I had decided a couple weeks ago that my next long swim training session would concentrate on getting better with breathing from the unfavored side. After having made good progress on the two beat kick and overall form with the total immersion techniques, it was about time I get more comfortable breathing from both sides. Last time I had done any degree of breathing from the other side, I could tell my form was very unbalanced - most noticably because my right leg would make a big splash during a kick.
My initial goal was to do an entire lap breathing from the opposite side. So, thats what I started out doing. A few minutes in, I noticed I was starting to get the hang of it a bit more - the kick from my right leg was less water-disruptive, and although the motions themselves were still herky-jerky, it was a noticable improvement from before. However, I was still only going 5-10 breaths before having to stop for sighting, and in general just catching my breath.
About halfway through, I decided to start bilateral breathing. Since I'm much more comfortable breathing on one side, perhaps that would help normalize things and actually end up bringing overall efficiency up. The problem I had in the past with bilateral breathing was that I didn't have the aerobic capacity to keep it up.
So today's attempt at bilateral breathing was a surprise, initially. I was able to keep up the rhythm for a more extended period of time! I still had to stop every 50 yards or so - but apparently the improvements in form with breathing from the 'bad' side were enough to allow me to do the 50 yds, which is more than I could do before.
As a result, the last 1/4 mile (half the total distance) were basically in 50 yd sections of bilateral breathing. As a bonus, every time I stopped, I found I was tracking pretty straight in the water - no more swimming like a drunken manatee!
I stopped a bit short of the other shore because I had a good 15 minutes or so of dramatically improved form practice, and I didn't want to tire and let it get sloppy. At this point, I'm more concerned with ingraining good form into the muscle memory than I am about building distance or speed.
Total Distance: ~0.5 miles
Total Time: 25:37
Avg HR: 157
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