To improve your capabilities and comfort with breathing, here are a few more encouragements and ideas for you…
Make sure you emphasize the exhale in your non-breathing moments of the stroke. Contrary to instincts, this urgency and ‘breathlessness’ you feel while swimming is likely not a hunger for more O2. What your body is desperate for is the removal of CO2 from the blood stream.
If you are holding your breath, you are going to suffer. It is stressful for the body. Practice releasing a small, steady stream of bubbles from your nose the entire time your face is underwater.
Less CO2, Not More O2
I learned this from breath-holding activities – when you inhale then hold breath underwater, when you start to feel the urge to come to the surface to breathe, just start softly exhaling. The release of carbon dioxide (CO2) will calm those alarms and buy you more time before you actually need to take in more oxygen (O2).
In conjunction with this emphasis on the exhale, practice a ‘quick sip of air’ on the inhale. Common instinct is to take an equally long and drawn-out inhale to match the long steady exhale, but we don’t need to. In easy to moderate exertion, we don’t need more O2, we just need to get rid of more CO2.
Here is what I am coming to understand about respiration: the blood, even at moderate to high exertion, has more than enough O2 in it for our needs. We only use a part of it and actually expel quite a bit on each exhale along with CO2.
Fun Fact: rescue breathing works on this principle – normal air contains about 20% oxygen. The air you exhale contains about 14% oxygen. This is the reason CPR works – you have excess O2 coming out of your blood, out of your lungs and it is enough to keep another person alive. That means you have more than enough O2 in your blood to keep you going for quite a while without having to replenish it 100% on every breath.
So, what our breathlessness likely indicates is that we need to expel CO2 more aggressively, not take in O2 more aggressively. When we rid the blood of CO2 this triggers the muscles to pull more O2 from the blood. Common breathlessness in swimming is not a problem of too little O2 but too much CO2 in the blood.
Training To Be Comfortable With Discomfort
This idea needs to be joined with another – when under athletic exertion you will feel signals of discomfort because the cardio-vascular system is working in a different energy-processing mode. When that discomfort start to grow initially, it may compel you to stop at the wall soon – you experience this as a high heart rate and breathlessness. Why are you stopping? Likely because some part of your brain is afraid that this discomfort is going to get worse and worse until you pass out.
Actually, you may be surprised to find that the discomfort rises only to a moderate level and then it doesn’t get any worse. You may find that, though it is initially unfamiliar and therefore uncomfortable, you could actually keep swimming in that discomfort and go much further than you imagine. Your body would be OK. In fact, after some time (like 5 to 15 minutes) your body would adapt to it and the discomfort would go down, if only you would train in that zone a little while longer. After some weeks of training this way, you may find that those alarms no longer go off and you have much less negative association with those sensations – they are no longer labeled as ‘uncomfortable’; they are just normal now. Practice this longer and you may even look forward to it! The sensations would then be associated with the flow and fitness you gain in each practice.
A Dry-Land Exercise
Here is something you can do any time any where. I especially like to do this as a self-calming exercise.
Any time you think of it, simply make a steady and complete exhale and then hold your breath for a while with the lungs nearly empty. It could be just a couple seconds or many more. Just wait there for a moment – you may pay attention to the soft beating of your own heart in some parts of the body. Observe the sensations in your lungs when they are quite empty. Observe the changes in sensations in your body and breathing muscles as the second tick by. Get familiar with this sequence of changes and sensations. See what happens when you hold just a little longer past that initial discomfort. What were before alarms that made your feel desperation can become mere sensory information that you handle mindfully. These no longer need to be labeled as ‘uncomfortable’.
When you take your first inhale try to make it soft as normal – resist the urge to compensate for the extra time holding your breath. Breath softly and normally after each breath hold.
This little exercise is one way you can encourage your body’s tolerance and comfort when respiration is limited by those extra breath holds you take during a flip turn, and for breathing within the constraints of your stroke cycle.
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Hello Mat,
you’re right with all the phyisological stuff. But I’m feeling the discomfort even when reading it. There must be something psychological else, overturning the physiological reality. At least somtimes….
Remember some thirty years ago, when I did scubadiving. Most times I’d used just a little bit more than half pressured air than my (male) partners (females where a little better than most men, there I’d to use 2/3 to 3/4…) It was a time when we tried to use as less lead belt as possible (with 6mm Neoprene full suit) so exhaling became important. I could only use as little air when dealing around lungs half filled using the air in for balance too. Exhaled totally and trying to hold or breathe very slowly I needed as much air as the others… And it felt much more uncomfortable all the divetime…
Nearly the same when swimming. A linear exhale will cause extreme discomfort all the time, no matter what pattern I’ll breathe. I try to exhale continues, but 1/2 to 1/4 rest volume has to stay inside and be pushed out when my mouth cleares surface.
