Breathe In, Breathe Out

The practice lanes were crowded tonight so I wasn’t able to do a lot of drilling. I had hoped to work on the breathing drills again, this time concentrating on the right side. Instead, I did some of the Continuous Switch with Breathing drills, on the right side, and then several laps with the traditional single arm drill (hold out one hand in front as the lead arm, then stroke only on and breathe on the other side) on both sides, with more reps on the right. Afterward I went on to whole stroke, trying to see if I could prevent the said lead arm from dropping.

Noticing the Imbalance

I notice that, while I am able to do the single arm drill on the right, it is not as effortless as doing it on the left side. Since I have not imprinted a patient lead arm while breathing on the right, preventing the lead arm from pushing down in the water, I need to have enormous amounts of concentration just to keep the arm from dropping when breathing to the right during whole stroke.

I hope I could find some time and space in the coming nights to review the breathing drills for the right side. I did review the rolling to breath on Sweet Spot drill on the walking lane while the lifeguard wasn’t looking. There is a considerable time lag between left and right. When I roll to my left I go “whoosh”, but on the right it goes “whoooooooooosh”. For the right side I need to work on rolling from the hips more while keeping head-spine alignment.

The Importance of Breathing

Breathing in and out is such an important part of swimming that when I was finally able to breathe during crawl after doing the TI drills, I felt like it was the dawn of a new beginning.

On our latest session with the gym trainer we were told that we needed to breathe correctly while doing the workouts.

So tonight I tried to concentrate on rhythmical breathing: exhaling when exerting effort, and then inhaling when going back to original position. Everything felt better!

For gym newbies it seems that there is a tendency to hold one’s breath when working on the machines.

What a difference rhythmical breathing makes.

Instead of the workouts being boring and repetitive, concentrating on breathing right seems to also help with concentrating on working the proper muscles.

I’ll try to be as highly aware of rhythmical breathing tomorrow night. I hope it becomes a habit soon 🙂