Lesson December 12, 2018

Lesson – December 12, 2018

Hello John,

It was a pleasure to meet you in person and to work in the pool today! You have such a nice stroke already and you make adjustments and respond to feedback well. 

You came with a desire to find a solution to some breathlessness you experience after a lap or two. So that is what we worked on. I explained how breathing is quite complex, yet we would work through a diagnostic process to narrow down what the likely causes of your breathlessness are.

This is what we came up with…

Breathing Pattern

I noticed you were using a 4-stroke breathing pattern, breathing only to the right side. I pointed out that this is quite a long time between breaths for anyone to do continuously. Once good fundamental technique is established and the turning to breathe is not very consequential or disruptive, we want breathing pattern to conform to your need for abundant respiration, rather than you conform to the breathing pattern.

So I have you try out a 4-2-4-2 breathing pattern which would give you a slightly greater average number of inhalation moments during each lap.

Later on in the lesson, I also observed that you were pushing off the wall, going through the breakout and taking a few strokes before taking your first breath – this too is an extraordinary amount of time without an inhale, and putting you in deficit right at the beginning of the length. So I recommend taking your first inhale either on the first or second stroke after breakout.

You might also get some ideas for how to work on this in Practice Example For Breathing Patterns.

Improve The Frame

Breathing is an advanced skill because it is dependent on the fundamental stroke skills. Those must be in place and in fairly good order before ‘easy breathing’ becomes easier to realize. 

I had you work with the Tippy Toes focal point to not merely align your legs and torso, but to stretch out your body to the point that the legs are now an extension of the torso. This stretching action causes the muscles in your abdomen, around the lower spine, and extending down into the thighs to become taut and unify the whole body into one unit, no hinging at your waist or hips.

This stretched, taut body frame is now more easily supported as one unit by water pressing up and the rear more easily lifted to the surface by the flow of water underneath.

This also engages the abdominal muscles, inside which you will do diaphragmatic breathing.

Activities

• Standing rehearsal
• Superman
• Superman then 6 strokes
• 1 length of whole stroke

Diaphragmatic Breathing

I explained a bit how diaphragmatic breathing is superior to chest breathing, but it seems this is not natural for modern adults to breathe this way (for various reasons). It’s something we have to work on to make a habit of.

You want to focus on executing the exhale, but squeezing the diaphragm above the navel. You may let the inhale take care of itself, while this emphasis on the exhale will most likely keep you in this d-breathing pattern. 

You may read more on Instructions For Diaphragmatic Breathing.

Activities

• Same as the previous topic

Partial Air Exchange

We also discussed and experimented with making partial air exchange. I explained the problems with going to either extreme: holding breath or doing a massive exhale. Both put the body into a more stressed state. Rather, we want to make frequent, partial air exchanges, playing with just the (conceptual) top half of the lung capacity, leaving more than half in reserve. The initial need is to just expel CO2 and there is still a good amount of O2 in the air held back in the lungs, so we can keep going with some in reserve and topping off the tank on each inhale.

Gradient Exhale

Though it is easiest to teach new swimmers to just do a gentle, straight, constant rate of exhale on the non-breathing strokes, a more functional pattern under exertion is to start by holding the breath and then gradually increasing the rate of exhale right up to the moment the face breaks the surface to breathe in.

I suggested working with your 4-stroke pattern like an exponential curve, after turning the face back down from the inhalation, you’ve got 3 strokes until you touch the air again – on the first stroke hold breath, on the second start exhaling out the nose gently and let it grow. On the third stroke you are now anticipating the face turning and start to push out air more aggressively, with a final blast of air out the nose and mouth to push dripping water away from the airways as they break the surface – just like dolphins clear their blowhole as they break the surface to breath.

Lead Arm on Breathing Stroke

Lastly, on the breathing stroke, I pointed out how your lead arm was pushing down before you had your head back to face-down position on the finish.

I gave you a drill called the 3-Part Breathing Drill to help you work on overriding that pattern with a new one to keep that lead arm extending forward. The three new patterns you are building are:

• the lead arm keeps extending until head is back to face-down position
• the head returns in front of the recovery arm
• the recovery arm comes all the way to entry position before the lead arm begins the pull – just as on the non-breathing strokes

Counter-Balanced Foot Position

You did very well with this also, in such a short introduction.

You may read the Instructions for the Counter-Balanced Foot Position as well as the Instructions for 2-Beat Kick.

Activities

• Standing rehearsal
• Holding the wall
• Superman
• Superman to Skate
• Skate to Skate (do L to R several times, then R to L several times)
• Skate to Skate to Skate (do several times starting on one side, then the other)
• Multiple switches in slow-motion