THREE Breathing Tricks = Feel Like You Can Swim FOREVER!

If you're training for your Phyllis Ironman but you can't swim more than 50 meters without being so out of breath that you have to stop and you know you're fit enough, there is a reason and it's not the one you think. The problem almost certainly has nothing to do with your aerobic fitness, it's a breathing mechanics problem and it's one of the most fixable things in all of triathlon training. I'm coach Rob Gilbey from Team Oxygen Addict and in this video I'm going to show you a simple three step breathing fix that'll take you from barely surviving 50 meters to swimming continuously for 10, 30, 60 plus minutes without that desperate need to stop. So let me start by explaining what's actually going on when you feel like you can't breathe in the pool because once you understand the cause, the fix is going to make a lot more sense. Picture this. You're at the pool, you're watching a swim session, there's an athlete in lane 3, they're a strong runner, they've got a big FTP, they've trained consistently for years, they push off the wall, they swim 50 meters and they're completely done. Arms on the wall, head down on the forearms, absolutely heaving for breath. And in the lane next to them, someone who by any objective measure, nowhere near as fit and they're just swimming length, after length, after length, relaxed and rhythmic and comfortable. Over the years I've seen this hundreds of times on pool deck and the fit athlete always looks across and thinks the same thing, what on earth is going on? Here's the thing most people get wrong, when you feel that desperate panic you need to breathe, that feeling of I've got to stop right now, your instinct is that you're running out of oxygen, it's that you need more air in, but that's not what's driving you. What's actually triggering the urge is a build up of carbon dioxide in your blood, your body detects the rising carbon dioxide level and it sends an alarm signal to your brain that says breathe faster. When you're running or cycling, this isn't a problem, you breathe whenever you want in and out continuously, the carbon dioxide clears and your body stays in balance. But in the pool, everything changes, because every time your face is in the water, most athletes hold their breath, even a little bit, you take a stroke, they hold, you take another stroke, they hold and all the while the carbon dioxide is building up inside the lungs. Within 50 metres, which is only about a minute of swimming, the levels have risen enough that your brain is screaming at you to stop, but here's where it gets really costly. Think about what happens when you rotate your head to breathe, you've got maybe half a second with your mouth above the water and if you've been holding your breath, you have to use that half a second to breathe out and breathe in, there's not enough time for both. So what actually happens is a quick dump of air out, a quick snatch of air back in and your lungs never fully clear and never fully refill. You go back under and the carbon dioxide keeps building and the whole cycle gets worse with every single stroke and that's why it feels like it's a fitness problem. With every length, the debt gets bigger, but it's not a fitness debt, it's a breathing debt. You're simply not breathing out fully enough. So here's a story for you, I worked with an athlete a few years ago who was a multiple Ironman age group winner and a Kona qualifier. He was already a very good swimmer, consistently in the low 60 minutes for 3.8k and when we analysed his stroke, what we noticed was he was trying to breathe out and in at the same time as he turned his head. No swimming coach had ever mentioned this to him and when we got him to do these drills and exhale fully into the water, his swim dropped from consistently in the low 60s down into consistently in the mid to high 50s and it wasn't a fitness improvement and it wasn't because he was swimming more, it was just from fixing how he breathed and if it can change things for someone at that level, I guarantee it's going to change things for you if you're struggling with the same thing. So let me show you exactly how to fix this, there's three steps, they build on each other and together they'll completely change how your swimming feels. Step one, exhale continuously underwater. The first step is the most important one and it's this, from the moment your face enters the water, start breathing out, steadily, continuously through both your nose and your mouth and don't hold anything back. If you watch a swimmer who's got this right, you'll see bubbles the whole time their face is in the water, a constant stream and when they rotate to breathe, the exhalation's already done, they just open their mouth, they take a breath in and rotate back down. The entire time their head is in both the water is used for getting air in, nothing else. If we watch an athlete who's holding their breath, their face goes in the water and there's nothing, there's no bubbles and they rotate and then try and dump all the air out and snatch a breath in during the same half second window, never works. There's not enough time to do both, so the carbon dioxide never fully clears, the oxygen never fully replenishes and by the end of a few lengths they're in trouble and the fix sounds simple and it is simple but your brain is going to resist it at first, exhaling underwater feels like you're getting rid of something that you need, you're overriding a reflex and so here's a cue that's going to work really well, it's called the bubble bubble breathe drill. As you're swimming normal front crawl, I want you to say the word bubble bubble into the water and then turn your head to breathe in, bubble bubble and turn to breathe. What this does is it gives you something to focus on other than the anxious feeling of I should be breathing out or I'm holding my breath and you'll hear the bubbles, you'll see them and it forces that exhalation to happen, it's usually a very quick fix, a couple of lengths of this and most athletes are thinking right okay now I'm exhaling fully into the water before I turn my head to breathe and here's what happens when you get this right, the desperate urgent feeling, the one that made you think you couldn't swim more than 50 meters, it goes away and it doesn't go away gradually, it goes away quite quickly because it was never a fitness issue, it was that carbon dioxide building up and you've removed the problem, within a single session you'll notice that 25 meters starts to feel much more manageable and then 50 and then before you know