For those new to swimming or unfamiliar with the term, bilateral breathing means to breathe to both the right and left side while you swim. Simple enough concept. Sorta like dribbling with your right and left hand when you play basketball. The problem is that quite a few new swimmers (and let’s face it, a lot of swimmers who’ve been at it for a while) shy away from it because it feels awkward and can take a while to adjust to. Added to that that, if you’re struggling with swimming to begin with, and then you must hold your breath for 2 strokes (if you’re breathing every 3) then you’re going to get winded in a hurry. But just because it’s difficult shouldn’t mean you gloss over the idea. The benefits associated with it are many. In fact, as you might have guessed, I’m going to go over a few of them here.

Sighting – For triathletes this is the most obvious argument that is made, and perhaps, one of the least important. In any given open water swim, you are bound to get the sun in your face at some point. So if you are breathing to your right side and the sun is in your face, then the ability to breathe to your left is a great help in navigating your way through the course. The reason I say that this might be the least important is that you can also just close your eyes when you breathe and lift your head to sight in front of you to get around this problem. Not a great solution, but it will do the trick.

Symmetrical Technique – This one’s a biggie. Almost without exception, swimmers will have a strong side and a weak side. Right handed? Then your right arm/pull is typically stronger than your left. To make matters worse, swimmers will cater to the strong side by breathing to the strong side. A the domino effect begins..In order to breathe just to one side (we’ll use the right for this discussion)  they start swimming with the left shoulder lower in the water to make for an easier breath.  This makes one arm pull deeper than the other. To compensate for that they begin to reach a little further with the right arm to get a bigger pull with the strong arm. This soon turns into an overreach, and now there is a slight wiggle in their stroke. In order to compensate for the wiggle, the swimmer adds one really large kick with his right foot to get the body to rotate back over. Now he has a scissor kick and can’t swim in a straight line. What started out as favoring one side of breathing a little has turned into a bit of a messy stroke. This isn’t an exaggeration either. I have corrected a stroke just like this on numerous occasions by simply forcing them to breathe every 3rd stroke to make the pull symmetrically. There are other examples I could give such as dropping the elbow and breaking form when you breathe, but this is a blog, not a book.
Notice the asymmetrical strokes in the following videos. Strong swimmers, but the uneven stroke is costing them efficiency.

Rotation – Good body rotation is a big focus in learning how to swim well. Grab any book on the subject of swimming and rotation is mentioned early and often. When you choose to breathe on just one side though, you only develop half of that rotation. Because you’re favoring (as I mentioned above) one side, you will not rotate fully back to the other side. This is also at trap when people breathe just to the right for a length and then just to the left for a length. It’s a typical workaround for those who just hate breathing every 3rd stroke. So by favoring one side you rotate well in one direction and then finish rotating on the other side completely flat on their stomach. By not continually alternating your breathing you don’t learn proper rotation, you just learn how to drop a shoulder.

Swimming Straight – This is also a play off of the technique issue (isn’t everything a play off of technique with swimming?). An imbalance in your stroke leads to swimming crooked. It’s quite simple really. If one arm has a bigger reach/stroke than another, even if by a tiny amount, then the stronger arm/bigger stroke will control the direction. Never an issue in the pool as you have a black line and your hands naturally adjust pitch to steer in a straight line. Get in open water however, and you you’ll find yourself swimming all over the place. Happens to everyone. When I breathe to my left I tend to steer right just a little. Still working on that.

Now, I know the first thing some of you are thinking. “Well I watched (Insert Name Here) race in the Olympics/Ironman/World Cup, and they breathed to the same side the whole race. If they don’t do it why should I think it’s important? Answer is pretty simple really. When you race, technique needs to almost be automatic and getting enough air needs to be the focus. In training, you are focusing on technique so that it becomes automatic, so that needs to be the focus. In other words, when the effort is big (training or racing) get your air, but the rest of the time dial in that stroke.

If nothing else, watch the best swimmers do it. If you think it’s tough and they make it look easy…maybe, just maybe, there’s something to it.

Now go breathe right…..and left.

The first thing that I have to mention is that these swim videos are done with a wetsuit on. The problem with that is that it can hide certain flaws and habits with all that added buoyancy. Having said that, I can still pick out a few of them even with the suit on. More on that in a bit.

In watching Jay swim, I can tell that he is very comfortable in the water and a good swimmer. I don’t have any racing times, but I’m quite sure he’s not bringing up the rear. Of course this wouldn’t be any fun if I just complemented the stroke and moved on. So let me pick this sucker apart..

First thing I want to touch on is the easy one, and that’s Jay’s pull. Like a lot of people, Jay is dropping his elbow on his pull, and in some of these shots it’s pretty pronounced. As I have mentioned in other areas of this site (here), by leading the pull through the water with your elbow, you minimize the surface area in which you’re pulling yourself through the water. In addition, you use more tricep and less lat by dropping your elbow. Take a look at the still shot of Jay here:

And compare it to the pictures here of a pretty good pull. (There’s also a great one of Grant Hackett on a previous post)

While my pull isn’t perfect, this makes it pretty easy to see the difference, and what needs to be adjusted.

I also noticed that the left arm is entering/extending wider and pulling more air, especially when he breathes. This is easiest to see in the brief head on shot, but you can still see it pretty well on his return trip when the left arm is closest to the camera. The fix? Bilateral breathing. By breathing to both sides you start to move equally between the left and right sides. It also will help prevent injuries as the yards add up as there are fewer ways to favor weak habits.

