Breathing in Freestyle: How to Fix Common Mistakes
Adult swimmers often overcomplicate swimming. There are too many gurus online offering quick fixes and ideas that ultimately lead to further complications. In this article, Coach Philip explores freestyle breathing and how to correct common mistakes.
Breathing is important, but breathing underwater without any apparatus is impossible. Nonetheless, “put your head down and swim” is, at its simplest, the manner by which freestyle or front crawl gets us from A to B.
I often simplify problems to their fundamental physics first; I approach them from an engineering background. A swimmer or body in water is working against four forces: vertically, weight and buoyancy; and in the direction they are swimming, propulsion and drag.
Let’s explore these a little more:
Weight: This is your mass and the effect of gravity on it.
Buoyancy: Your body is less dense than water, but more dense than air, so that it will sit somewhere near the surface of the water. People with higher body densities (often those with more muscle) will sit lower in the water. Our legs, compared to our lungs (filled with air), sink more, which is why it is easier to tread water with your head up!
Drag: Drag as a Force is comparable to air resistance on the bike and related to your frontal area, speed and coefficient of drag – Cd – (how slippery you are). The slippiness depends a lot on the materials you are wearing: baggy shorts = bad, fancy slippy race suits = good! Assuming you are in a tight-fitting bathing suit, we can ignore this a bit for now. The area, though, does make a difference, and we will come back to that. Simply, though, making yourself as narrow as possible helps. So the more you can stay in line with your spine, the more “hydro” (like aero on a bike, but in the water) you are.
Propulsion: How much force you put into the direction of travel you want to go in. Think about this like jet propulsion: wherever you point the jet, that's the direction of thrust. You want to be thrusting backwards to move you forwards.
That is it!
The remaining nuances concern individualisation and adapting general principles to the individual.
So how do all of these interact to affect your ability to breathe?
If you imagine the swimmer lying face down in the water, to take a breath, they must bring their nose and mouth above the waterline. You can do this in one of two directions. You can rotate around the spine and breathe, or lift your head and breathe to the front (or a combination of the two). Remember, we can’t breathe under the water.
If we lift our head forward, our legs are likely to drop, increasing our drag. Additionally, to lift upward, we often push the water downward in front of us, reducing the direction of propulsion.
Therefore, the preferred direction to breathe in freestyle is to the sides. Breathing to the side means we have to rotate (which can help propulsion).
The Bow Wave Paradox
This is where something called a bow wave helps us out.
We all know that “sea level” exists. It is a line from which measurements are taken. However, the sea is rarely level! There are swells, peaks and troughs all over the place. We can use this to our advantage. The water or sea level is the average of these peaks and troughs.
When something moves through the water, it creates a wake by displacing the water. This is best thought of like a boat. There is a trailing wake behind it, but if you look carefully at the front, you will see something interesting: the water at the front of the boat (as it is moving) is highest at the very front (the bow). This is called the bow wave.
Waves have peaks and troughs: the peak is at the top, and the trough is the bottom and on the boat, trailing the peak (depending on the speed, it can be farther back). Because the peak is surging above the water level (sea level), the trough is below it. Meaning we don’t need to rotate completely to the side to breathe above the waterline.
What is more, (and counterintuitively), lifting your head removes the very object that creates the bow wave, meaning you have to lift your head higher to breathe.
The size of the bow wave, or more importantly, the depth of the trough, is proportional to the speed at which you move through the water. Swim faster, and it is amplified and here lies the paradox. If you swim faster, you create a bigger wave, which lets you breathe deeper, which means you move your head less, which creates less drag, which means you go faster. On the slip side, if you swim slower, there is less of a bow wave, meaning you have to rotate more to breathe and are likely to lift your head more, which in turn reduces propulsion and increases drag (a double whammy).
The Common Mistakes
Common mistakes we see all involve buoyancy and drag. They are lifting their heads and increasing their drag. Every one of them is linked to these two areas. Pushing down at the front, lifting our head to breathe, breathing timings, the list goes on. In fact, many of the stroke flaws or issues we see stem from your breathing.
So, can we correct this?
There are two simple aims: 1) increasing your bow wave, 2) building your confidence not to lift your head.
These are very difficult to do simultaneously, so consider doing them separately.
Increasing Your Bow Wave
You increase your bow wave by moving faster through the water and not lifting your head. These are generally propulsion-based in focus. So can you swim faster? There are stroke mechanics cues and books on this topic, so we won’t go into too much detail here, but one technique that can significantly help you work on good movements and ingrain them. That is not to breathe normally when swimming freestyle. Using a snorkel helps keep your head steady, allowing you to focus on your rhythm, timing, stroke mechanics, and everything else without worrying about breathing-related issues. A snorkel can significantly build up good swimming movement and allow you to get those tricky parts right without worrying about when you will be able to breathe next! The snorkel can significantly improve your swimming by spending more time working on good habits.
Building the confidence to breathe into the Bow Wave
If we have a bow wave and we know you need to breathe into the trough, the next step is actually to use it. Remember, if you lift your head, you lose that wave! This is where the other parts of the stroke make it harder to focus on this. Fins will help you gain speed (and a bigger bow wave). You want to focus on turning your head to breathe (often, the cue to breathe is under or in front of your armpit). Spend time kicking and learning how low you can breathe.
Sidekick can be fantastic for this. Remember, the aim is to have one eye under the water (Swim Smooth call it a split screen) and gradually you will find you can breathe out the side of your mouth while looking at the side of the pool, not the ceiling!
Another thing people may struggle with is holding their breath. Although you can’t breathe underwater, you can exhale! Breathing out with your face in the water gives you more time to breathe in when it is above the water. Drills like sink downs or the “bubbe, bubble, breathe” mantra can be really helpful.
Summary
Swimming is tricky, mainly because it is a different environment—one where we cannot breathe. However, the very methods we use to get more oxygen often make the environment even harder to operate in. Learning the correct mechanics without worrying about our breathing and building trust that we can breathe when theory says we can goes a long way toward overcoming many of the breathing-related swimming issues. These are best overcome with fins and a snorkel.
Philip is the founder of Tri Training Harder LLP. He’s a British Triathlon Level 3 coach, and has been coaching for over a decade and is involved with mentoring and developing other coaches.
Philip has coached athletes to European and World AG wins, elite racing, many Kona qualifications, IRONMAN podiums and AG wins.
Alongside the conventional development through many CPD courses, he has also been fortunate enough to work alongside experts in the fields of Physiotherapy, Strength and Conditioning, Nutrition, Psychology, Biomechanics, Sports Medicine. Putting this knowledge into practice he has worked with thousands of athletes to various degrees, from training camps in Portugal and around Europe, clinics in the UK and online coaching.
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