Tip of the Week: BiLateral Breathing

Bilateral breathing - essential to powerful swimming

Single sided breathing is one of the biggest mistakes triathletes make when learning to swim. It’s easy to understand as one is just trying to make it from one end of the pool to the other! However, there are multiple reasons why learning bilateral breathing will make you a faster swimmer.

The biggest issue with single side breathing is that it often leads to one side being weaker than the other which creates a host of issues. We often see the following:
A) An imbalance in the rotation of the stroke where you rotate fine to one side but then swim very flat on the other making it difficult for your recovering arm to both finish the stroke and clear the surface on recovery.
B) Increased drag on the arm that is supposed to be out front during the breath cycle. When you are breathing, you are solely focused on breathing and rarely thinking about your supporting arm which then commonly drops very deep before catching. This creates increased frontal drag and voids your opportunity to have a great catch. 
C) It creates an imbalance of strength that limits your ability to create propulsion and balance. Increasing propulsion is essential if you want to become a faster swimmer. If you breathe every 2 strokes then 50% of your strokes are limited! 

So what is bilateral breathing? It’s breathing to both sides, both right and left, most commonly in a pattern of every 3 strokes (counting each hand entry). If this is difficult, you can also try a 3-2-3-2 pattern so you are breathing more often.

Benefits to bilateral breathing in the pool:
1) It helps create a balanced stroke with symmetrical technique, equal body roll, and power production that is equivalent on both sides. 
2) You are able to watch your stroke underwater better if you aren’t breathing every stroke. If you breathe to the right every 2 strokes, you never get to watch what your left arm is doing under the water.
3) It helps keep your body more streamlined and balanced on the surface, preventing inefficiencies such as crossing your midline at any stage of your stroke, leg splay with a scissor kick, and laterally flexing your abdomen (weaving like a snake). 

Benefits to bilateral breathing in the open water:
a) A more balanced stroke is more likely to track straighter from buoy to buoy (when you no longer have a black line to follow).
b) In wavy conditions, you need to be able to breath away from a wave so you aren’t taking in water every time you try to breathe. If you are proficient at breathing to both sides, you can select to dominantly breathe to either side during open water.
c) It helps with sighting and navigating both the course and people around you as you are more aware of your surroundings. 

If you aren’t currently bilateral breathing for the majority of your pool swimming, it’s time to make a change. Focus on implementing this into your swim routine and after 4 weeks of consistent work, you’ll be well on your way to a more efficient and powerful stroke. 

Tip of the Week: Racing in HOT Weather!

TOTW: Training/Racing in the Heat, by Steve & Cindi
Summer is upon us... which means so is the heat!
As a coach, I call this the "assure athlete's they are still fit."
Simply put, you can't go as fast in 85 degrees as you can in 50 degrees. It’s physically not possible.

In the attached file, I highlight a lot of good information coming from a Runner’s World article from a few years back. In the article, it talks about what actually is causing your HR to be higher when training in the heat and physiologically what is happening in your body to cause these effects.

What this boils down to is this: You can’t run as fast in the heat as you can in cooler/more moderate temperatures. You can train yourself to adjust to the heat in preparation for a hot event, but you won’t ever adjust yourself to be able to race at the speed you did when it was cooler.

"It's generally recognized that for every 10-degree increase in air temperature above 55 degrees, there's a 1.5 percent to 3 percent increase in average finishing time for a marathon. (Translation: An extra 3 to 6 minutes for a 3:30 marathon with every 10-degree increase.)"

So when you are doing a workout and your Half Marathon pace feels like 5k pace... or when your 70.3 watts feel like threshold... or when fatigue on a workout jumps on your back... it’s not because you're not fit... it's because the heat is reducing your ability to go at the level you once did when it was 20 degrees cooler. Pushing through, or trying to push through, will only lead to exhaustion. Psychologically, this leads to frustration. The solution to this is: adjust your expectation and lower your ego. If you don’t, the heat will get you twice over because you’ll be running slower because of the heat and then be running doubly slow because you are allowing the negative self-talk to creep in, telling you that you are performing poorly or aren’t fit. Don’t let that happen, adjust your expectation.

Take note of the section on ‘dewpoint’ in the article. This is pretty fascinating stuff. 

Currently:
In Kona it's 76 Degrees with a Dew Point of 70. 
In Kentucky, its 85 Degrees with a DP of 70
In Asheville, its 83 Degrees with a DP of 63
In Madison, its 75 Degrees with a DP of 59

So when you look at Kona, with a DP of 70 (high head and high humidity), that’s pretty tough conditions. It could be just like this in Door County or Racine or IMWI (and Madison 70.3!). 

In conclusion, do what you can to prepare for a variety of conditions on race day to give your body the best chance for success under a variety of conditions. And then if it is ‘one of those days’, check your ego at the door, be flexible with your goals, listen to your body, and race smart. It certainly isn’t always about times or paces, and knowing your body and what you can sustain in those conditions will give you a leg up on the competition.