I was working with ‘Ray’ in a private lesson. He presented a good example of how we could use the Checklist For Easier Breathing to diagnose his breathing complaint and pinpoint the possible solutions.
To review, here are the four main features of easier breathing:
- Fundamental Stroke Skills
- Breathing Technique
- Swimming Specific Fitness
- Mindset
Review The Foundation First
Ray was practicing diligently the last couple months, but came humbly, expecting me to find something in his stroke or breathing skills that was causing his troubles. But honestly, during his warm up swim of a few 25s, the fundamental stroke skills on non-breathing strokes were looking really good to me. The common errors which typically make breathing difficult were not present.
And, when he did execute the breathing stroke, the critical features were in place also. Yet, after just 1.5 lengths in the 25 yard pool, he felt he had to stop and collect his breath. If he tried to swim more than a length at a time, he would run into problems.
We did a bit more testing and I interviewed him about his internal experience as he approached that 35-40 yard mark in the swim. What was happening inside?
Before this point, he was feeling fine and the stroke was looking fine. But as he made the turn and began the second length he explained how he was feeling increasingly anxious. That’s when he started to choke on water a bit, and just before that moment is when I noticed certain small details in the stroke lost precision. What was the root cause?
Investigate Inside
At the time of this lesson, Ray, in his mid-30’s, had been swimming for just 2.5 months, with no prior swim training experience. He started swimming right when he took our Freestyle Technique, 4 week, 4 lesson series and had been practicing 3 times a week, 45 or more minutes per practice, since then. Though I would not expect him to be 1K race-ready with this history and modest amount of training in his bag, I could expect a person in his position to be fit enough to swim continuously for 10 or 15 minutes.
My assessment led me to suspect that he was having a psycho-somatic reaction to the normal stresses that emerge from moderate swimming exertion. A change in his body chemistry was provoking a change in his attention, and subconsciously that was provoking a change in the qualities of his body position and movement patterns.
I built a hypothesis for what may be happening that we could test: as he made the turn he was feeling some discomfort from the increase of normal, healthy waste products in his blood stream, breathing was a bit heavier as a result. He pushed off and held breath until that first stroke and this made him start to feel anxious for respiration. He agreed. I would describe this as a normal, healthy land-mammal reaction to heavier respiration in water. The survival brain is saying, “PUSH DOWN AND GET YOUR HEAD UP OUT OF THE WATER TO BREATH MORE!” The loyal land-mammal brain takes that message seriously and starts urging the body parts to shift priorities in their movement patterns. Ray explained how he was feeling more tension in his body and could feel how this was changing how he was interacting with the water. The brain, without his conscious consent, was beginning to make a subtle but disruptive shift from swimming forward smoothly to survival.
But did he really have a reason to be alarmed, or was this an old habit, a programmed warning that he could now safely override?
Search For Failure Points and Specific Causes
We ran another experiment on a few repeats. He was going to apply some focal points while swimming 25 and beyond and see how those focal points affected his sense of calm and control in breathing. For the first length he was to observe how relaxed and smooth he felt and pinpoint a couple specific internal focal points that contributed to that. Then, as he turned at the wall and began the second length, he was to focus on holding those specific relaxation focal points, trying to extend that sense of ease farther than he had before.
And, as Ray did this, he turned at the wall then passed his previous failure point looking as in control as he did on the first length. His breathing was slightly heavier, but he held critical position. He turned again and made it half way down the third lengths – about 65 yards – before I noticed those small details of his stroke start to deteriorate and he ended up choking on a bit of water. He was pleased with how well it worked!
I pointed out the particular places in his stroke that appeared to be more vulnerable to deterioration when anxiety took over. Those are parts of the stroke movement pattern that are not strong enough to keep going on auto-pilot when his attention is diverted. And, we added those to the short list of relaxation focal points he had already made to protect himself as the discomfort of normal exertion built up during the swim and the old program would mistakenly try to get him to shift priorities.
What About His Fitness?
