So my son, a freshman high school swimmer says he doesn't breath out underwater and he doesn't see most others on his team do it either. Instead he exhales out and in quickly on each breath. How common is this in reality in your experience at the upper levels of the sport?

I just think it would be more efficient and therefore result in faster times if one were to breath out underwater so one could inhale more air on the breath stroke. He insists, however that on freestyle, he would be uncomfortable doing this so it wouldn't allow him swim any faster.

Thoughts? How do those of you who have had success at the high school and collegiate level breath? Until he told me this, I thought all good swimmers breath out underwater just as I do (although I have never swam competitively).

Breathing is THE most disruptive portion of swimming strokes (other than backstroke). Much of the technique work, especially in freestroke, is focused on minimizing the negative effects of breathing.

Your son should absolutely exhale underwater. It minimizes the amount of time his head is turned. It rids his body of CO2 more completely, and improves his ability to take in oxygen. EVERY good swimmer does this.

If your son says his teammates don't exhale - then:

- they are not good swimmers and he shouldn't do as they do
- he isn't actually seeing the exhale anyways because their heads are turning, he is swimming himself and can't really see, etc.

Watch the video below of Ian Thorpe, probably the best middle distance freestyler in history, and you will clearly see a strong exhale before his head breaks the surface to breathe.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8egC7PbOME

Phelps:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7cES6C6Oww

The force of the exhale is very evident.

Youtube is full of great underwater swimming videos of swimmers.

Just for reference, I was an above average high school swimmer (long ago) and a current masters swimmer. My two sons were state level swimmers and medalists.

[This message has been edited by SpicewoodAg (edited 1/8/2011 12:05p).]

as a swimmer it is fundamental to exhale while underwater while swimming any stroke where the head is submerged. breathing slows a swimmer down and more time not in the most dynamic body position is slower, there is no way around that. with practice he will realize that it is in fact more comfortable to exhale with the head submerged.

I think those two pretty much covered it, but yes, exhaling while underwater is one of the fundamentals of competitive swimming at any level.

I second all that. Exhaling underwater is what helped me learn to breath to both sides (every three strokes). exhaling is also key to the rhythm of breathing, and can prevent you from getting a "stitch" as we like to call it, or sortof cramp in your lungs. those things suck, and exhaling properly keeps it from happening

Completely agree with all posts that it is imperative to breath out underwater.

However, just to be devils advocate, I can see in sprint races holding your breath for one quick burst out-and-in per 25. Not ideal, but I'm sure some sprinters do this successfully.

H2O - sprinting is a time for a different strategy. Garrett Weber Gale talks about how on a 50M free, he tries to hold air in his lungs as long as he can before he takes a breath (probably once in a 50 long course). Keeping air in the lungs increases bouyancy. But I bet he still explodes his air out underwater before he breathes.

Ideally, in a 50 short course you do it no breather. One breath for the LC 50 tho. but the 100 is a different beast, even though it is still a "sprint". breath control/strategy is extra important in a 100. too many breaths going out and it slows you down, but not enough breathing early will tank you at the end.

Thanks for all the input. Glad to have the confirmation. Talked to his HS coach at their meet yesterday and he confirmed also. My son has been swimming club for several years so probably a knock on those coaches that they never corrected this.

I mentioned his coach's advice to him and he sounded agreeable to trying to make this correction as he respects his knowledge. Any idea how much time he could improve on a 500 once he gets comfortable with it (currently about 5:40)? He's not creating any extra drag now as his technique now is to take a breath every 3 strokes as taught. It's just that he quickly both exhales and inhales each time his mouth comes out of the water.

Although not an elite swimmer, he's decent for a 4A freshman and it's amazing he's done as well as he has using this technique. Lesson to any coaches out there, make sure your swimmers are exhaling correctly.

Ha, you'd be amazed as to how many bad coaches are out there. They just like to stand around, arms folded, and "train" their swimmers, and assume that every 14 year old knows perfect technique. "Hey, that kid has decent speed, he must be good, so I'll just train the crap out of him!"

They may or may not know proper technique, but they sure as h*** aren't going to share it with the swimmers! There's a reason why, despite 4-5 hours of practice every day in HS, swimmers drop so much more time when they get to a program like A&M with good coaches.

It's hard to quantify even if we were to watch him swim. It's harder to quantify without having seen him swim. It sort of depends on how hard he works at it. Ideal breathing technique should leave one goggle in, and I imagine that he's not doing that and able to breathe out and in. So he's gotta follow up on that underwater exhale with perfecting the rest of the breathing technique.

There's also a compounding effect (and I believe this is relatively new) where "the studies" are now showing that improper/too much breathing can ware out the diaphragm, use too much energy, and thus each subsequent breath takes in less and less air. I imagine trying to exhale/inhale in the same turn would fall under that category.

