Anytime I've ever been swimming, I've taken a breath every time my right arm comes out of the water. I suppose this is partly because when learning to swim, it provides frequent opportunities to breath in. Even when swimming competitively in a pool, the biggest downside is that it slowes you down somewhat. However, in open water swimming, I found it to not only slow me down, but also is likely the major contributor to not being able to swim in a straight line.
As far as why it is actually slower - every time you take a breath, energy is expended to do so. Not such a big deal when you are talking 50 yds, where you can just power through the inefficiency - but when talking about a long distance such as 1/2 mile or more, this extra energy adds up. Also - in order to time things correctly so that you can take a breath on the next stroke, I found I was ending up with half a lung full of air at all times - I was either forcefully inhaling, or forcefully exhaling at all times. With running and biking, the breathing is generally a bit slower because it can be.
As to why it contributes to not being able to swim straight, I suspect that in my swimming form, my right arm naturally has a shorter stroke length as a by product of being the arm that comes out of the water when I take a breath.
So, I've recently decided that I want to learn how to breath bilaterally - that is, on the right side during a right stroke, complete the left stroke, complete the right stroke, and breath again on the next left stroke. This will allow more time for oxygen to be removed from air in the lungs, and I think it should also result in a higher average amount of air in the lungs. Also, by alternating sides, anything that causes me to lose my heading from one side should be compensated by the other. This can ultimately lead to less of a need to sight myself during a tri swim, which means faster swim times.
I decided that this would be the perfect type of thing to take advantage of the endless pool for. I could set the power relatively low, and just concentrate on the motions and timing of breathing when my left arm comes out of the water. So that is what I did today. I didn't bother with a stop watch or the HR monitor because getting a cardio workout was not the point.
I ended up doing 4-5 sessions of breathing from the left side, with each session lasting about 3-4 minutes. The first session felt like I was learning to swim all over again. What I thought was a simple matter of turning my head to lift my mouth out of the water turned out to be insufficient. I discovered that when breathing from my right hand side, my left arm was actually pushing down to raise my upper body out of the water slightly. Training my right arm to do the same, in a similar motion, took some practice - and some mouths half full of water.
After a few sessions, the timing and technique started to come together, and I started feeling more proficient. It seems like it is one of those things that I'll never be quite as comfortable as I am on the right hand side - but if I practice left hand breathing for a week or so, I think I'll be good enough that I can incorporate it into my normal swimming. It'll have to go slow at first, until the timing becomes second nature enough that I can increase speed - but I think in the long term, it'll improve my swim time.
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