Up to this point, although swimming regularly, Ray’s fitness development had been limited due to the fact that he was not doing many repeats longer than 50 yards because of this tension and choking experience. He may have been gradually increasing volume in his training by doing more number of repetitions, but his distance-specific fitness would require swimming longer, uninterrupted distances. Though we now had some solutions for what was keeping his repeats so short, he would still likely run into neural fatigue (loss of attention, loss of precision) and muscular fatigue (loss of power) not far past that 50 yard point because his body was simply not used to working continuously for distances longer than this.
I suggested a pattern he could use to gradually increase volume while developing both neural and muscular fitness together. In this way he could acquire genuinely efficient endurance.
Practice Series To Build Easier Endurance
Since we found his new failure point to be somewhere between 50 and 75 yards, we would start his repeats distances with this.
Ray would choose one or two focal points to imprint on each set. If using two focal points, he would use one of them for half the set and the other, or the two blended, for the second half.
For at least three practices in a row he will swim 8x 75, where failure is expected somewhere before 75. Failure, in his case, is described as the loss of attention which leads to the loss of relaxation, which leads to the deterioration in stroke quality, which leads to choking on water, which forces him to stop swimming.
75 yards is the assigned quantity objective. His quality objective is to either improve upon that failure point, or at least hold it consistent for the full number of repeats. This would provoke the building of neural strength over the set and over the series of practices. When he starts to feel the first subtle signs of fatigue that is when the hard work really begins in each repeat. He is considered successful in this set only if he achieves the quality objective inside the quantities assigned.
When he is successful at holding consistent or improving that failure point for all 8x 75, then he can increase the volume of that set to 10x 75 for a few practices until successful. Then he can increase it to 12x 75 for a total of 900 yards.
Then he may increase the volume of the repeat. He will start with 6x 100 for a series of practices, then increase to 8x 100, and then to 10x 100 for a total of 1000 yards.
Then he may increase the volume of the repeats again. He will start with 4x 150 for a series of practices, then increase to 6x 150, then increase to 8x 150 for a total of 1200 yards.
Patience And Persistence
As he goes along in this efficiency building process there is no point in Ray swimming longer repeats or more number of repeats if he is going to imprint failure under fatigue. Failure would be defined as being able to hold his quality standard only 40% or less of the distance. If he is mostly failing, then its time to rest or time to stop.
When seeking efficiency in fitness, he gets no points for swimming more distance if he cannot also achieve the assigned qualities within that distance. What pattern would his brain then be imprinting for fatigue-state swimming? To hold attention and extend quality a bit longer than before is the whole point of the set. But if he cannot hold attention and extend quality any longer, then that’s when he must rest a bit longer or stop. That’s where understanding, patience and persistence is required for such a process of incremental increase in neural challenge.
It may be that he breaks through sooner – doing just a couple practices at that first level – and can start doing longer repeats while holding the quality standard he has set for himself. He may arrive at practice and find that he can easily do the assigned 6x 75 and tries to do 2 more repeats. He may find out that he can suddenly swim 85 yards before failure and should start doing 100 yard repeats. He can always accelerate according to his neural strength.
But he must also be ready to be patient and gradual in his increase in neural challenge if it is going slow. He may have anticipated doing 8x 75 for only three practices, but maybe it will take five. Occasionally, the swimmer may have a breakthrough and improve in big leaps. At other times the breakthroughs take longer and improvements are more subtle.
This is what makes the efficiency training process personal and organic – it responds to the actual state of the swimmer from practice to practice. High quality practice must be tailored to address that specific swimmer’s weaknesses and failure points, and expectations adjusted in the moment by the feedback he receives during that practice.
Breathing ease will come when you can pinpoint the specific causes of the trouble and tailor your practice to work on those points, with an appropriate level of challenge so that qualities remain higher priority than quantities. But you must also gradually increase those quantities!
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Mat: I have several years of TI learning (after late adult onset learning) and practice under my belt, but I still run into the same wall that you describe. More like at 75m after the 2nd or 3rd 100m repeat (with fixed TT cadence and constant send-off times), but essentially the same story.
In your fix for setting distance to the point at which failure is expected to occur, do you also limit the recovery time/ set constant send-off times?
Or is does this repetitive method at expected failure distances work better with flexible recovery times?
Hello Su-Chong Lim. Good to hear from you again.
First, I would recommend that you test how far you can swim with no limits on recovery time or send offs. Yes, to start, it would work better to be flexible with recovery.
