You Shouldn’t Breathe Every 3 Strokes [0:07] – Now that sounds silly because you hear a lot of coaches talking about how important it is to breathe every 3 strokes. But you should be breathing in a mixture of 2s, 3s and 4s particularly in training. Now the reason for that is that most of us would breathe every 2 strokes in and out of a turn. And that’s because you need more oxygen as you go into a turn.
Now in a race, if you are doing a 50m sprint, then you want to breathe as few times as possible. But if you are racing anything 100 meters or more, then you should be getting in a rhythm and finding what’s most comfortable for you. So for most swimmers that’s breathing every 2 strokes, some swimmers prefer every 3 and other swimmers prefer to mix it up with 2s, 3s and 4s. So you don’t need to stick to one breathing pattern you can mix it up within a lap or within a race.
How To Best Use The Mastering Freestyle Program [1:14] – The answer to that is that you should watch each of the modules so you can either download them or watch them online, and you watch each of the modules then you print off the drill card which you take in the pool with you and then you go through a 25 to 50 minutes of each drill in the one session. And then at the end of that you will be feeling better and you will be swimming better after that session. And after that to lock that technique in, you pick your favorite 4 or 5 drills and you do them in your warm up each time you have a training session, that activates good technique and it gets you swimming harder in the water and gets you feeling better and feeling more relaxed in the water. That way, you lock in that good technique that you’ve got from doing the Mastering Freestyle program.
Sharing Goal Times in Training [2:11] – Now last week, I spoke about the importance of not sharing goals because you’ve got a better chance of achieving them. That caused a bit of a controversy and I got quite a few emails suggesting that the opposite is true. What I recommend is to try that with one of your goals. So pick one goal and don’t share it with other people, just keep it to yourself and see how you go in a couple of months and see if you do achieve that goal down the track. It’s worth testing and it’s worth trying. Now I do recommend you do share your goal times in training. So if you’re with training partners or you’re a coach or in a squad, share what goal time you’re going for in your set and that will mean you’ve got a better chance of achieving that time than if you hadn’t shared it.
Build Sets Develop Pacing and Speed [3:21] – One of my favorite types of sets to do in training are building sets. So rather than swimming at a constant pace for a whole set, its where you’re building up as you go. So an example is 4×200 freestyle where the first one is the slowest one and the fourth one is the fastest one. And you get faster with each 200 that you do. And the advantages of this is it gives you a better feeling of how hard you need to go in order to swim different times. It’s also good for race practice.
Now Is the Time to Train Hard [4:08] – Now is the time to get stuck in your training and your stroke development. We’ve got a few months before we head into the Christmas and the New Year break – and by getting that basic fitness and basic aerobic fitness over the next few months then you put yourself ahead of most swimmers and most athletes. So now is the time to really get stuck in your training. If you’re looking for programs to get you fit the Effortless Swimming Workouts program is very good to help you build up that fitness and speed as we go into the holiday period. And if you’re looking to develop your stroke, we’ve got the Mastering Freestyle program which will help you develop your freestyle technique. Or if you want to develop your butterfly, backstroke or your breast stroke, there’s the Effortless form program which goes through drills which help you develop the other three strokes.
