Oxygen debt is simply the lag between the oxygen you require and the oxygen available-and just like on land, your respiration rate will increase with intensity. Try breathing like this as you’re reading, and you will quickly see why swimming can be so hard for some athletes! Before long you are scrambling, believing you need more air in-but just as big an issue is the buildup of carbon dioxide because you are not exhaling adequately.
When athletes start swimming, many attempt to inhale too much and too fast, then hold their breath and are left to exhale incompletely (usually with great force) just before they turn to inhale again.
You’ll probably imagine the sensation of relaxed air in and continuous relaxed air out. If your strength is riding, for example, think about how you breathe when you’re riding. To start, think about how you breathe on land. The problem, in other words, is not the size of the tank but how the athlete is utilizing it.įortunately, breathing well in the water isn’t a challenging skill to learn, it simply requires some awareness and practice. Many triathletes I have worked with come to the pool, jump in, gas out and say to me “I’m just not fit enough.” Really? You can ride hundreds of miles a week, go for a run at the end of your races, and you’re telling me you’re not “fit” enough? While aerobic capacity does have an impact on performance, the ability of an athlete to utilize their capacity is just as important, if not more important. All of these can and are enhanced with training to some extent. Aerobic CapacityĪn athlete’s aerobic capacity is affected by the strength and size of their heart and lungs, density of capillaries and mitochondria in their muscle, concentration of hemoglobin, and the activity of their aerobic enzymes. Let’s look at some theoretical principles and give you some practical tips for effective breathing in swimming. Can it be as simple as breathing effectively in the water? A quick search on Google Scholar alone indicates there have been over 17,500 published research papers on breathing, with 6,400 of them being directly related to sports performance just in 2019. Love it or hate it, there is always a search for the magic technique that can give you that extra edge. Swimming is a polarizing discipline in the triathlon community.
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