How far can you go in the most gentle, relaxed swimming? Do you still run into the same failures at the same distance, or same number of repeats? Do the precision of your movements, your stroke quality remain the same, but your breathing or heart rate shoot up at this point? If so, this suggests you need to develop your fitness side more. If your precision drops first, then you notice your breathing or heart rate shoot up, then you may also or more predominantly have a neural weakness and you need to keep demanding highest concentration and quality of movements as you enter fatigue, as you reach that failure point and push slightly farther than before.
Consider using a progression like this (change repeat distances and number of repeats to suit your skill and fitness):
6x 100 with as much rest as you like
6x 100 with consistent SPL
6x 100 with consistent SPL and fixed rest intervals
6x 100 with consistent tempo, and fixed rest intervals
6x 100 with consistent SPL and consistent tempo, with as much rest as you like
6x 100 with consistent SPL, consistent tempo, with fixed rest intervals
Once you can do the whole set holding your quality standard, you may graduate to the next step in the progression.
Mat, thanks for your post. Your clarity and logical advice are always helpful to my training.
Being able to swim longer than you think you can is definitely psychological, at least for me. Even though I could swim 2000 broken yds without much problem, swimming more than 500 yds continuously was “impossible” for me … until I signed up for your Master Class 1K and did it on the 1st try! Still, maintaining my SPL at constant tempo is still a struggle for me. When I swim sets of 100’s, my SPL will typically be 17, 18, 18, 19. I get the same pattern at tempos 1.15 – 1.20. Hopefully, your training suggestion (to Sclim) above will help me be more consistent (at least not go up to 19). I use a recovery of ~ 15 breaths and do 10×100’s after a 500 – 600 yds warm up. I am planning to decrease the # of recovery breaths as my SPL consistency improves.
Thanks,
Lin
Hello Lin,
Good to hear from you. Being able to hold consistent SPL is a measure of strength of very swim-specific muscle and neural pathways. Doing this kind of work, pushing your attention and muscle control and movement quality to hold it a little bit farther than you did last time in the set is just like lifting weights in the gym. Reducing rest while maintaining quality is the correct path to efficiency-based fitness.
Just to discuss this concept further: A trainer in the gym, guiding you to do squats under a certain amount of weight, would be pushing you to conduct each lift with perfect technique, and to follow through the entire movement from start to finish, the same every time. At the point where you think you might not be able to do one more, he/she would urge you to do one more and coach you through it. You might very well be able to do one more than you think. And, it is in this push-through-perceived-barrier, where the muscles and the neural connections are lovingly pushed to do the full, precise action one more time, that the body is provoked to get stronger. The trainer would not push you to do the action past the point where your safe technique broke down because that is dangerous to the body and harmful to the neural patterns you are trying to imprint. But the trainer would push you past the
limits. That’s the challenge of self-coaching – you’ve got to step out of your own body for a moment and coach yourself to double your concentration and effort to conduct another length at or above your technical standard. In this way, you can expand your consistent SPL capabilities.
For example, let’s say you are doing 10x 100 with a standard of 18 SPL (allowing -1 on first length). And around 6x 100 you notice strength is wavering and one length becomes 19 SPL. You would push your concentration and increase your physical effort to hold the features the make 18 SPL possible for you. If you can solve it by holding shape, do so. If you must solve it by adding more power, do so, only after you have done all you can to protect shape. Then your body will develop solutions for preserving 18 SPL for longer distances. Maybe on this set you can make it into the 7th repeat before you just can’t maintain 18 SPL any longer. That will be a marker of your performance today. After some rest, the next practice you would do this exact same set and be aiming to match or surpass that marker. If you do it easier than the day before you know you increased in strength (neural and or muscular). If you did not, then learn something from it – what broke down in your body or concentration or pattern in the pool? Those weak spots show you what you need to train.
Mat: Following the discussion with great interest. As I have revealed, this is a central problem for me, and it is reassuring to know that it is not my problem alone, and that seeing other people hit the same barrier, although at different points for different individuals, is very reassuring.
