Two Quick Tips If You Struggle With Breathing

Two Quick Tips If You Struggle With Breathing

If you're quite new to swimming freestyle, you might well struggle with your breathing. You might be drinking water when you try to breathe or feel desperately out of breath and have to stop for a rest at the end of each length.

Don't worry that's perfectly normal; here are two quick tips to help:

The One-Two-Stretch Mantra

One of the biggest causes of breathing problems when swimming is if your lead arm is collapsing down into the water as you breathe.www.poqswim.com

As you start to take a breath on the water, your lead arm should still be out in front supporting you. If it sinks down in the water with little purchase then your mouth will sink below the surface and you'll drink water on swimming pool.

At this point of the stroke when on the swimming in water, you're naturally thinking ‘give me that air’ and not other things! The key of breathing when you are swimming is to let your breath take care of itself and keep your focus on the support of the lead arm instead.

 

poqswim

To help with this, try repeating this mantra to yourself when you are swimming: 1-2-Stretch; 1-2-Stretch where the 1 and 2 are on normal strokes and the stretch is on a breathing stroke, This will help you reminding to keep that lead arm stretched forward for support when you are swimming.

If you have a tendency to pause and over-glide in your stroke when you are in swimming, then be wary of leaving this arm stationary for too long or you risk stalling. Just stretch and feel like the focus is on that lead arm and not on breathing in.www.poqswim.com

If you found this tip helped your breathing then take a look at our Bambino Swim Type and see if it rings any bells with your stroke when you are swimming. The Bambino Stroke Correction Guide will give you plenty more tips to improve your swimming, all tailored to your specific stroke style!

Popeye Breathing

Our second tip breathing when swimming is to remember to angle your mouth to the side.www.poqswim.com

poqswim

This looks a bit like Popeye chewing his spinach, which is where the technique gains its name from. Breathing in this way helps you keep your head lower without drinking water, which is important as lifting the head too far causes your legs to sink downwards.www.poqswim.com