Breathing in Freestyle Swimming

When you are learning to swim better, your breathing technique is going to be important. When you aren’t using a proper technique, you are going to have a problem dealing with the intermediate and advanced techniques that you will use during freestyle swimming.

As you begin exploring proper technique, it will be important that you focus on when you exhale, rather than when you inhale while swimming. When your face is in the water, you should be exhaling. When you turn your head back up, you should be inhaling. With that, you need to keep your head in a single position when you aren’t breathing. As you rotate your body during swimming, you don’t need to roll your head around with you. This can harm your efforts and in some cases, it causes unnecessary dizziness.

Another time during swimming you can focus on exhaling and inhaling is when you are doing the bow wave with your body. This is when the water is dropping to the side of your face and you are able to inhale at this time. When you inhale in this air pocket, you don’t have to make adjustments to your swimming or the position of your head at the time. In fact, if at all possible you don’t want to lift your head in an effort to catch the air as it will negatively impact the bow wave that in naturally there.

Remember, that while swimming, you want to rotate your body and not your head. This is an important area to stress. When you stop rotating your body, you are actually going struggle to inhale properly, while not being able to move forward. If you are unable to stabilize your body and really need to get things moving forward, you can do it bilaterally.

This is where you are able to focus on swimming, like in y'chi, while inhaling from both sides of your mouth. Many swimmers like this approach because it does allow them to make a straight line through the water, rather than focusing on rolling. However, you need to make a conscious effort not to focus on leaning or rolling on one side too hard. Because of the importance of this technique, many professional swimmers will take the time to focus on building up this technique in an effort to master the art.

We all know that we can’t breathe with our head in the water. However, while we are swimming the freestyle, there are techniques we can use to ensure that we are getting the air we need in the pool and ensure that we are able to stay focused on swimming, rather than struggling to catch our breath because of amateur mistakes made while in the water.

Today's Daily Swimming Workout:

Warm-up:  500 as 25 breaststroke, 75 freestyle non-stop continuous

Swim with Long swim fins:  10 X 50 alternating freestyle and backstroke by 50

Swim 8 X 200 alternating 200 Individual Medley (50 each of butterfly, backstroke, breaststroke, freestyle) and 200 freestyle

Pull with Hand Paddles on:  800 of 50 one armed butterfly, 150 freestyle, continuous

Cool down:  200 relaxed, your choice

Total:  3600 meters or yards

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