Yesterday, doing 100m x ? I collapsed after only 7 repeats despite following the same routine tempo and same time on sendoffs, when usually at my best I could do 10 with only slight SPL drift towards the end, and, with more liberal rest, another 2 or 3 more. But I realized yesterday’s premature failure was after heavy shovelling of snow for 30 minutes just to get out of my driveway, so I have learned my “excellent technique” duration limit is very sensitive to prior superimposed stress. Also, your discussion of exactly what breaks down (mental coordination or physical power) is very provocative for me. I was never very clear exactly what breaks down for me. Your description now forces me to reflect what’s happening at that breaking down process. As I reflect, I realize it’s quite complicated. But essentially I become aware that my stroke distance is shrinking (due to noticing my arrival short of my usual distance markers at given strokes number 12, number 15, etc.) and I struggle to “shape up”. as I exhort myself to lengthen my stroke back to the original specification.
Because I’m so distracted and mildly distressed, it’s rare that I have the presence of mind to relax and focus on stroke perfection while so relaxed. So the default becomes one of forcing a longer stroke, which more rapidly uses up precious diminishing resources of physical strength and aerobic capcity. On the rare occasion that I am able to focus on relaxation at that critical moment of impending failure I am able to postpone the inevitable failure point a little further!
There, by thinking clearly what has happened I have forced myself to articulate that what happened was actually a failure of process. Finely sharpened focus on the mental skill-set is what is going to get me further along, rather than blindly “trying harder”!
I also realize now that another critical question that arises is: when I’m doing so well during the first 1,2,3 or so repeats, am I actually working physically harder to achieve those long easy strokes? It certainly doesn’t feel like it, and in my mind I’m very relaxed and not pulling “hard” at all. If I’m not pulling hard, then the only explanation for the nice long easy strokes is that my technique and timing must be very precise. Why and how does that precision break down? (Maybe the answer is a combination of things — I probably am pulling harder than I realize, because I feel so strong and fresh at first, but the ability to be relaxed while I do so, which is easy early on in the series, is hugely beneficial to the preservation of good form as the series extends.)
I am so glad to have this discussion. Coincidentally, this morning in our practice group I was working with a swimmer on this exact same situation. Though there are things to improve and added those focal points, we did not see anything in the stroke to account for the breathlessness at 1.5 lengths. As he stood and rested at the wall I watched his breathing. He was clearly breathing in his upper chest – the rib cage was expanding, the shoulders lifting on each breath. He was not breathing deep in the diaphragm. If he is doing this standing, he is most likely doing this while swimming. The upper lungs process a fraction of the oxygen that the lower lungs can. Though he is breathing on a 2-3-2-3 pattern and otherwise in fairly fit shape, and exhaling and inhaling in sufficient amounts, his lungs are simply not exchanging very much new air for old. This improper breathing technique could easily explain his breathlessness. So, I had him practice belly breathing at rest and then attempt to emphasize diaphragm exhale while swimming 25s. He noticed it was a significant improvement, and interestingly, it improved his balance too. Now that air was being drawn deeper into the lungs, contributing slightly but noticeably to lightening his hips, it felt easier to keep balance.
But switching to diaphragmatic (belly) breathing may not be a quick fix- one must practice mindfully for weeks or months to turn this into a habit (even just on land!) and the muscles that control this need weeks to be strengthened to endure a normal swim practice duration.
I encouraged him to practice this form of breathing everywhere, any time it comes to mind. It may not take that long to form a new habit on land. It will benefit him in the land (tri) sports and in daily life in general.
So, if all else in the foundation has been checked and corrected to a functional degree, and still you feel breathless, then go back to this ‘air management’ category and examine your current technique for breathing. If it is not distinctly coming from your belly then you may get excited that you have discovered a big part of the solution for your breathlessness problem. Breathing from the upper lungs is like trying to swim at 14,000 foot elevation! Even I would feel breathless in a couple lengths.
Hey Su-Chong Lim, I love the detailed measurements and awareness you are practicing on this problem.
Think about this analogy – your blood stream is like the roads through a dense Chinese or Indian neighborhood – the kind of place where there are a lot of pedestrians, carts, scooters, and people trying to go in every direction. When you start firing the muscles the streets are gradually filling up with people carrying oxygen to the muscle cells, and other people coming out of the muscle cells carrying waste products. On the first length the street is not that busy, people are only starting to emerge. But it builds up into a crowd quickly. Fitness means your blood vessel system, those neighborhood streets are made wider, and more small avenues and alleys are carved off of it, thus relieving the build up of traffic.
