Chapter 7 Breathing

     It would not be an overstatement to say that breathing technique is the single most important aspect of freestyle swimming. Good breathing technique is much more challenging in freestyle than the other strokes because the head is in the water at all times and the swimmer must keep their head low and breathe out to the side very near the surface.
     For swimmers learning freestyle, breathing can be extremely challenging and it’s normal to experience high levels of anxiety about getting enough air and not swallowing water! If you feel this way then developing your exhalation into the water and your bowwave breathing technique is going to be critical to improving your swimming; these are the first two aspects of breathing technique we’ll look at here. Don’t worry, work on the technique of breathing and you’ll soon be feeling much more calm and relaxed when swimming freestyle.
     For intermediate level swimmers, brushing up on bow-wave breathing and exhalation into the water is going to be useful for you and will make a real difference to your efficiency and level of relaxation. We also strongly encourage you to learn to breathe bilaterally, which is important as a natural way of keeping your stroke symmetrical and can even help you develop the catch phase of your stroke. Don’t worry if you’ve tried bilateral breathing before and struggled, we’ll show you why that was and how to conquer it.
     Breathing timing, specifically breathing late, can also be a problem for more advanced swimmers. We’ll look at breathing timing in the final part of this section.

     For all swimmers it’s important to constantly exhale whenever you are face down in the water. This rids your lungs and bloodstream of CO2 and means that when you do rotate to breathe you have more time to inhale as you don’t have to exhale first. It also helps to improve your body position as too much buoyancy in the chest lifts your front end up and puts downward pressure on the legs.
     Exhaling into the water sounds easy but can be surprisingly hard to learn. For many swimmers it simply doesn’t feel like a natural thing to do. To develop good exhalation technique use the Sink Down Exercise in Appendix A. Experiment between exhaling into the water using either your mouth or nose or a mix of both; there’s no right or wrong here, see which feels more natural for you and then stick with that method. It should feel like you are sighing and not forcing the air out. Try to be loose and floppy as you sink down to remove all the tension from your body.
     Your ability to sink to the bottom of the pool during the Sink Down Exercise is totally determined by how relaxed and efficient your exhalation is into the water. Many swimmers with poor body positions would expect to sink like a stone but often the opposite is true and they find it harder to sink than other swimmers. This is an interesting insight into their swimming as it shows how their tendency to hold onto their breath is actually harming their body position: the excess buoyancy in the chest lifts their front end up but the body then pivots around its centre and so pushes the legs downward.











     Once you are able to sink down easily to the bottom of the pool with a nice relaxed exhalation try some easy laps of freestyle swimming. Simply focus on a smooth exhalation into the water using your normal breathing pattern to whichever side you feel most comfortable. For those who normally only breathe to one side, don’t be surprised if you notice that you are suddenly able to go from breathing every two strokes to breathing every four strokes and feel more comfortable doing so. Sometimes breathing every two strokes does not physically give you enough time to exhale properly especially if you have a naturally high stroke rate.
     To really contrast the difference a good exhalation technique makes, trying swimming 100 m straight through as:

25 m exhaling smoothly
25 m holding your breath and exhaling at the last second
25 m exhaling smoothly
25 m holding again

You will really notice the contrast, the difference a good exhalation technique can make is truly amazing!

     An efficient stroke technique keeps the head low in the water when breathing. Many swimmers feel that they need to lift their heads to find air but lifting the head excessively causes the whole upper torso to lift and the legs to sink, creating a large amount of drag.
     The secret to keeping your head low in the water is to breathe into the trough of air formed by the bow wave created around your head. Every swimmer has a bow wave, it’s formed as the head pushes forwards through the water creating a small rise in the water in front of the head and then a trough alongside the chin and neck – a channel of air beneath the main surface level of the water.
     It’s important to appreciate that the bow wave forms off the top of your head and is just deep enough to breathe into by the time it passes the level of your mouth. If you lift your head clear out of the water to breathe then the bow wave will not form off the top of your head and so the trough will not be there for you! This is a very common occurrence for those swimmers who feel they must lift their heads excessively high to keep from swallowing water. Ironically enough, if this instinctive action can be controlled and the head kept lower when breathing, it becomes much easier to get a breath in. Equally though, some swimmers completely bury their heads in the water in an effort to improve body position which, as we will see in Chapter 8, might not be necessary for every swimmer. Furthermore, the act of burying the head may be problematic if it is too deep to cause the bow wave to form cleanly.

     When developing a good bow-wave breathing technique think about keeping the top of your head low in the water and try and breathe ever so slightly behind you into area (A) shown in Figure 7.4. If you crane your head forwards (B) then the bow wave isn’t as deep, which makes breathing much harder. Many swimmers who spend a lot of time training in the open water often develop position (B) from trying to sight forwards and breathe at the same time, as we will see in Chapter 35 this is something to be avoided.

     One simple way to make sure you have this position correct is to ask a friend or coach to walk along the side of the pool with you as you swim. Ask them to walk as close to the water’s edge as possible and ever so slightly behind the level of your eyes. When you go to breathe, you should be able to see their feet walking alongside you. Avoid turning the head too much to see their whole body, seeing the feet is enough. Experiment with making subtle adjustments to the walker’s position relative to you until you find a comfortable breathing point where you are not lifting your head too high or looking too far forward or back. Looking too far back (C) in Figure 7.5 may cause you to bend in the middle and start snaking down the pool or crossing over in front of your head.