Recently, I have had three different swimmers come to me with specific complaints about being out of breath from swimming just a lap or two. There are likely a few more possible causes, but here are the three that I run into more often:
1. Struggle
Obviously, then someone is fighting the water rather than working with it (think machine versus fish) he will be burning a lot more energy than he needs to. When we improve Balance, we remove Struggle.
2. Poor Breathing Technique
This is what each of my students has suspected and asked for help with. Of course, we would examine the way in which he is taking the breath to make sure he is getting enough in each breath and enough breaths per length.
3. Muscle Tension
A slightly different action than Struggle, but essentially the same effect inside the body. If all the muscles in the legs and the arms and neck, for instance, are being held in tension during the entire stroke cycle then that is a lot of extra oxygen being burned up, unnecessarily. In TI we train to turn off all that can be turned off, so that as much rest is built into the stroke cycle as possible- even in sprint technique.
My first month practicing (self-teaching) TI produced a 40% savings in energy. I became capable of swimming 1500m in the same time with 40% fewer strokes and a much lower heart rate and effort level. The obvious difference (besides far fewer strokes) was in the relaxed breathing.
4. Mental Tension
It may not be too hard to identify with this. Tense, anxious thoughts produce a tense body and that tension is likely not being channeled toward forward motion. And muscles held tense are consuming oxygen, not to mention resisting fluid movement. This is where the Mental Focus we train for in TI has additional benefits- by re-directing the mind toward productive, positive objectives and stress-relief becomes a natural byproduct.
When the tension and anxiety is caused by the swimming itself (fear of the water in some form), then that is where we begin in TI coaching. Relax! is the first skill we pursue in TI, for a very important reason.
What I have not mentioned is Poor Fitness. Almost everyone who has come to me, or come to one of our workshops is already an athlete or fitness-oriented person who has been swimming regularly or has other sports that they enjoy regularly. Fitness, in the sense that she does not have the cardio-vascular capacity to handle more than a couple lengths without breath-exhaustion is rarely the case.
Of course, there is sport-specific conditioning for muscle and the cardio-vascular system that must happen. Again, most swimmers who come to us have been in the water long enough that this should not be a problem.
So I might break down the oxygen Problem into two categories:
1. Not getting enough oxygen (volume, frequency of breath)
The solution is generally found in improving breathing technique- head position and rotation during breathing, timing of the breath, and air-management (or ballast-control, as I call it).
2. Consuming more than necessary (wasteful movement)
The solution for this is found first in Relax! and then in re-building smooth, economical stroke technique upon it. For the breath-srugglers out there I encourage you to examine your body to see how much you need to work on one skill or the other. With these proven TI skills you are entitled to swim as long as you want with great ease and peacefulness in your mind and body.
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Hi Mat, so what if the problem is either exclusively due to poor/undeveloped fitness or lung capacity OR in conjunction with imperfect (not poor) technique?
I chose to focus on swimming due to weight/knee problem and I know that my fitness level is not good. Beside swimming I do 30 minutes walk to the office most of weekdays.
Thanks beforehand
Hi Baruno,
The fact is that your breathing ease, or lack thereof, results from the combination of these variables, never just one of them. There may be one that is the weakest link in this moment, but they are interdependent, and under-development in each link is going to make it harder for the other links to make their contribution. When a swimmer is under-developed in several variables, fixing just one of them is not going to magically create ‘easy’ breathing.
Cardio improvement alone will not fix this since poor technique will be causing excess drag and excessive work load on that aerobic system. Each breath-done-poorly will disrupt the stroke and take 2 to 3 strokes to get it back, but you never ‘get it back’ when you have to breathe every 2 strokes. So, the fitness-first solution is problematic.
In TI, we want to build up the neurologic system first (the lines of communication), which will make it so much easier to work on the other systems and increase loading with lower risk of injury.
The good news is that you can work on improving breathing technique without having strong fitness to start, and from this process fitness will develop to a good initial point without having to focus on it directly. You can work on breathing technique in very short repetitions, with lots of rest – you’re building precise wiring for movement patterns, without running intense signals through those wires (yet). As you gain some sense of improved competency in short reps with lots of rest you can then slightly increase the challenge on those wires by slightly increasing the distance of the reps, or slightly decreasing the amount of rest between. And you just keep following this pattern of incrementally increased challenge over the weeks. You may start with 15 meter repeats (3 or 4 breaths) for the first week or two, and work your way to full lengths.
Taking the time (in terms of weeks) to get these fundamental pieces of technique in order is like taking time in the garage to build the race car frame and engine, before taking it to the track to race under full stress conditions. The gentle and gradual kind of conditioning you need to start with, to make a safe transition to ‘full-time swimmer’ can happen very conveniently from this technique-emphasized approach. There are two extremes to avoid – those who are desperate to get to ‘the workout’ and fear losing fitness if they do ‘technique’ work and those who are so afraid of doing some part of technique incorrectly that they never increase the physical intensity of practice – but a seasonal and organic view of training will lead you to emphasize technique at certain times and fitness at others. But the two are never separated in training.
Through TI’s form of training you develop deeper sensitivity to the relationship between technique and fitness. From this you will be able to sense what aerobic or metabolic potential you still have and when you might be approaching some sort of un-improvable limit in one direction, which urges you to then emphasize development in another.
So, if you work on fitness-only now – you might get bigger cardio, but swimming is not going to get ‘easier’ – it is far too physiologically specific in terms of conditioning and motor control. But if you work on technique now, and follow a process of incrementally increasing challenge on that technique, ‘easier’ and ‘faster’ will emerge together.
Thanks again Mat.