I want to start a conversation with you about breathing problems and their possible causes.
Feeling ‘out of breath’ (when I don’t think I should be) is one of the most common complaints I hear from swimmers and it has come up recently with some members in the Dojo. In this post I want to map out many of the possible causes for this.
First, it is likely that the problem of being ‘out of breath’ is caused by several factors affecting you together.
Second, some of these factors are things you can improve with know-how and training once you identify what they are. Others are things you may compensate for with changes to your technique.
Third, some of the problems could be with your technique (wasted effort), some with your conditioning (improvable conditions or unimprovable conditions), and some of it could be a matter of perception – you may need to change the way you interpret uncomfortable sensations that come with higher exertion.
I don’t know what is affecting you. But as you read through this list (and there could be many more that I have not listed) you may suspect certain ones are related to your situation.
Here is a list of possible causes that come to mind….
In Body & Stroke
These are factors that will either make it harder to get to breath (to inhale) or just make more work for the body which increases demand for air exchange.
- Faults in body position which create excess drag – you have to work harder and require more air exchange than necessary.
- Faults in the stroke pattern which increase drag or reduce power transfer – you work harder but accomplish less.
In Breathing Technique
These are factors that will either make it harder to get to breath (to inhale) or just make more work for the body which increases demand for air exchange.
- You drop the lead arm (or ‘break the ice’ as some of you have learned from me) before it’s time to switch the arms.
- You breathe too late in the window of opportunity.
- You hold your breath underwater.
- You try to make massive air exchanges – nearly emptying the lungs on each exhale, feeling desperate to fill the lungs on each inhale.
- Your turn to air and return to ‘face-down’ position is so disruptive to balance and streamline that it breaks your momentum on each breathe requiring two or three strokes to restore these.
In Breathing Pattern
This is actually a complicated situation – when training you in breathing patterns we hope you will naturally fall into suitable patterns without thinking about it too much. But the fact is, your brain is having to sort through these variables to find the best sustainable arrangement to let you swim the speed and distance you want.
I will list these one-by-one but realize that they are interdependent, affecting each other…
- Your stroke tempo is inappropriate (too fast or too slow)
- Your breathing pattern is too infrequent for your intensity level
- The volume of air exchange is too much or too little (often too much)
- The amount of effort per stroke is too high
In Conditioning
The longer you have been swimming and the younger you started, the larger ‘bank account’ of fitness you have to draw from when you get older, and the higher the potential you could possibly return to if you fall away for a while. These factors listed below could be from either a small ‘bank account’ or one that has been neglected for too long.
- You are older.
- You do not have a long and strong history in systematic swim training.
- You lack experience with high-aerobic athletics.
- You have been ill recently.
- You have been training frequently for less than 6 months.
- You swim (on average) less than 3 times per week.
- You rarely include any high-intensity (80% to 100% effort) work in your training.
- You rarely swim continuously for duration longer than 5 minutes at a time.
Frankly, those who have experienced high performance when younger have the most to lose, and can be most discouraged. If they have neglected their fitness for a long time it will be hard to get close to the potential at this age they could have if they had kept it up. While those who have not had a strong endurance athletic background, chances are they are not even close yet to swimming at the potential they could with more appropriate fitness-building training – any progress will feel better than they have had before.
But good news for all of you – you can build up a good ‘bank account’ of fitness again. As you get older you just have to be extremely dedicated to building it and maintaining it.
In Your Head (consciously or subconsciously)
Note: all of these listed below assume your body is functioning in a healthy way and the uncomfortable signals in your body are what is normal and appropriate for that effort level – these are sensations that you need to change your relationship with because they will always be present in healthy high-effort athletics.
- You feel uncomfortable with high heart rate.
- You feel uncomfortable with prolonged, deep respiration.
- You feel uncomfortable when lactic acid builds in your muscles.
- You hold your breath without realizing it.
- You hold excess tension in parts of your body (which don’t need it) without realizing it.
- You feel uncomfortable with the buildup of carbon dioxide in your system between breaths and during turns.
These final factors all relate to your perception – you are working hard, breathing hard, heart rate pumping harder, and that is normal and healthy and sustainable if you will accept these sensations as OK. Sometimes inexperienced endurance athletes misinterpret healthy discomfort as danger signals that things are going to break down, when in fact, the body is ready to keep going for an hour or two.
We can discuss solutions to each of these sections in the next blog.
