Freestyle breathing how to practice freestyle breathing skills

We know the correct breathing technique is very important for freestyle, here is the practice method of freestyle breathing for you.

Floating board single arm exercise

Extend your right arm straight forward and hold the floating board, keeping your left hand in the opposite position, against your body. You can only advance through the water by stirring your legs. Bury your head in the water, rotate it every five seconds, inhale quickly, then re-bury it and exhale in the water. Change arms every 25m. The goal here is to keep your body and float as streamlined as possible and gain more buoyancy by inhaling quickly and exhaling slowly, without floating your head out of the water too much.

Ventilation exercise

To perform this exercise, you must be able to control your inhalation and exhalation enough to avoid suffocation. The main content is normal freestyle swimming with a ventilation tube. You must keep your head straight during the entire swimming stroke, exhale hard and inhale to the maximum.

Single arm exercise without float

One arm in front freestyle is an excellent exercise with repetitive characteristics to train breathing. As you can see from the name, the main element is to use the one-arm freestyle with the active side (right arm stroke = right side inhale) breathing once for every two strokes. The exhalation remains continuous while the head is buried in the water. The other inactive arm is stretched straight forward. Change arms every 25-50m. Again, the goal is to practice keeping the body streamlined while limiting the breath and buoyancy.

One movement and one change exercise

The training technique consists of inhaling with each arm stroke during freestyle (right and left side). The difficulty is that the body must remain straight and streamlined while the head is continuously rotated. Inhalation must be short and exhalation as fast as possible to avoid hyperventilation. The aim of the exercise is to force you to always maintain a straight position, not to raise your head too high when inhaling and to get used to exhaling underwater.

Why to practice breathing in freestyle

Proper breathing technique is important when swimming. If swimmers neglect proper breathing techniques, they may face dangers such as balking, deviating from the course, difficulty breathing or choking. In order to overcome these problems, it is recommended to perform some exercises using different techniques, with or without equipment, with the aim of improving breathing and "lung capacity". The recommended exercises are performed after the warm-up or during the recovery process, so that you can focus on the technique without regard to speed or distance. No need to try to speed up, just focus on the stroke.