How to Breath While Swimming Freestyle

Video Transcript

Hello and welcome to Expert Village. I'm Phillip Toriello from the Avila Bay Athletic Club. In freestyle, the most efficient breathing technique is side breathing. Side breathing is basically a breath where you are looking straight down into the water. So, you are looking straight down into the pool which is important to maximize efficiency during your freestyle to alleviate any sort of drag and to keep your body focused. The side breath will be simply blowing your bubbles in the water, placing your ear on your shoulder, keeping your cheek in the water at the same time (just enough to get your mouth out of the water to get a good breath of air). Also, in the side breathing technique, the best way to do it is to really focus on every three strokes, take a breath. What this is called is bi-lateral breathing. This also optimizes your stroke in addition to balancing out the strength of your body. As you'll see some people do, they only breathe to one side. What they end up doing is they will breathe to the strong hand side; in short, their writing hand, their throwing hand, etc., which is probably the dominant hand and the strongest on your body. What bilateral breathing provides is the opportunity to balance out the strength in your body so then both sides are developing equally, as opposed to having one overpowering arm or side of your body.