Breathe Easy For As LONG As You’d Like

Doing drills is not going to lead to bulletproof breathing that holds up while racing.

It’s not enough to just do some drills and call it good.

You need a plan to be able to sustain great breathing for as long as you’d like.

Too many triathletes make the mistakes of doing a few drills at the beginning of their workout and assuming they’ve got it all figured out.

Unfortunately, drills don’t really help you improve your swimming.

HOWEVER, they do help you FEEL how better swimming is possible.

They ‘work’, but only when you couple them with a sufficient amount of freestyle swimming.

THAT is when the magic happens.

It’s like a locked door to a wonderful new world.

Drills are the key to the lock.

Once the door is unlocked, you still have to open the door and walk through it.

When it comes to breathing, good drills help you feel better ways of executing your breathing.

I covered those HERE.

Once you’ve practiced those drills and integrated what you learned into your freestyle, the job still isn’t done.

What happens when you want to swim faster?

What happens when you want to swim longer?

What happens when you want to swim harder?

You need to TRAIN those skills to be able to withstand those pressures.

Let me show you how to do it.

Here’s the simple solution.

How To Integrate Breathing Skills Into Your Sets

First, you need to learn how to integrate breathing skills into your sets.

In my previous e-mail/video/article from earlier this week, I described three key drills for improving your breathing.

You have to learn to integrate these drills into your sets.

When it comes to bobbing, the easiest way to do so is to just perform a few bobs between each repetition.

This is particularly effective because it allows you to get a lot of practice.

Even better, you’re going to be slightly out of breath once you finish your repetition, which makes it just a little harder to execute great breathing, which is exactly what you want.

You’ll be forced to breathe rhythmically, and you’ll train to do so under a little bit of pressure.

When it comes to paddle cap freestyle, just perform a few repetitions, take the paddle off, and then perform a few repetitions of freestyle.

The only trick with paddle cap freestyle is that you have to have the paddle with you.

If you’re leaving it on one side of the pool, you need to make sure you start the next paddle cap freestyle rep when you’re back on that side of the pool.

That takes a little more planning, but not much.

Incorporating stroke and roll is even easier because you don’t have to worry about the paddle.

Just integrate it whenever and wherever you please.

You can perform the drill within the same repetition as regular freestyle, or you can perform it during separate repetitions.

It’s ALL good and it ALL works.

Just remember the key concept- combine the drills and freestyle swimming, alternating between the two on a semi-regular basis.

When it comes to TRAINING, you want to push the challenge, always ensuring that you’re swimming WELL.

If you don’t continue to swim well, back off a bit, reduce the challenge, and ensuring you’re executing great skills.

Go Long

This is all about building endurance.

You want to progressively increase the total volume you’re performing and the total distance you’re swimming.

The intensity should be low, and the rest periods should be short.

Remember, it’s about endurance.

Constantly integrate the skill work throughout, and swim WELL.

When you can swim long distances with excellent breathing, your skills are that much closer to being bulletproof.

Checkout this set for a practical example.

Just make any adjustments based upon how upon your specific goals and your specific abilities.

Go Fast

This is all about learning to swim fast with great skills.

You want to practice swimming faster and faster with awesome breathing.

The intensity should be high, the volume should be low, and the rest should be high.

Remember, it’s about speed, so you want to ensure the sets allow you to go FAST.

Constantly integrate the skill work throughout, and swim WELL.

When you can swim FAST with excellent breathing, your skills are that much closer to being bulletproof.

Checkout this set for a practical example.

Just make any adjustments based upon how upon your specific goals and your specific abilities.

Go Hard

This is all about learning to swim HARD with great skills.

You want to practice swimming fast over longer distances with great effort, all while breathing with terrific skill.

The intensity should be high, the volume should be moderate, and the rest should be short.

It’s all about repeated EFFORT.

Constantly integrate the skill work throughout, and swim WELL.

When you can swim HARD with excellent breathing for longer periods of time, your breathing skills are going to be bulletproof.

Checkout this set for a practical example.

Just make any adjustments based upon how upon your specific goals and your specific abilities.

Keep it simple...

Andrew

P.S.

When you're ready to accelerate your progress, check out Fix Your Freestyle FAST .

Take your swimming to the next level with world class insight into exactly what you need to do to improve your freestyle, and everything you need to make it happen.