Manage Your Breathing For Better Results

Swimming is a full-body workout that relies heavily on breath control. Whether you are a competitive swimmer or just looking for a way to stay active and in shape, the inhalation of oxygen plays an important role in providing the body with energy. Managing your breath is essential for improving your time and sustaining you through a workout. 

As someone who grew up in the water and swam competitively for the first 22 years of my life, I have experienced firsthand the importance of using my daily conditioning to incorporate proper technique with breath management.

Managing the Breath

There’s a lot to think about as you travel back and forth in the pool. As in almost all activities, there is a lot of focus on technique to help improve your strength and mobility, but not a huge focus on the breath. 

Because we can’t survive more than a couple of minutes without breathing, it becomes vital for a swimmer to learn proper breathing techniques–something many coaches and trainers spend very little time talking about. 

Swimmers learn very early on the importance of timing their breath. They have to work the breathing into the pattern of the technique and develop their own rhythm so they don’t become hungry for breath during a turn or just before finishing a race. These are the most common areas you can learn to use your breath to drop time. 

Anyone who’s ever raced has been there. You’re neck and neck with the swimmer in the lane next to you, your heart is racing and you’re hungry for breath. Your focus becomes scattered and your need for oxygen outbids your need for speed. You take that last breath and you lose. Why? Because you haven’t learned to use your breath as a weapon. 

It’s the same at the end of a grueling workout when your lack of breath control has you breathing every other stroke. The good news is that you can learn to develop breath control to help improve your time and sustain your energy through a full workout. 

Below are 3 breathing drills to improve your swimming experience. 

1. Abdominal Hollowing

Abdominal hollowing is an excellent dryland breathing exercise. Not only does it improve your breathing, but it’s a deep-core stabilizer too.

Having a strong core in swimming is really important, and deep core stabilizers are muscles that don’t conventionally get trained. By performing this exercise you are essentially getting the best of both worlds AND the best part is that you only have to do a couple of reps before your workout.

Here’s how it’s done…

• Sit, or lay on your back 
• Contract and pull in the abdominal muscles without moving the spine or pelvis
  • Visualize yourself sucking your belly button all the way back to your spine or the floor. 
• hold this for a 5-second count and slowly inhale.
• Do 10 rounds

This exercise trains the core muscles to better stabilize the spine and pelvis. Allowing you to have complete exhalations while competing so when you inhale again you are able to take in as much air as possible. Super handy for hard training sets and during races when you want to breathe as little as possible.

2. Use Breathing Patterns

Your workout is a perfect time to practice breathing patterns. The struggle for oxygen can be tested by playing with the pattern in which you breathe. You can do drills in your workout to strengthen your breath by starting slow and building. 

Using breathing patterns is great since it’ll help you not only to be ready to swim on low oxygen at the end of your race but also to learn to control and maximize your breathing efficiency.

Here’s how…

• Start slow and progress from there. 
• Pick a set and start breathing every 9th stroke. 
• Gradually increase the stroke-breath ratio.

Here’s an example of a ladder swim I love that helps me. All Freestyle with a 30-second rest in between each.

• 50 breathing every 9th stroke 
• 100 breathing every 7th stroke 
• 150 breathing every 5th stroke 
• 200 breathing every 3rd stroke 
• 200 breathing every 3rd stroke
• 150 breathing every 5th stroke
• 100 breathing every 7th stroke
• 50 breathing every 9th stroke

This is effective and engaging. It also gives you a solid 1000-yard workout. This can be done in reverse breathing to yards swam as well. 

Breathing patterns are a terrific way to train, but they can and should feel challenging. 

It’s important to remember that sometimes saving your oxygen for longer swims might be more beneficial than practicing retention. Incorporate here and there, but don’t feel the need to practice it during every workout. However, it is a good idea to find a stroke-to-breath ratio that works for you and train consistently using that pattern so it becomes second nature as you develop your breath control. 

3. Don’t Hold Your Breath

A majority of your time spent swimming is done with your head underwater. Learning to not hold your breath but develop a slow exhale out the nose while swimming is going to help you take full inhales when your head is turned.

The reality is that your body tells your brain when you need to breathe, but it’s typically not from a need for oxygen but more because you’ve built up too much carbon dioxide (CO2). By slowly exhaling out the nose while swimming you are offsetting the CO2 allowing you to stay streamlined longer.

Here’s how…

• Start swimming and begin as you take your first inhale
• Once your head is back in the water slowly begin releasing air out the nose. 
• Count the strokes in between breaths to stay consistent
• Inhale more fully on your next breath because you’ve expelled more CO2 from your lungs

The idea is to maximize the airflow when you inhale while resisting the urge to hold your breath as you swim. More experienced swimmers do this very naturally. If you are new to swimming, learning to exhale out the nose underwater takes some time. 

You can think of this type of breathing much in the same way you exhale while moving into a flip-turn. Flip-Turns require a more aggressive exhale, but it holds the same principle. Just be careful to not inhale through the nose underwater. It’s not a fun experience and one that sticks with you all day. 

With enough practice, you will no longer find yourself gasping for air in the water.  The drills might even become a fun experience and a way to challenge your breathing muscles. 

Notice Your Breathing 

As you learn to breathe more effectively in the water you may begin to start noticing your breath out of water too. 

My obsession with breath began because of swimming. I have always found swimming to be meditative; an hour a day I can move my body, focus on my breathing and process my thoughts. 

It wasn’t until many years later that I realized the value of what was happening in the water. Now I use my breathing on dryland to induce the same effects. 

Once you learn to control your breathing in the water it becomes easier to manage your breath in other situations as well. 

Situations that were once hard to breathe through become manageable. You will find that you can keep control over your breath and emotional state when life gets challenging. 

Your breath is your greatest asset in the water and in life. Learn to control and manage it and you can accomplish almost anything with more ease. 

My History and Training

If you are interested in learning more about breathing drills for swimmers or for managing stress, reach out. I am in the Seattle area and have worked with local high school swim teams, both on land and in the water. 

I was blessed as a young swimmer to have an excellent swim coach, Bryce Jensen, who still coaches today, and manages the Lindbergh Swimming Pool. He takes his swimmers training beyond the pool with dryland drills and visualizations. He helped move me from a swimmer who had plateaued during my sophomore year of high school to a swimmer who was breaking all her personal records in both my junior and senior years.