I often get asked “what’s the one thing I can do to make my swimming more difficult without actually going faster”. There are a lot of options to chose from, but when I think biggest bang for the buck, I go with the freestyle breath.
First of all, unless it’s 50, you can’t really avoid it. You get countless opportunities to implement this at every practice and at every meet. Availability alone puts it at the top of my list!
What many coaches teach is that the freestyle breath is just a rotation of the head, as minimal as possible, just enough to get one eye out of the water and let the nose create a trough to move the water below the mouth so you can get a nice, full breath of air. Who hasn’t done the “close one eye” drill where you close the upper eye and should see only underwater with the open eye on the breath? That’s great if you want to go faster and expend less effort, but that’s not what we teach here
What you really want to do if you want to work harder and swim slower, is lift and turn the entire head up and towards the back as far as you can. Don’t worry if you range of motion doesn’t take you far. Even just a little movement in this direction will have the desired effect. See the illustration below
- Notice how by lifting and turning back the head in the manner exposes a larger surface area for the water to push back on? This will nicely create a scenario in which with every pull, you will have to work harder against the increased resistance.
- Every action has an equal an opposite reaction and this definitely holds true with you head and your butt. The lifting off the head will cause you butt to go lower in the water, creating more increased drag , which means…more work, less speed!
- Observe the over exaggerated rotation of the head and shoulders? This will give you a bonus slow down by causing the front arm to slide across the midline, making the hips jut out to the side (creating even more drag!) and putting you in position for a less powerful pull.
- Forget the one eyed goggle test. Ask you coach if they can see the both of your ears above water when you breath. It’s a tell tale sign that your are working your hardest, and going your slowest.
As you can see, this is a triple threat method for you to really increase the work you put in on every stroke. A bonus nugget of information. While there is no scientific proof, nor is it even common sense, but I personally believe that oxygen gets better the further your mouth is from the surface of the water. Why wouldn’t you lift you head as far as you can when it’s time to take a breath?