it a continuous 10 minutes because that panicked sensation of I have to stop just disappears. By the way, if you've been struggling with your swimming and this is the first time someone's actually explained why it feels so hard, that's exactly the kind of thing we deal with every day in Team Oxygen Addict, breathing, technique, pacing, the stuff that makes the difference between riding the swim and actually feeling confident on race morning, if you're training for your first Ironman and you want a coach in your corner who understands balancing demands of a busy work and a busy family life, there's a link in the description to book a call with me. Step two, one gobble in the water, once you've got the continuous exhale, the next thing to work on is what happens when you actually take the breath because most athletes get this wrong too and it makes the breathing problem worse. When beginner swimmers turn their head to breathe, they lift their entire head out of the water very often and it feels natural because you want air so you think you have to lift your head up to get it but when your head comes up at the front, your legs sink at the back, your body goes from being streamlined to being angled, your drag increases and suddenly you're working much harder just to maintain the same kind of speed which means more carbon dioxide production which means more of the same breathlessness so the head lift is actually feeding straight back into the problem we just fixed in step one. Here's the fix and this is one of the most valuable things that I can tell you about swimming. When you turn to breathe, one gobble always stays in the water, always. Most athletes don't realise this but when you're swimming front crawl, your head will create a bow wave just like the front of a boat and that wave will push water level down beside your face and it'll create a little pocket of air right next to your mouth, you don't need to lift your head to find the air because the air is already going to be there. You just need to rotate your head to get your mouth into it and here's a visual cue for you to remember. When you turn to breathe, the water line should cut right across the middle of your face. One gobble above the water, one gobble below and if both gobbles are leaving the water, you're lifting your head too much. Now this does take practice, the first few times you're going to feel like you're about to get a mouthful of water and so there's two things that can help with that. Firstly, as you rotate, you can purse your lips over to the side a bit like Popeye, that in itself is going to keep the water out of your mouth even though half of your face is still submerged. And the second thing is, as you turn your head, think about pressing your ear down onto your shoulder. So if you're breathing over to your right, I'll demonstrate this here, we have to think about pressing this left ear down onto our shoulder, that'll keep the rotation controlled and it stops you lifting the head. So if one gobble is always in the water, your head can't come up and if your head doesn't come up, your legs don't sink, your body stays flat, your drag stays low and you're not burning extra energy just to stay afloat. When athletes get this right, they always say the same thing, that swimming suddenly feels calmer, it's less effort, it's less panic, it's more control and that's because you're no longer fighting your own body position every time you take a breath. Step three, learn to breathe on both sides. Once you've got steps one and two working, the third step is to start practicing on both sides. This is called bilateral breathing and it's where these skills start to become specifically relevant to your Ironman race. Now I'm going to be straight with you, this is one of the things that takes a lot of practice but it's really worth it. If you've only ever breathed on one side, breathing to the other side is going to feel really strange as your timing will be off, you'll feel less confident, you'll probably swim slower for a while and that's completely normal. Don't let it put you off. Most athletes find that it starts to feel natural within a couple of sessions and the reason this matters is threefold. Firstly, it will balance your stroke. If you only ever breathed to one side, you develop asymmetries and those flaws get baked deeper in every time you swim. Bilateral breathing will keep everything even. Secondly, and this is arguably the most important one for Ironman, it gives you flexibility on race day. In an Ironman swim, you're not in the pool, you're in open water with hundreds of other athletes around you, there's chop, there's sun in your eyes, there's swimmers on both sides of you, and if you can only breathe on one side and there's someone splashing on that side, you've got a bit of a problem. If you can switch sides easily, then you can adapt. You might breathe every three strokes or you might breathe every two, but alternate sides throughout the swim. The pattern doesn't matter as much as the ability to go either side when you need to. And thirdly, breathing every third stroke acts as a natural pace limiter. When you can only take a breath every third stroke, you physically cannot go off too fast. It forces you to find a rhythm that's sustainable for the full distance, and for a swim that might last an hour to two hours maybe, that's exactly what you need. The athletes I work with who learn bilateral breathing naturally find the right Ironman pace without even trying. The breathing pattern does the pacing work for them. So if you get steps one and two comfortable first, and then start introducing bilateral breathing, even just a few lengths per session to begin with, but build it in gradually. By the time you get to race day, you want the ability to breathe on either side to feel automatic so you're not thinking about it, but things get rough in the water. Okay, I want to come back to where we started. If you're a fit athlete who can't swim more than 50 meters without stopping, the problem almost certainly isn't your body, it's the three things that nobody's taught you. Exhale continuously from the moment your face enters the water. Keep one gobble in when you breathe, and learn to breathe on both sides to create a sustainable rhythm. Now hopefully your breathing is sorted, but if your stroke still feels like hard work, like you're pulling through the water but you're not really going anywhere, there's a reason for that. Watch this video next, and I'll show you the single drill that fixes one of the most common stroke flaws that I see in almost all age group swimmers.