Hey, YouTubers. Welcome back to another video. This is on breathing, if you ever have trouble breathing to your opposite side, then this video might be the way that
you can fix it. We’re going to look at exactly what you can do in your freestyle to make sure that you can comfortably breathe to the side. Make sure that you don’t over
rotate and also make sure that you’re not missing the catch because you’re breathing too late. We’re going to look at two examples, we’re going to look at two different ends
of the spectrum.
In this first view, we’re going to look at a swimmer who has more of a catch-up style of stroke. This is Solomon Wright who won the Rottnest Channel Swim, he has
more of a catch-up type of freestyle and he’s a distance swimmer and open water swimmer and you’ll see here that as he takes his breath, the hand that’s extending out in
front stays out in front for quite a while and his head turns back into the water just as he’s finishing the catch phase of his stroke. On the other end of the spectrum is a
swimmer with a much higher stroke rate than Solomon this is Sharon van Rouwendaal, world champion for the female 10k. In this video, you can see that she has a very high
turnover and she pulls through a lot sooner than he does but you’ll also notice that her head turns back just before the arm passes the shoulder apart passes underneath the
shoulder. So that’s the two different ends of the spectrum in terms of the timing of the breath. It doesn’t matter where you fall within that spectrum as long as you stick within
that. One of the things that I see that causes people to either miss time the breath or really lose their catch out in front is if they go down too deep with their arm through
that first phase so is that as they’re entering the water they’ll then go down deep without extending forwards or they’ll over rotate which will cause them to go very deep and
straight with that arm and they’ll pull through too soon by the time that there has already passed their shoulder the heads turning back. The goal here or the way to really
make sure that you’re doing the right thing to allow you to breathe to both sides very comfortably is just make sure that you have an extension phase of the stroke. The
extension phase is once the hands entered when you’re reaching forward. It’s counterintuitive to think you should actually extend forwards in the stroke, you would think
that you’re just better off getting straight into the catch but the thing is the fastest point in your stroke is actually when you’re reaching forwards with one arm and the other
arm is pressing back past the hip. That’s the fastest point in your stroke because that’s when you are creating the least amount of drag, you’re in the best position possible.
The slowest point in your stroke is actually just after you finish your catch phase when the hand is pretty much directly underneath the shoulder that’s because it creates
the most drag. It’s obviously a relevant part of the stroke but the fastest point in a stroke is when your hand is reaching forward out in front so it’s important to make sure
that you do extend or slide the hand forwards before you start tipping the fingertips down, that to me is really one of the keys to making sure that you can fairly comfortably
get the breath on both sides. What I’ll often see with swimmers who are having trouble bringing to the opposite side is they’ll have their hand go straight down too deep in
the water and they won’t have the extension. Just make sure that you include that in your stroke to be able to get that breath comfortably to the other side. You’ll often start
to make these changes if you feel like you go down too deep, too early make a good way to do it is to exaggerate that aspect of the stroke. I had a swimmer a couple of
months ago who was really struggling to get the breath in times. Her head was still out of the water by the time her arm had come underneath her shoulder. What we did
there were two things, we made sure we exaggerated how long she was extending for so it really slowed down that glide or that extension phase. It was still sort of a drill I
wouldn’t get us from like that normally but it was a good way to just get her to make sure that was she was extending long enough. The second thing I got her to do was to
get the breath very early compared to what she was used to. I got her to one hand in to turn the head straightaway get the breath as quickly as she possibly could and turn
the head back in so just getting that breath really soon compared to what she was before. Again it’s still a drill, we’re always going to come back from that but it’s a really good
way just to start to change that motor pattern that you’ve currently got to be more towards the motor pattern that we want. Those two things really help to make a change in
their breathing and it helped her also improve her catch on in the water because her head wasn’t out of the water while she was trying to get that good catch. That’s one
really effective way to make sure that you can breathe comfortably to both sides, make sure you extend forwards for long enough and also just make sure that the heads
turning back into the water at the very latest by the time the arm is just about to pull through past the shoulder. I hope you enjoy this video I’m gonna do another one on
breathing because I know it’s important to a lot of you when you’re swimming and if you haven’t subscribed make sure you hit the subscribe button below. We’re very close to
100,000 subscribers that’d be really cool to hit so if you could support the channel just by subscribing below that’d be wonderful and also just make sure you comment below
let me know what videos you’d like to me to do for the next couple of weeks about to be heading to Thailand to our Hell Week Camps over there we’ve got two camps
running and we’ve got about 20 swimmers coming along to both. It’s gonna be an awesome time and I’ll do my best to make some video as well I’m over there and just show
you what it’s like and show us like to come on a training camp with us so thanks for watching we’ll see you next time you
