Correct Breathing Technique For Swimming Freestyle

Right, let's get straight into this. This is how to breathe when swimming freestyle. When your hand first enters the water and you extend out the front, you should start to rotate your body onto its side. Now, this should all happen in sync. Your hips, your shoulders, and your head should all rotate round together. Almost think of it as opening your body up to the side and getting that little bit of extra reach at the front of the stroke. Now, your head should actually remain in the water. One eye in the water, one eye out of the water. Now, obviously, the concern here is that you're going to get a mouthful of water. Actually, what happens is that the top of your head almost creates a bow wave and subsequently, we get this trough around your mouth. Pretty clever, hey? Now, when we're in this position and we're taking a breath to the side, as we're finishing the pull phase at the back of the stroke and we start to lift that recovering arm out of the water, we should then initiate the catch at the front of the stroke. As that recovering arm continues up over the top, almost use the hand passing by the head as a cue to pop the head back into the water and then we'll breathe out. Then we go into the next pull phase. That's the action. Now, let's get into a bit more detail on how and when we actually breathe. Before we do, if you already find this video informative and helpful, make sure you hit that subscribe button so you don't miss any of our future videos. Also, by subscribing, you are supporting our channel, allowing us to make great content like this. To propel ourselves through the water, we obviously need to use our muscles which need oxygen. Now, we all have a natural built-in instinct to breathe when we need to. Swimming, however, forces us to break that instinct because for a number of strokes, our face is under the water and we can't breathe. For this reason, many struggle with breathing while swimming, often resulting in a feeling of breathlessness or undue fatigue too soon. Normally, this is a result of poor technique or timing. Let's go through the right way to do this. First, find the instinct to hold your breath. Rather than taking a huge lungful of air and trying to hold as much breath as possible as if you're going to hold your breath for 30 seconds, just take a normal breath as you would when you're cycling or running. As soon as your face goes back down into the water, start exhaling gently and continuously. Often, it helps to breathe out through your nose so it's more controlled, but you can use your mouth or nose. Before then, turn your head back to take another breath. The perfect timing of this is to have fully exhaled that entire breath just before you turn your head to take in that next breath. This takes time and practice to learn and get right. Personally, I find it best to breathe out slowly throughout and then just before you breathe in, fully exhale that last little bit with a big burst at the end. Now, that brings us quite nicely onto how often you should breathe. By now, you've probably heard of bilateral breathing, which is the ability to breathe to either side. The benefit of this is having a nice balance and symmetrical stroke. Obviously, with this brings its own issues because if you are already struggling with breathing while swimming and having the sense of breathlessness whilst you swim, then suddenly limiting yourself to breathing every three strokes or maybe even five strokes if you're being really ambitious, it's going to be really difficult. I'm going to be really honest and put my hand up here. I never breathe every three. Actually, I breathe every two strokes as many elite swimmers and triathletes actually do. Now, to be clear, I do fully condone bilateral breathing, but I feel it is a little misunderstood. As I said at the start, it's an ability to breathe to either side, but it's not meant as a strict you must breathe every three or five or whatever how many strokes it is. It could be that you breathe every two strokes for half a length and then you switch to the other side and you're quite happy in doing so. Again, this is something I do. I don't have a preferred side that I breathe to, but I will happily switch from one side to the other mid-event when there's an athlete on one side or whatever it may be. That is still bilateral breathing. Now, you have the tools to breathe properly. How do you put this into practice? Well, you might like to take a step back and start with some breath control exercises. These focus mainly on building up your confidence to exhale under the water while your face is in the water. Start with your hands on the side of the pool, and then simply drop down under the water whilst breathing steadily out. Practice breathing out through your nose and your mouth, and then pop back up and take a short breath and then down again. As you get more confident with this, grab yourself a kickboard and perhaps put some fins on to make this a little easier. Hold on to the middle or bottom of your kickboard so that you can place your head in the water. As you kick yourself down the pool, try placing your face down in the water and trickling your breath and then breathing to one side back into the middle face down to trickle your breath again and then breathing to the other side. Again, keep repeating this until you're more comfortable with the action. Now, obviously, this is not practicing the rotation we've been discussing, but it does allow you to practice the basic action of the breathing. A final progression that does allow this rotation is to take the kickboard away. Keep your fins on and kick down the pool with your hands by your side. Start in the middle face down and trickling your breath for six to ten kicks, then rotate to the left, take a breath for six to ten kicks, rotate back to the center and trickle that breath out and then rotate to the right and take a breath and keep repeating this and keep repeating this over and over. If you've enjoyed today's video, please hit that like button and don't forget to subscribe to catch our future videos.