On the first length you may be working ‘easily’ but there is a lag time for waste products to build up and flood the blood stream. A sense of breathlessness and other internal discomfort is not merely a signal of the difficulty getting oxygen to the muscle cells but also the difficulty of getting rid of waste products from increased muscle cell activity. When you are super fit, you may still work just as hard, but your body has bigger streets and more numerous streets for delivery of O2 and removal of waste. When there is restriction in the in and outflow, the muscles clog up with waste and do not respond as quickly or powerfully to your commands.
And, then the brain also requires delivery of oxygen and removal of waste products. It also has to get more fit at delivery and removal, and competes for the same resources the rest of the body is demanding. When this delivery system for the whole body gets strained by fatigue in the swim set, the brain and its ability to control movement can also be affected. So, we may look for clues in our careful examination of failure to see whether we have a weakness in the body or a weakness in the brain that we can address in training like this.
I see your point regarding the development of work capacity for the small muscles of the shoulder and arm. Their precise positioning requirements are still new and still improving in my case, so the muscles complain somewhat towards the end of the set. Not much, but enough to add to the total burden of distraction. (I like the Chinese/Indian neighbourhood analogy! I grew up in Asia. Also I have visited Istanbul, so I really get it!)
I have identified an additional component — and a somewhat unmeasurable one — confidence. This point was driven home to me today – it is minus 30 degrees C outside so I skipped my weekly run with run buddies and did an indoor treadmill run. I monitored speed and HR quite precisely and was struck by how unaffected emotionally I was by major physical stresses while running (I am a very experienced runner). I got up to a HR of 171 during a hard sprint today, and this was perceived as only mildly stressful). At a HR of 140 while swimming I am pretty well overwhelmed. This is no doubt a result of inexperience and land-based fear. It will get better with time and more exposure. Meanwhile I will accept it for what it is, and try to separate the “physical” difficulty from the “mental” and address each component in isolation.
By the way, I have seen it stated that your swimming heart rate, at equivalent effort level, will be about 15-20 beats lower than running on land (for example). It makes sense, since in swimming, we are horizontal and weightless and being compressed by some pressure. There are quite a few things different or more complex about working vigorously while being submerged in water, so we may give ourselves some grace for how challenging it really is for any of us land mammals in that environment.
I just reviewed my last comment and “new insight”, and then re-read you original post. I feel a little silly — of course, you had stated it precisely in the first instance! And I thought I did get it when I read it the first time. Obviously there is a lot to unpack and various new depths of layers of meaning will reveal themselves, onion-like with each re-visit, especially with the help of intervening new experiences of practice keeping in mind about what you had said, and allowing new moments of “Aha” to jump out at you. So it’s not that I don’t pay attention when I read your stuff — I think I need to cogitate and chew on it a bit and reframe it in my mind to make it real and make it mine. But I guess my point is that your stuff is good for a lot of going back and reviewing. In this spirit I went back and reviewed your “Checklist for Easier Breathing”(Parts 1,2,3). Really good stuff. Rinse and Repeat. Happy New Year everyone!
I hope I’m not beating this to death. But the essence of this post, for me, can be expressed as “to maximize the greatest bang for your mental focus buck, identify the vulnerable point on your fatigue/deterioration cycle, and repeatedly rewind to that point in your training sessions at which to put all your precious and limited mental resources into trying to delay the moment of deterioration of technique.” And it can be done. And it works.
Today I did an indoor bike session — a skill that for me is still in the development phase. But, still reflecting on the message of this post, at a point in the bike session that I was normally starting to fatigue, I found that I was able to focus on pedalling lightly (my mental image was “feather light pressure” and “really smooth”) in a really precise circular pattern, with extreme ease, yet still sustaining the same rpm and watts — the exact equivalent of swimming relaxed and with economy and still maintaining same SPL! With disciplined focus I was able to delay the onset of subjective fatigue for a significant increment of time! So that very useful insight is transferrable to all kinds of other disciplines! I bet I can apply it to running, too.