Another thing I see is that Jay is lifting his head a bit too much to take a breath. While it’s not a big deal in and of itself, a head high in the water usually means a lowering of the hips and forces you to kick harder to keep the proper body position. Try keeping a goggle in the water (or as close as you can) when you rotate to breathe.

Kick. here is one of the areas that a wetsuit is good at hiding. A good kick is used to help facilitate body rotation, body position, and a little bit of propulsion. (more on that here). Ideally you want to minimize how much you kick by making each kick as effective as possible. (For the distances of triathlon, I recommend a 2 beat kick). The less effective the kick, the more kicking you have to do. When I look at Jay’s kick, it looks like the wetsuit is hiding some flaws in his kick. From what I see, the basic fundamentals of the kick are pretty good. Starts at the hip, bend in the knee, whip in the ankle, like kicking a ball. The big problem that I see is the timing. The kick should start the rotation, so when you are rotated to one side, the bottom foot should initiate the rotation in the other direction. In watching Jay, you can see a pronounced kick with his left leg, especially when he breathes. This is simply because Jay is rotating more when he breathes and needs that forceful kick to get him rotating in the other direction. What you don’t see is that same type of timing and force on his right leg. Easiest way to fix this is for Jay to start …..everyone together now…breathing bilaterally. By breathing to the left he will begin to balance out his stroke and force that kick to be more purposeful. Between that and a heathly dose of kick sets, Jay can improve his kick so he rotates better and gets to his bike a bit quicker.

Lastly, You’re arms should extend straight out in front of your body. Jay’s arms are extending in downward (say, 4 o’clock) trajectory as the swim progresses, which shortens the length of his stroke and negatively effects his streamline. Usually this is a flexibility issue, so I would recommend focusing on a good streamline off each wall and a generous amount of stretching when you get out of the pool.

Hopefully there’s a few take home points here and it quickens everyone’s times. Questions? Fire away.

Oh and Jay, thank you for your service to our country. It’s greatly appreciated.

I don’t really feel like picking apart my own stroke in any great detail, but I will admit that my stroke does have flaws. Since I don’t slow down the video or point any of them out, most of you won’t see too many of them though. That works just fine for me, because if I let you peek behind the curtain to see the real wizard, then you won’t tap your ruby slippers together anymore…

From under the water:

Above View:

Head On:

See ya at the pool.

Generally speaking, when someone starts swimming, they tend to have their head and shoulders riding very high in the water with the hips and legs dragging behind (poor balance). Poor rotation and a horrible streamline are also pretty standard. To compensate for this, the swimmer will kick a little harder to bring the hips up and to try and generate a little more propulsion. My experience is that this comes in the form of the 4 beat kick (2 kicks for every stroke). As the swimmer gets better, the body position improves and the streamline gets better, but the kick doesn’t seem to change. Why? well my experience has been that its the rhythm that’s so hard to break. Its just a classic bad habit, and it makes it very difficult to change up your tempo on the fly once the habit is formed.

So what’s the big deal? Who cares how many times you kick? Well, there are a couple of big reasons, so let me explain the function of the kick first.

The purpose of the your kick, at least in distance swimming, is primarily rotation and a little for balance. There’s not much in the way of propulsion. When you rotate to one side, the leg kicks to start the rotation in the other direction. The better the kick, the better the rotation. (People are often told to rotate from the hips, and I have no issue with that. I think it’s more of a mental image that anything. Try and rotate your hips without using your feet or arms and you will see that it’s impossible, which brings me back to the kick. ) That same downward thrust will also raise the legs and hips if needed, however, the better you get in the pool, the less that is needed.

With a 2 beat kick, your bottom leg (leg closest to the bottom of the pool) kicks shortly after the arm begins its pull. So your right arm enters the water and right after it begins its pull, the right leg applies one swift kick. That one, powerful, well placed kick is all you need to begin rotating to the left side. If you have a 4 beat kick, that means that your bottom legs kicks to start the rotation and the top leg immediately follows and COUNTERS that kick, slowing or hindering the rotation. People with a 4 beat tend to struggle more with a good rotation as their kick isn’t helping as much as it should. The 6 beat kick allows for two kicks toward rotation, and one to counter, so you are netting out a solid rotation. Anything more than that and you are swimming from a shark in an all out sprint.
Trying to get a good visual of that kick? Think of kicking a soccer ball with your bottom leg. Swift deliberate and powerful. Of course the flexibility of your ankles come into play as well.

Now we all know that the quads are some pretty large muscles, and while they can generate some pretty powerful movements, they also burn up a serious amount of oxygen. So, if you are generating a lot of power and burning a ton of oxygen, but aren’t getting much benefit from it (propulsion) why wear yourself and your legs out? This, in my opinion, why the 2 beat kick is so important to learn if you are doing triathlons or swimming long distances.

Alright, so lets take a look at the two types of kick. First off, take a look at Michelle’s freestyle. She has a great stroke and has really improved over the last 2 seasons.  In the video, she is swimming a little faster than 1:20 per hundred yards and quite comfortable. Clearly no slouch. Pay attention to the kick.

 Now, take a look at a two beat kick. In this clip I am swimming about 1:12 per hundred yards.

The differences are pretty subtle between the two strokes top to bottom, but Michelle has a 4 beat and I have a 2 beat. Who looks like they’re spending more energy?

This goes back to another point I tend to talk about. A more efficient swim will not only make you a faster swimmer, but make you a faster cyclist because you are much fresher coming out of the water.

A lot to think about here, but hop in the pool and give it a try. So, at what level of a swimmer should you try to work on getting into a 2 beat kick?  I think you should learn it from the start. It seems like breaking the habit of the 4 beat kick is like quitting smoking, based on the swimmers I help.

Good Luck and let me know if I can help.