Swimming - breath control

Something that I hadn't been looking forward to, especially after a sesson in the pool 2 days earlier when my arms felt like lead. I was told we were going to work on breathing. I was thinking head position and learning how to take on board air without inhaling a load of water (a regular occurrence for me). In fact it was breath control we were practicing which meant testing how long you could hold your breath for.

Thankfully the night before we'd been doing breathing exercises in yoga to regulate and improve our breathing. Full yogic breaths involve inhaling from your abdomen, up through your chest to your collar bone followed by even longer controlled outflows of breath. Sometimes we restrict our breathing to one nostril, other times we retain the breath for prolonged periods. Either way, very relaxing and definitely helps when I get in the pool.

Swimming should also regulate your breathing but for me it turns into a gasp followed by as many strokes with my head under water and then another gasp. I often panic, especially when I get into open water and can't see anything under water. My typical 'rhythm' in open water is to breathe every 2 for a couple of strokes, then 3 to swap sides, then back to 2 again.

The session went along the following lines:

• Warm up - 300m
• Catch ups - 120m (see Swimming Lesson 1 post)
• Normal front crawl - 60m - all OK so far, I hadn't forgotten how to front crawl
• Breathing pyramid [and so I thought my nightmare was about to begin] - swimming lengths you set off breathing every 2, next length every 3, then 4 up until the 4th length when you are breathing every 5 strokes. On these latter ones I was advised to actually hold my breath for the first couple of strokes and then breath our slowly ("like blowing out a candle"). And then back down again, 4-3-2, each time getting easier until breathing every 2 strokes felt like I was hyperventilating. So 210 m / 8 lengths in total. It really wasn't too bad as long as I remained calm which, in the grand scheme of things, I did. I think the key is to not push it too much so that your HR and breathing remain relatively steady. With practice I should be able to get up to breathing every 8 strokes. Eeek.
• Swimming underwater. "How far do you reckon you can get" says Dave. Oh no, oh no, this is not what I signed up for, I'm thinking. "Erm, probably about 5m?!" I reply tentatively. Under promise, over deliver. I'm told to do breaststroke and to go as deep as possible. I get to the other end having come up twice for air. The most I managed was 7 strokes of breast stroke under water but the aim is to have me swimming whole lengths by the summer. Watch this space...
• What I hadn't realised is that Dave was prepping me for the Usain Bolt. As per the 100m runner I was required to sprint the 30m length of the pool while holding my breath. I think I took 2 breaths but, again, the idea is to hold your breath for as long as possible. Head down and power through the water. It was good to go fast and I definitely felt more power going down. The exercise was to do 4 sprints with 30 seconds rest at the end of the first, 25 secs after the second and just 20 secs to recover before the final sprint. The idea is to up the number of sprints and reduce the length of recovery as you improve
• I finished with 4 lengths warm down and a further 12 lengths to put into practice what I had learnt during the session

So, three lessons down, have I improved? I do have a couple of observations:

• There is some element of excitement at trying out my new stroke when I get in the water - a bit like buying a new pair of shoes or even a new car. You want to use it all the time. Needless to say it hasn't been so exciting that I want to swim more than twice a week!
• The 'high shoulders' call is one of the best things to focus on when swimming longer distances. You feel your whole body role out of the water and your arm then automatically reaches further forward. Even if I'm not going much faster my stroke is longer, smoother and, without doubt, using less energy.
• WJD laughed at me when I said I was aiming to do the Ironman swim (3.8km) in 1hr 20 mins. But I am fully confident that I will be at or about this time when I come out of the water. If I'm 10 mins ahead of him on the bike that's quite a lot of catching up to do if I'm averaging 28kph on wheels.... If that is not worth the spend on swimming lessons then I'm not sure what is.

Next lesson is on Wednesday. There was some mention of practicing tumble turns which, whilst not very helpful for open water swimming, will help me get into more of a rhythm while I'm training indoors. Plus it always looks quite flare and helps you overtake the annoying slow swimmers [me included after 20+ lengths...!] in the fast lane. Unfortunately I'm not sure it's something I will be able to  master without holding my nose.