I bring this up because I think it’s important for me as a swimming coach to help my adult clients (the bulk of whom are triathletes) understand what fast swimming is.  They understand that elite marathon runners can rip off 5 minute mile after 5 minute mile.  They appreciate how fast world class cyclists ascend the French Alps.  But most have no real reference point for fast swimming.  And while I don’t expect they will approach Nico’s performance level on 3-4 hours of swimming per week, I think it’s fair to point out that he’s a very young boy who’s only been swimming a couple of years.  One of the reasons he achieves at such a high level is because we coaches EXPECT our athletes to achieve at these levels.  We don’t shy away from high expectations, and we don’t baby them.  We were pretty blunt with Nico: If you want to break the Gold Coast record in the 400 free, this is how fast you have to train.  (He didn’t break the record, by the way: it is held by a young man who used to swim on my team in Plantation, FL, currently a junior at the University of Florida, with a time of 4:26). It is almost universal that teachers with high expectations produce students who are high achievers.  The same goes for coaching.

 Why is it helpful for triathletes who bang out an 8 minute 400 meter free to see what the age group swimmers are doing?  Simply put, it shows them how much room there is to improve.  Just scrolling through triathlon results I can see why an athlete might be content with an 8 minute swim:  it’s better than what most people do.  But that level of "better" sets the bar pretty low.  I believe my triathletes are capable of much more.  That doesn’t mean intimidate them by throwing unattainable performances in their faces.  Quite the opposite: the times these kids post are not unattainable.  They are typical.  Nico didn’t receive a standing ovation for his win, and Maggie will not be written up in the local paper as some kind of swimming prodigy. In fact, Nico’s teammates were more impressed with his new Droid phone than they were with his swimming.

 I have pretty high expectations for the WAY that I want my adult clients to swim: with ease, with efficiency, with skill.  I want them to understand what they’re doing and own the strategies for making continuous improvement on their own.  But nearly all of them came to me with specific performance objectives: they want to swim 2.4 miles under an hour, or knock off those :30 seconds that will put them on the podium in their next age group race.  I’m thankful that they came to me with goals.  Now I want them to have ‘big hairy goals’ that have a bit of hair.  And then we can talk about a roadmap for getting there.

 If you’ve managed to read this far, can you share with me your personal best for 400 meters, as well as your ‘big hairy goal’ for the same distance?  Or, if you have similar objectives for other distances (1500 meter Olympic tri swim), where do you stand with that–personal best versus personal goal?  What’s your plan for achieving it?

Gary

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So here’s the short answer:  Breathe when your body tells you to.  Air is fuel.  Limit your fuel intake at your own peril.  

There is much cultural baggage in the swimming community, and the reliance upon slavish breathing patterns and hypoxic (actually, anoxic) training are two of our more durable myths.  They don’t improve lung capacity and they don’t simulate altitude training.  If holding your breath were of such tremendous benefit, wouldn’t we apply it to running and cycling?

I typically take 52 strokes per minute, breathing every two strokes for a total of 26 breaths per minute.  Reduce this to one breath every four strokes and I’m suddenly down to thirteen breaths per minute.  The guidelines to perform CPR (and merely sustain life) call for twelve breaths per minute.  Thirteen breaths aren’t enough to get through breakfast, let alone sustain aerobic exercise like swimming.

So why do misguided theories on breath control persist?  Because in one sense it is true that breathing less will improve your form.  Breathing is the most disruptive component of swimming technique:  the head lifts, the body sinks, the lead arm drops, velocity slows.  By comparison, a string of face-down, non-breathing strokes feels fast, efficient, even skillful. But only in the short run.  As the distance increases, limited breathing translates into muscle failure and panicked movements.  The false choice of less air in exchange for improved technique is painfully, often disastrously, exposed.

The answer isn’t “take fewer breaths.”  It’s “learn to breathe with skill.”  Eliminate unnecessary head lift.  Strive to maintain a long bodyline. Does your breath fit rhythmically and seamlessly into your overall stroke pattern?  Or is there a noticeable hitch as you go for air?  Can you breathe with your face in a horizontal position, the lower goggle lens slightly underwater?  Or do you pull the side off your head off the surface as you take a breath?  When coaching competitive swimmers we use terms like “sneaky,” “hidden” and “stealthy” to describe the non-intrusive nature of skillful breathing.  If you can minimize the technical differences between your breathing and non-breathing strokes then you’re free to breathe when you please.  No compromise in form, and no lung-busting (and futile) breathing patterns.

Learn to do this on one side first, over the course of several weeks, even months.  It’s more important to breathe skillfully on one side than it is to imprint poor breathing mechanics on two sides.  Duplicating errors by alternating right and left breaths may induce symmetry—just not the kind we’re after.

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