But yes emphasizing the exhale pushing out CO2 will really help to get in fresh air more easy and enjoy it more.
So my question is more, will the steps from discomfort (usual breahtlesness sometimes in my swims) to extreme discomfort in swimming (trying to deal with totally exhaling) and exercises at desk have a pay off? And how long should I test it before yes/no-decicision has to be made? And will the improvement be a metaboloic or just a psychological one?
Strange, thinking about this kind of exercises, I feel they scratch at the border of TI-Training. But may be I’m just too scared, and they show to me exactly what is right for me and according to which I should set my pool- (and desk-)time…
Best regards,
Werner
There is no doubt there is a strong connection between the physical action of breathing and some psychological experience – it is not normal for human land-mammals to hold breath underwater and take just an occasional sip of air at the surface. So, we either acquire a skill and relaxed mind about it, or some strong protective reaction remains in our brain and makes us feel stress when holding breath underwater.
But, before you work on the psychological aspects of your breathing experience in the water, I feel you should get some data on your lung capacity and your aerobic capacity first. If you could see what your actual physical cardio-vascular situation is right now, on a scale of your peers from sedentary to athletic, then you could have a more clear idea of whether the main boundary is a physical one or a psychological one.
Then the next step I would recommend is that you seek out some training for breathing on land – understanding on how good breathing works, and exercises you could do at home or at work. This would build a better foundation – physically and mentally – for your swimming. Even if you discover that your cardio-vascular capacity is smaller than you thought, it is likely improvable with specific training, and that training should start on land, not in the water.
I wish I had the tests and exercises you all need, but this is a topic I am just starting to study myself. I think there is a lot of potential here that most people have not tapped into. We’re walking through our lives not realizing we could breathe better, sleep better, feel better – if only we had some re-training on how to do some of these basic things.
Hello Mat,
some more thoughts/aspects…
Pure breathing-exercises on land will result more in the psychological part, or how to learn new (old?) habits how to breathe . Think they can’t result in improvement in cardio-vascular capacity, maybe in better/efficenter use of the already existing.
Some months ago David Chen emphasized the goodies of belly-breathing in the TI-Forum. Most of us will have to learn it (again). You can emphasize the exhale too, but you have also to focus on inhale to get the air down enough by relaxation. An advantage of this is a slightly better balance… if you hold some air (let it slowlier out) and don’t exhale all.
Mandy demonstrates the need to hold some air back for effortless floating in
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3VV4PwIBCQ&feature=youtu.be&list=PLtkHLt3sCyVqsx3sQUjGR9W0tiYmcH6MZ
The basic things.. yes re-training can’t be wrong. And playing around with emphasized exhaling and holding back inhale for some time might lead to better breathing (felt and habits) over all. But as important may be to find out, why we did give up the good habits and changed to the bad. And can we cirumvent these reasons?
Best regards,
Werner
Hi Mat,
I played a bit with the pattern you described, to get started on land as a first step. After 50 push-ups with nasal exhale only (not to inhale caused no problem or discomfort) I passively rested (standing position). Calming down with focus on nasal air exchange (mouth closed) I confirm the shift you describe from the more intensive need to exhale (reduce CO2-load) in the beginning to the point where inhaling becomes more dominant and heart rate notably calms down (hint of the body: get ready for new activities…). I slightly modified the approach urging me to not actively inhale via nose but causing the air to passively float in (via nose) by contracting breathing muscles generating different pressure between in- and outside the body. Apart from swimming those who like can find lots of opportunities to train for this on land – for instance when passing a stair and (actively) resting afterwards while walking on. Thanks!! – Lutz
There are many land activities (like yoga!) that teach proper breathing, from deep in the diaphragm. I am studying the exercises described in the book The Oxygen Advantage by Patrick McKeown, and in Breathe by Dr Belissa Vranich.
There is the breathing technique, the place where breath is made in the body – the muscles need to be trained and strengthened, and our lungs need to adapt to that deeper kind of breath. And, when we practice these different kinds of controlled breathing, our whole vascular system adapts – just as if we have been training at higher altitude. Very interesting changes we can affect by this kind of breathing training. But it requires the exercises to be done for several weeks, properly, frequently and consistently.