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I probably suffer from many of the causes mentioned in this post, and they are indeed targets for improvement. However, the one change that made it easier for me to continue training, was a switch from 3BB (Three Beat Breath) to 2BB. In the pool, I alternate sides every 25m, and in open water, every twenty or so strokes (unless the waves dictate otherwise). 2BB is most helpful when I am concentrating on technique, and the stroke rate is slower.
If you keep other factors such as effort and tempo the same, then making the breaths more frequent should provide a greater sense of adequate respiration.
Why not just breathe every stroke?? Well, we all know that breathing is disruptive at least in some small way.
If turning to breathe is very disruptive to the stroke (interfering with balance) and it takes a couple strokes to get it back, the danger is that a swimmer breathing every two strokes will never quite get to a state of balanced swimming. So, it is imperative that breathing technique keep improving so that it is less and less disruptive – then 2BB is practically inconsequential.
Hello Mat,
as usual, you put mostly complete all parts together. There is one thing I found with two of my students where I don’t know which points of yours will cover it and how to work on with special FPs.
Both studens have a more or less good posture in SG, Scate and while examining recovery drills. But if they only should turn the head to right or left some degrees in synch with their shoulder. Their bodies seem to become plumb and the body and head is 10-20cm below surface at once. I’m sure something happens to let them become tensed in many bodyparts at same time. But it’s hard to get rid of.
Second problem is my own since a long time (aware of it for seven months). Tracey found it: Normally I’m looking some degrees back when taking a breath. Believe me I did far more than 2000 mindful repetitions, and I am able to inot do it, but only if this is my single FP. A second or other FP disturbs it, nearly at once. My feeling(!), the fix needs a special tensed(!) back down to hips and the head must not(!) be totally relaxed. But till now I could not ingrain it.
Best regards,
Werner
PS: On my first look into the Dojo I found a point “Comeback after a longer time-out” or similar. Would like to jump in there, but can’t find it again…
Here is a thought on that sinking swimmer – for some reason the sensation of turning to breathe can make some people feel very vulnerable, or perhaps there is great tension associated with the desperate turn for breath – and so in non-breathing Skate Position the swimmer’s body is properly firm but soft and slides near the surface, but at the moment he turns toward breath the whole body becomes stiff, and he makes it worse by pushing down with that lead arm.
This is one of the reasons I came up with the focal point of ‘Don’t Break The Ice’ so that we would become aware of any part of the body, especially that lead arm, that starts to push downward in our faulty attempt to reach upward with the head. If we are sliding along ‘on thin ice’ we have to learn to hold shape with no downward pressure points, and turn carefully to breathe without disrupting that body laying gently on the ice.
Here is that article I think you were referring to.
https://dojo.mediterraswim.com/forums/topic/kb-getting-back-in-after-time-off/
Hello Mat,
thank you very much. The `Don’t break the Ice´ brings a lot of work. We found there are (too) many body-parts the students are not aware of, even when I softly touch on…
Best regards,
Werner
PS: One of the students first changed to a one-arm-breaststroke… She wouldn’t breal the ice 🙂
And for you too, it takes concentration on keeping that long-and-firm in the horizontal sense, but very soft in the vertical sense (no downward pressure from any body part).
When I turn to breathe it feels like I am floating very delicately near the surface, and any excess tension, any downward pushing would instantly shatter that floating sensation. I hope the image is not confusing, but it might be a bit like a ballet artist flying through the air – weightless for just a moment. It is that kind of dynamic balance. Forces are all directed forward in that split second, with none allowed to push downward or the whole thing crashes.
Hello Mat,
last reply went to the wrong place. Sorry!
Yes, that’s the article I had in mind. Should it just be an article, or for discussion? Could not write a comment…
Best regards,
Werner
…. UUUps, seems, all my replies are one too far forward. So I’ll add this one to your last post… here too…
I do feel sure, my breathing is without feelable tension and the bad habbit of looking back is not as extreme that others would say: What Kind of rubbish are you doing there? And with FP I can fiddle it out. But if I don’t focus on it, it’s back very fast. Puzzling out this, the rectangular turning head feels a little bit odd and not as natural as the some degrees looking back breathe. It even feels not as streamlined on my face as it “should”. And the worst thing of all is, I don’t have any idea what’s the cause of it. Looking 10° back simply feels more right than the right turn/nodd of the head…
Best regards,
Werner
Best regards,
Werner
I discovered I was holding my breath going into and away from the wall. Once I corrected that, I have one less variable to deal with in figuring out why I am not comfortable breathing.
What remains is that I might be trying to completely empty my lungs. When I inhale, it feels desperate, like I can’t get enough air in that short window of opportunity, the trough from the bow wave. But that happens only when I breathe to right. Balance, stability and smoothly turning my head is effortless on the left.
