Gary hall sr - breathing advice

[andyinnorway]

http://www.beginnertriathlete.com/cm...articleid=2318

excerpt from above taken here.

5.Hold your breath underwater until you have to force exhale before taking your next breath. This happens just before and during the head turn for the breath. The more air in your lungs, the more buoyant you are. The more buoyant you are, the less drag you create. Don't blow bubbles underwater, even though that is what your first swim instructor likely taught you.

Do people still advocate this at senior coaching level? He seems to contradict all the other advice I have read about breathing out steadily and all the video I have seen of elite swimmers.

Am also wondering if anyone has a percentage guide to how full a lungful they take in for a breath as this obviously effects buoyancy. Terry talks about a bite of air but not sure what that means in terms of oxygen quantity as a bite can be small or large.

[terry]

Sheer unadulterated nonsense . . . but predictable coming from The Forum Suzanne Loves to Hate.

Holding your breath to 'improve buoyancy' is the worst possible advice to a person who's probably already in a tense state as a result of a 'sinking problem.' Breath-holding increases muscular tension and raises both blood pressure and your level of CO2. While doing nothing whatsoever to improve body position.

Yoga teachers remind us all the time to keep breathing while holding a pose. The same goes for swimming.

The correct advice -- for breathing -- is:
1) Maintain a continuous flow of air into and out of your lungs.
2) Begin exhaling, in an unforced way, as soon as you finish inhaling. (This can be from both mouth and nose.) The rate of exhale will increase naturally as your tempo and/or exertion do.
3) Then exhale forcefully just as your mouth reaches the surface.

The proportion is often characterized as 20/80 - with the 80 percent coming just as your mouth clears. Is that exact? Who knows, but it gives you a graphic sense of how forceful the last bit may be.

The correct solution for body position is Master Balance. That comes from relaxing into support and smart weight distribution, not breath-holding.

[webster99]

It has taken me almost a year to figure out the breathing thing (and I am still working on it). Especially what to do with my mouth while it is underwater. It seems very few coaches and bloggers discuss this. I now know that it is probably a very individual thing but when I read somewhere that the mouth should actually be opened and somewhat "slack jawed" that hit the nail for me. Holding your breath is what I used to to do when I didn't know what to do and it's the most uncomfortable feeeling in the world - panic, tension etc. I take a bit of air now, but more importantly, I practice blowing out that last bit of air just as my head reaches air. My breathing/mouth is still a work in progress in the water, but I am getting there.

[CoachSuzanne]

i might imagine this works for sprinters...but nothing more. And yes, it's the F.I.L.T.H Forum I Love to Hate! There are lots of great threads there, but it's not a site that is coach moderated and like many groups, suffer from hero worship from uncertain and unqualified heros....

I have taken a few gems from Dr. Hall, much of what he teaches is "standard far", and a few things, like this...I think are hurtful or at least, not helpful.

the amount of air in your lungs does affect bouyancy, but the exact quote above is BS. Every swimmer needs to learn how to control exhalation in order to make breathing feel natural and not an inhibition.

[johagster]

Isn't it really easy to solve breathing? Referencing pro athletes seems a bit wierd, they breathe every other take, which is different from most TI swimmers.

I do hold my breath when doing breaths every 3-5 takes, but I don't when I braethe every take.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KB4fJxMWX3U

[CoachSuzanne]

Originally Posted by johagster

Isn't it really easy to solve breathing? Referencing pro athletes seems a bit wierd, they breathe every other take, which is different from most TI swimmers.

I do hold my breath when doing breaths every 3-5 takes, but I don't when I braethe every take.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KB4fJxMWX3U

I used to do this (hold breath then exhale). You can improve on it and make it feel like you are breathing underwater if you
-don't hold your breath
-learn to exhale at just the right rate (which may be faster or more slowly)
-learn to sip just the right amount of air in time with your stroke.

Practice, pratice, practice.

That bowman video is awesome.

[haschu33]

Weird advice, but even for sprinters I don't see how it could work, since they need a lot of air and you simply might not have time to hold your breath...

Originally Posted by terry

. . . but predictable coming from The Forum Suzanne Loves to Hate. ...

Just great :))


Nevertheless I have some problems following this (I read that also on the Swimsmooth site):

Originally Posted by terry

... Breath-holding ...raises ... your level of CO2.

I don't understand this.
Given that the time between the end of one inbreath and the beginning of the next inbreath is fixed, the question is, what happens when you hold your breath for a while or not during this fixed time, let it be a breath every second stroke.
The air we breathe in has a CO2 level of appr. 0,04 %. When that air is in our lungs the CO2 from the blood will diffuse into the air in the lungs as long as the level of CO2 in the lungs is lower than the CO2 level in the blood.
Now, when you hold your breath you keep more air in the lungs and therefor more CO2 can diffuse into the lungs. When you start your outbreath immediately you immediately decrease the air volume in the lungs and the level of CO2 in the lungs increases faster. So, regarding the CO2 level the holding of breath should not have a negative effect.
Of course the story is different if you hold your breath for a long time - than f course the level of CO2 in the blood will raise eventually and inevitably. But still this effect will come at a later time compared to breathing out earlier.

I am not advocating to hold the breath, I just want to understand the logic of the CO2 level. Any thoughts on this? Me thinking wrong?

[terry]

Originally Posted by CoachSuzanne

Dr. Hall.

Don't mistake that for a PhD in anything sports related. He's a retired optometrist.

[andreasl33]

Haschu, you say that holding the breath in theory should result in lower CO2 levels, since more CO2 can diffuse into your lungs. I wondered the same thing, yet in practice it does not seem to be the case. So I offer a two explanations and would like to hear others' opinion on them:

1) tension around the lungs restricts the flow of blood into the lungs
2) breathing out slowly causes turbulences of the air inside the lungs, which moves new ununsed air to surfaces where diffusion happens. If you hold the breath CO2 levels in your lungs will be lower, but higher right at the surfaces where diffusion happens.
3) tension around the lungs reduces your tolerance for CO2 in the blood, since your brain may think: "Hmm... something's wrong with the breathing... better provide for some margin of safety and demand extra low CO2 levels." Which then causes a feeling of oxygen deprivation.

Terry, you say, you bubble out 20% of the air slowly and 80% in a quick burst shortly before your next breath. I have been doing it vice versa. Should I try to change it

[haschu33]

andreasl,

I don't know, when I hold my breath I can sometimes swim ten strokes before I feel a need to breathe, when I start to exhale immediately the need to breathe comes a lot earlier.

Here:

Originally Posted by andreasl

...
Terry, you say, you bubble out 20% of the air slowly and 80% in a quick burst shortly before your next breath. I have been doing it vice versa. Should I try to change it

I do the same, I breathe out a lot while bubbling and only a little to clear the mouth from water before the inhale.
So, same question: should I change it?