And here's a fantastic promo shot of one of our favourite swimmers Becky Adlington:
Shots like these are beautiful and remind us how lucky we are to do a sport where we get to spend some quality time in a wonderfully different environment. But is there something wrong with these shots, something that actually harms our swimming?
Take a look at a real shot of Becky when she's going about her business of winning Olympic Gold Medals:
What difference do you notice? That's right - bubbles! Lots of bubbles! Particularly bubbles exiting from the nose or mouth.
Of course when selling products photographers and marketers are looking for the cleanest images possible so naturally select shots without any annoying air bubbles in the shot. And if necessary they will resort to Photoshop to get rid of any pesky air from an otherwise perfect shot.
The problem here is that by seeing these images you might consciously or unconsciously decide this is how you should be swimming too and end up holding your breath underwater when you swim.
At Swim Smooth we understand that good exhalation technique is the single most important aspect of freestyle swimming. Failing to exhale at all or only exhaling partially is the underlying cause for several inefficiencies in your freestyle stroke.
Firstly, holding your breath causes CO2 to build up in your blood stream which quickly becomes uncomfortable and makes you feel short of air. How often do you hold your breath cycling or running? Never hopefully! Try it and you'll find how much harder it makes the activity.
[Aside: If you get a headache when you swim it's quite possibly a CO2 headache!]
Further, holding your breath underwater increases the buoyancy in your chest. This will cause your chest and upper body to rise in the water and the legs to sink. If you have sinky legs when you swim (most male adult swimmers do) then the easiest way to bring them higher and so reduce drag is to simply develop a better exhalation technique.
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| Becky at full speed: A dynamic stroke with great exhalation |
Developing Good Exhalation Technique
Need to improve your exhalation in the water? Here's a simple exercise to develop a better technique called "sink downs". This is the perfect drill to do during the start of the session during your warm up to improve your confidence in the water and get used to breathing.
As long as you are confident being out of your depth, start in the deep end of the pool. Move away from the wall and treading water take a smooth relaxed breath in and then start exhaling, bringing your arms down by your side. Exhale through either your mouth or nose, whichever feels more natural. In fact we recommend you try both and see which works best for you.
The goal here is to sink straight down to the bottom of the pool. If you find yourself hanging around by the surface then you need to relax a little more and let go of the air a little quicker. Keep exhaling and you should find you drop down from the surface towards the bottom.
Once you feel you have got rid of most of the air in your lungs, push off from the bottom and return to the surface. Repeat this exercise several times through, the more relaxed and confident you are the better:
Now it's time to bring exhalation into your freestyle swimming and to do that we recommend using our all time favourite Mantra: Breathe-Bubble-Bubble-Breathe...
Push off from the wall into your freestyle and literally say 'Bubble' into the water every stroke - speaking the word will make you exhale as you do so! Repeat Breathe-Bubble-Bubble-Breathe... and rotate to inhale on the 'Breathe'. You'll notice the mantra has your breathing every 3 strokes - great technique in its own right as it gives you enough time to exhale properly between inhales and also helps you develop a nice symmetrical stroke.
You can watch our full coaching videos for these two exercises in the Swim Smooth Guru here (subscription required):
www.swimsmooth.guru/streamvideo/cZF/if/breathe-bubble-bubble-breathe/
and
www.swimsmooth.guru/streamvideo/cZF/h5/sink-down-drill/
Swim Smooth! Via Sports http://www.rssmix.com/
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