The range of motion in turning my neck to the right is greatly limited. I’ve adjusted by keeping my head in alignment with my spine, pointing my nose straight down, reaching up with my mouth instead of turning my head up, and breathing at the first part of the catch. All this has greatly helped me breath more easy to the right. But not enough. I’m still out of breath when I breathe to the right.
When I try to keep my goggles completely underwater, I swallow water and get no air. My recovery is slower. As I’m writing this, I pause, and practice dry land breathing to both sides. If I have short sips of air and do not try to exhale completely breathing is fine. Do you suggest practice this sort of breathing on dry land and then try to replicate it in the pool?
And practice speeding up my recovery on the right, as a second focal point?
I am seeing more on the topic of breathing that both instructs us to breathe from a deeper place, but breathe less – though that sounds contradictory. And, the exhale is far more important to train than we might realize because it is the exhale that sets up the corresponding demand for inhale.
What is your breathing pattern? And what do you think the approximate tempo is when you are in these kind of swims which leave you feeling more desperate for air?
Can you swim as some sort of ‘walk-like’ pace such that you avoid this sensation of breathlessness for longer distances? That would be a good thing to achieve first, because it would create a reference point then for any changes in your body that increase sense of respiratory stress once you speed up the tempo.
The angle of the turn of your head is relative to the shoulders. So, If you are feeling like your neck can turn adequately and comfortable toward the strong side, but not quite so on the weak side, then first check the relative angle of head rotation on each side (you can do this at home just standing there). If you feel you can, in fact, turn your head in both directions as far, relative to the shoulders, then in the water check that your torso angle is the same on both sides.
If the torso turns 45 degrees how much further must the head turn to have the side of the face break the surface of the water? We can estimate this by doing a rehearsal on land, turning to both sides. Then we can test it in the water to make sure we are doing the same amount on both sides.
As for the right side being harder to breathe on, I discovered I was lifting up my head and straining my neck. Once I focused on the sensations of what it’s like to rest my head on the water and turn without lifting, the breath comes more easily.
However I think I was over gliding and the timing was also throwing my catch off. Would you say that the catch starts before the elbows are aligned and right at the moment when the recovery elbow starts moving forward?
As for the rate of exchange of air, I am now
focusing on less volume on the inhale and less output on the exhale. And it works. I’m no longer out of breath. Thanks for the feedback. This was relatively painless. And it was very interesting to figure it out.
Now I have to find a way to swim continuously, enter and exit from the wall.
That is a great report Jill! Glad those relatively painless adjustments made a dramatic difference.
It is possible that in the act of training the breath timing you could pause the stroke just before the hand exits the water (like pausing in Skate Position) to finish the breath and then resume the recovery swing. It may be necessary to pause like this just to notice the timing of the breath in order to then make it start and finish earlier. This pause could very likely create an over-glide. If it is temporary, as part of the observation and correction process, then no worries.
But the timing of the arm switch should remain anchored to the position of the arms relative to each other. From the elbow of your lead arm in Skate Position, draw a line across to the other arm track. That is the point where the fingers of your recovery arm will enter. When those fingers hit that point, that is when you should set the catch. That is when the arms switch position. The breathing timing should not affect the catch timing or switch timing of the arms – rather, the breath timing must conform to the timing of the arms. Did I understand your question correctly?
“You try to make massive air exchanges – nearly emptying the lungs on each exhale, feeling desperate to fill the lungs on each inhale.” does one not empty the lungs during breathing in swimming? if not, are the lungs never emptied and refreshed with oxygen? in cycling, i’ve always understood that exhaling all air is actually the most important so that you can take in enough oxygen to maximize effort.
There are probably several physiological and psychological dynamic going on here – but to summarize, you’ll be a lot more comfortable if you take smaller, partial exchanges of air, and do it frequently enough that you are ok skipping a breath from time to time. If you fully exhale, not only do you remove your buoyancy, you create a desperate situation where you had better get that next inhale or else – the water and walls and other swimmers do not always cooperate with your need to get that breath NOW. And the more you exhale the longer you need to keep the face turned toward the air to get a proportional inhale – all that is a set up for problems.
Even while running hard one does not completely empty the lungs. But how the breath is done does matter. Even while holding a firm, stretched core, the breath needs to happen deep in the abdomen – this will give a higher quality exchange in a partial exhale/inhale.
i’ll give it a shot as soon as the doc releases back into the pool…thanks