dagblog - Comments for "Bilateral Breathing"

The poolmate was wrong. It

Donal — Thu, 24 May 2012 12:40:52 +0000

In reply to Thanks, it's going well. Last

The poolmate was wrong. It would have meant dropping about 8 seconds per 100m. But a few days later I swam a 500m warmup, in the 50m lane, and actually counted 5 laps, but the Poolmate told me I had swum 600m at a pace that was ten seconds faster than my subsequent 100m repeats. So I really have to concentrate on properly stopping the Poolmate's counter. I'm fairly sure that the 1900m was really 1800m, which still makes the pace as fast as I was at the end of last summer.

Yesterday afternoon's 1600m swim, in a 25m lane, was all 2R/2L and perfectly comfortable and the Poolmate reported one less stroke cycle, or two less strokes, per length. With no feelings of breathing anxiety, I have more freedom to think about form. I plan to do some fist sets this weekend.

Thanks, it's going well. Last

Donal — Thu, 17 May 2012 00:41:14 +0000

In reply to I happened to scroll down to

Thanks, it's going well. Last week I swam two days of 500m warmups with 5x100 sets of crawl, breast and back and 5x50 sets of crawl and breast. All my crawl repeats were 1R/1L bilateral and felt very fluid. Last Saturday, after the expo, several 50m lanes were open, so I went for the long swim.

I felt dog slow doing 2R/2L and lost count of laps after the first 500m. I keep a small clock near the edge of the pool, and after 25 minutes I was feeling just a bit short of air, so I switched to 3R/3L for two lengths, then back to 2R/2L. I was fine after that. Based on previous times I figured I must be close to 1600m. I felt so slow that I swam an extra 100m just to be sure I made 1600, then stopped.

The poolmate told me I had swum 1900m. So that feels promising.

I happened to scroll down to

acanuck — Wed, 16 May 2012 23:52:09 +0000

In reply to Bilateral Breathing

I happened to scroll down to this post, Donal, and noticed no one had commented. In case you're disappointed (it shows lots of care and effort), I found it very informative.

This year, decades after I ostensibly learned to swim at my college pool (splashing around haphazardly ever since), I enrolled in a 10-week course in swimming basics -- mainly to push myself to exercise. Our instructor took her job seriously, however, teaching us to at least fake the crawl, backstroke and butterfly.

Alternate breathing pretty much eluded me, though; I instinctively favored one side. So I was happy to read that even competitive swimmers often reject the orthodox approach. Most of my style in the water could charitably be called unorthodox, so it's appropriate that I breathe that way too.

Good luck improving your times.