My body starts sinking after 20 minutes of practicing - why?

Hi guys,

I'm very new here and I started practicing TI in the summer. Although I think I got the basics, I must admit I am still very far from feeling that I can swim effortlessly. My biggest problem is breathing. I've never been tought how to do it well, I only learned it on TI classes.

The problem I have is that I have strange feeling that all my trainings start really good and then, after 20-30 minutes of practices I feel like it's getting worse and wors. My intuition is that it should be the other way around, but it isn't.
When I do my first lanes I feel like I don't sink that much into bottom as later. I think i don't have much problems with keeping the right (flat) position. After time, I feel like my body is just sinking more than it was at the beginning. This makes me struggle to breath well, which makes the snoball effect - then everything starts to go wrong.

I tried several times to do larger breaks - even 2-3 minutes to normalize my breath and concentrate again, but it doesn't work for me.

Does any of you see anything I could be the reason of my feeling?
Thanks a lot guys!

[tomoy]

It's hard to guess without video, but the most likely issue is that some muscles are getting tired over time. That decreases your ability to hold your vessel together properly. When the vessel gets sloppy, you sink.

Examples would be the posture turning to a limp noodle. Leading hand patience might start pulling too soon. Tired shoulders might start leaking their tension into your neck so you might start lifting your head which can cause sinking. You might start over-rotating as the stabilizing muscles get tired and that will cause sinking.

Next thought is that you might just be gassed and running out of oxygen. You need a good flow of air to keep the lungs and muscles happy. The calm breathing of starting out might become held breath, tension or released breath, which decreases buoyancy.

Not sure, but some thoughts to consider.

THank you for such a quick reply!

Originally Posted by tomoy

It's hard to guess without video, but the most likely issue is that some muscles are getting tired over time. That decreases your ability to hold your vessel together properly. When the vessel gets sloppy, you sink.

It may be the case, although I'd find it as a bit surprise, as I practice a lot of sports regularly, since becoming a child. That is mostly football, but also since couple of years I'm attending regularly to a gym. However, it could be the case that freestlel engages mustles I didn't work out as much as possible. Could this be the case? I think my arms are quite strong and well built because of the gym, so maybe these could be the "core" muscles of stomach and back?

Originally Posted by tomoy

Examples would be the posture turning to a limp noodle. Leading hand patience might start pulling too soon. Tired shoulders might start leaking their tension into your neck so you might start lifting your head which can cause sinking. You might start over-rotating as the stabilizing muscles get tired and that will cause sinking.

THe first three I think are fine, but... over-rotating is something that happens to me indeed in this time when I feel like I'm losing control over my style! Which muscles you think are too weak that result in over-rotating?

Originally Posted by tomoy

Next thought is that you might just be gassed and running out of oxygen. You need a good flow of air to keep the lungs and muscles happy. The calm breathing of starting out might become held breath, tension or released breath, which decreases buoyancy.

Not sure, but some thoughts to consider.

This makes sense, but isn't the 2-3 minute recovery period enough to keep my oxygen levels to the starting level?

Thanks so far, I'm impressed!

[CoachDavidShen]

Tomoy gives some pretty good ideas. Here is one more.

Learning a new skill can be taxing, even if you seemingly have good fitness otherwise. New movement skills can require extra effort and energy through the learning process. Your nervous system will get fatigued faster but as you learn you will tire less in your brain, your nervous system and in your metabolic system. And especially since we are land based creatures entering an environment such as water can make things very hard as our sensory system is thrown out of whack when gravity isn't pulling on our body quite the same way, we don't have the same reaction as we do when we press on water than pressing on the ground, and sensation of water on our skin is different than in air on land, and breathing for air is changed from normal.

At this stage, i would not be concerned about getting tired at a certain time. i would use whatever time you have to build up swimming skills and you will naturally be able to perform swimming movements longer as you learn and adapt. When you get fatigued mentally or physically, just get out of the pool. It does no good to reinforce bad habits which happens most easily during fatigue. So practice fresh and with energy and get out of the pool when these elements wane.

Once your skill increases, then you can begin to push your boundaries knowing that you can hold good swim habits unconsciously.

[dougalt]

"Know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em...."

[Danny]

I think everyone's advice above is correct, but I know from personal experience that it can lead to frustration. If you are teaching yourself how to swim as an adult, you probably have a limited amount of time you can devote to this enterprise and cutting it short because your technique is falling apart seems like the wrong approach. So here's an alternative, which may be easier to swallow. When your freestyle starts to fall apart, find some drills that you can work on and do these instead of full stroke. In fact, here is (perhaps) a more reasonable approach: Don't swim 20-30 minutes continuous freestyle. Choose a distance, several hundred meters or yards, and swim that. Then mix in drills to give yourself a rest. Then swim another interval of the same length and alternate between intervals of full stroke and drills. The trick in this is to find appropriate drills. These drills should give your body the chance to recover as opposed to stressing it in the same way that the freestyle does. You might try swimming with fins. Switching between back or breast stroke and freestyle is also a common strategy. If you have a lot of energy and enthusiasm, try teaching yourself butterfly. All of these activites will complement your freestyle practice and help you not to burn out before the end of your workout.

Thank you guys for all advices, I appreciate a lot.