Good luck to you guys! What area are you in?

jbeam - events like the 500 free rely very heavily on aerobic capacity. Your son is probably not maximizing his oxygen intake right now since part of the time he is breathing he is exhaling. He may also be cranking his head out of the water more than ideal so he gets more time to breathe. That can cause other problems. As AgBlastoff said - really good swimmers turn their head just enough to get their mouth out of the water.

So if he improves his breathing, he could see significant improvements. A 5:40 is a solid time for a freshman. If he can split each 50 1 second faster he will drop 10 seconds. Very achievable (every year). The thing about the 500 is that your time savings compound so easily.

Your son should remember that exhaling can and probably should be done both through the nose and the mouth.

By the way - I agree with Agblastoff that so many age group and high school coaches are crappy. Not saying your son's is. But it is actually not easy to detect that he is exhaling wrong. But they should always reinforce proper breathing technique.

[This message has been edited by SpicewoodAg (edited 1/10/2011 10:42a).]

Great discussion - this thread!

We're in Friendswood, Agblastoff. He's probably the 4th fastest of an excellent men's freshman class which should be making waves for the next four years if we can keep everyone together. One of the other freshmen just went 4:55 at the GU senior meet this past weekend so Kyle's slow in comparison. Another is a 1:03 Breaststroker.

This incorrect breathing has turned out to be a bit of a false alarm. After more discussion, the boy said he might be doing it right and just didn't realize it. So Monday pm he told me he paid more attention to it in practice and he is exhaling under water. He's just been doing it so long that he didn't even know his exact breathing technique. That's probably why nobody ever told him to correct it (been to Aggie Swim Camp 3 times). Anyway, although there won't be an immediate resulting time drop, the good side is he won't have to take worry about training himself on a different method.

Ha, false alarms tend to happen when you just do things right out of experience. It actually leads to the exact problem of poor coaching quality because we are all prone to not realize what we do right/wrong when it becomes second nature. So many coaches were good or even great swimmers that they don't really take the time to dissect the details of a stroke or keep up with new developments in training or technique.

I remember my club coach while I was in HS was a younger guy and ok HS swimmer, but he also read a ton and kept up on coaching news. Then he used me and another guy as guinea pigs for training and technique, which I preferred over coaches that just gave the same workouts year in and year out. Several of my teammates left for more established programs in the area. The main group of guys that stayed, including myself, developed much more through HS and went to Juniors or Seniors with several going on to swim at UT, A&M, and other solid programs. I don't think we had the best coach ever, but his effort made him pretty good in comparison to most.

On the flip side, my HS team coach qualified for the 1980 Olympics and didn't keep up as much with training techniques, therefore wasn't as an effective coach. With that said, both are great individuals. I just think that relying on past success contributes to the lack of quality coaches at the age group level.

Oh ya, Spice and 09 - I completely agree that sprinting is a different strategy, which is precisely why I mentioned it. Even in sprinting you should still breath out underwater, I was just trying to find a situation where you could get away without doing it.

(edit for grammar)

[This message has been edited by H2OPoloAg02 (edited 1/13/2011 5:26p).]

H2O - I agree with everything you wrote. The difference in quality between coaches can be gigantic. So many USA-S coaches are ex-swimmers, who coach their kids just like they were coached 20 or 30 years ago. Many still believe in yardage as THE strategy to develop a swimmer.

Many others have no training in physiology. They barely understand aerobic vs. anerobic and build workout sets with no purpose. High school coaches are on average much worse - because they aren't coaches first. They are teachers, then coaches. And almost no good swimming coach will choose to be a high school coach where they only get the kids for 8 hours a week.

Ha, I know one of those kind of coaches...he's an ex-sip swimmer too! The worst part is that those coaches get extra credibility with people who don't know any better, just because they were good swimmers.

The whole "To be a good coach, you had to be an athlete" theory is really just a myth and unfortunately one which a lot of people buy into.

My favorite example of that being that Gennadi Touretski (The great coach of Klim, Popov) certainly was not a great athlete in his own right.
It would be really interesting to look at a world championships or US Trials and try to take into account how many coaches were "great" athletes themselves....

Aquabullet - like your name....

I think it is helpful for a coach to have been an athlete in that sport, but not mandatory. It is definitely not an automatic qualification.

The A&M diving coach was not a diver. He was a stunt skier, but not a diver. Dennis Franchione never played football.

quote:

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Dennis Franchione never played football.

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Well, maybe not the best example.

True (Franchione) - but he had a lot of success other than at A&M.

http://sports.espn.go.com/ncb/columns/story?columnist=katz_andy&id=3045864
Interesting link on coaches who didn't play. Not necessarily swimming related but good read anyways