on, no point in doing something that’s not comfortable in the water, and seems to be messing up your rhythm.
If you want to keep working of breathing on your off side, switch to alternating breathing every two on your left and every two on your right by length.
Yea, actually that was the plan. I started off this whole new stroke doing 100s. Then I did sets of 200s. Then sets of 400s. Then I jumped from 400s to 800s… and thats when the headache started
Maybe, I’ll stick to 600s for a couple workouts before moving to 800s…
I’ll also try making a conscious effort to exhale all the air before my next breathing stroke.
I second ‘ditch the bilateral’ breathing. It’s a good drill but you can incur an oxygen debt problem. If your breathing is ok (not jerking your head up) then breath away (this also passes TI muster, Emmit Hines has a good article on breathing when you want). Also, if you’re doing flip turns you’re missing a breather at the wall. Get the distance down then play with the other. Swim times look good tho’, seems like you’ve passed over to the above avg fitness swimmer level.
“…if I keep hacking away at it, one day it’ll become second nature to me”
I think it’s a good idea to practice breathing on either side. The way I do that is, I breathe to the left going one way up the pool, then on the right coming back the other way. That way I can still breathe every other stroke. I can do bilateral only when I’m going very, very easy at the beginning of a swim, but there’s really no point in incurring oxygen debt. And yes, now that I’ve been doing this for a long time, I can hardly remember which side was my favored one. When I’m in a tri and the sun is coming from one direction, or the waves, I have no trouble switching.
It could also be muscular - breathing bilaterally is introducing and new movement (breathing on the opposite side) and could be causing tension or stress issues in your neck or shoulders which can cause killer headaches.
Re: learning to breath bilaterally, when I was trying to start breathing bilaterally I had a slightly different issue than you, I could breath on either side but I was so bad at swimming I had trouble going more than two strokes without breathing. I started breathing on a 2-3 pattern, breathing every two and then every three strokes, and that made everything so much easier. Most of the time I can now breath every three strokes easily but if I’m going faster or getting tired I’ll switch to 2-3 or even 2-2-3.
actually yes. i think it was just severe oxygen debt. my body was not capable of handling breathing every 3 strokes and as i pushed it, it pushed back giving me the really bad headache. however over the weeks, my body started to adapt, and i think my stroke adapted too. too be honest, im not really sure which made a bigger difference…but i know that i increased my stroke speed so that 3 strokes took less time therefore i didnt end up as much in oxygen debt.
i think my breath control and ability to handle the lack of oxygen also improved and im able to do 800 yds relatively easily with bilateral breathing.
sometimes the ability of the body to adapt to stress just blows my mind.
therefore i didnt end up as much in oxygen debt.