Breathing & Freestyle Swimming

Learning to breathe properly in freestyle swimming makes you fast and efficient in the water. Freestyle is the fastest stroke, but body position makes it challenging to master. You face the bottom of the pool and must overcome the water's pressure to exhale. Feeling comfortable with your face in the water while you exert yourself takes time, but practice builds your confidence and technique.

Head Position and Timing

You need to time when you breathe in freestyle to avoid interfering with your stroke. Practice with a pull-buoy between your legs so that you concentrate on your stroke and breath timing. A pull-buoy is a float that keeps your legs on the surface without the need for you to kick. You face the bottom of the pool as you exhale completely. When you raise your free arm to take another stroke, take a breath just as your mouth breaks the surface of the water. Keeping your head low and straight in the water keeps your body balanced in the water, says Blythe Lucero, author of "The 100 Best Swimming Drills."

Bilateral Breathing

Breathing on both sides, or bilateral breathing, is an important skill for any pool or open-water swimmer. You naturally breathe either to the left or the right, but favoring that side is a habit best broken early. By taking breaths on both sides, you build muscles evenly and develop body symmetry, according to USA Swimming. When you swim in the pool, try alternating the side on which you breathe, every lap you swim. Breathing every three strokes is helpful because you must breathe on alternating sides. Practice helps you get used to the longer interval between breaths.

Body Rotation

Lifting your head, or rotating it to take a breath, leads to neck and shoulder stress. You rotate your hips and swim on your side during the freestyle stroke, using your abdominal core strength to switch from one side to the other. Let your head follow in sync with your body rotation so that you end in a position to inhale without ever having to twist or lift it.

Considerations

Though it might be instinctual, do not hold your breath underwater. You exhale slowly, starting as soon as you finish inhaling. The cycle of inhaling, exhaling and inhaling again, should be seamless. When you hold your breath then force air out at the last moment, you interrupt your stroke progression, exhaling too late. Hypoxic training involves deliberately limiting the amount you breathe during a workout. Once used to train competitive swimmers for sprints, hypoxic training can be dangerous for older swimmers with high blood pressure. Dr. Paul Hutinger, Masters swimmer, describes his hemorrhagic stroke after an intense "no breather" swimming set.