So one of the most important things in freestyle is we do know that when people take breaths, they generally fall out of balance. And so the timing of the breath is very important in order to maintain balance. So would you say that you have a early breath? Or a late breath? Or what is the timing of your breathing?

And I guess that's the question.

I would say it's kind of in the middle. I mean, we talked about this before, it's not really super early or super late. I mean, you look at saunas like Bruno Fratus, super, it's super late, I'm definitely not in that in that wheelhouse at all. It kind of just falls with the rhythm of my stroke, I'm not thinking breathe. Now, I'm just thinking, it just kind of is a natural thing that occurs with the rhythm of my stroke. So I mean, at the end of the day,

it's just it's a rhythm thing. It has to do with where my stroke is that where it's at in the process. But if you're looking at it in terms of early or late, it definitely sits kinda in the middle, not really early or late.

So rhythm

you spend, we've covered this once before, but you spend nearly no time and the breathing position, how important is it to get back, get the head back to center or back to balance.

I mean, I'm not nobody's in there fastest, nobody's fastest position is in the breathing, a lot of the time, it's actually one of the slowest. So it's super important for me to get in and out of that position, but do it efficiently. So I'm still getting oxygen to get in and out of that position as quickly as possible, because it isn't my fastest position that I'm in. So to get back into that fast position is important.

Breathing is essential, you need it almost, at first, it probably shouldn't need it. But for anything above that, you need it in order to swim fast. And my my claim to fame is my ability to swim fast. And I say swim fast, I mean, swim on top of the surface fast. And when I'm in that breeding position, I'm not really able to do that as well, because my stroke is my stroke itself without breathing is where my strength is. So getting in and out of that breath as fast as possible is super important. Because I want to get back to what I'm good at doing. And I want to be able to get back to you know where I'm fastest, I can finish the race as quickly as possible.

Excellent, I'm going to share a different screen here, we're going to go into the app, because I was looking at something

that I thought was pretty interesting, because we know that the breathing position is, is a position that is a little bit more dangerous, as far as and when I say dangerous, I mean, detrimental to fast swimming. And so what I did here was

going to erase one of the timers. So there's a timer in the app. And so what I did was I placed the zero mark just as you're lifting your skin in the water. And so this is a slow motion piece of video. So a full stroke cycle. By the time the left hand comes back in, right there is about 14.4 seconds. So again, it's all relative, because it's still a stroke cycle. Because what I'm looking at here is the percentage of time that your head is out of balance. And so when we look at the head starting to turn, which is right about now, so right here, the head starts to turn, we're going to add a second timer just above there. And we're going to time how long it takes you to get back to center. So right about there, it's about 3.1 seconds out of the 14.4 seconds, which was the full stroke cycle. Now, in doing the math on this, what I realized is that you spend 23% of your of your stroke right now. And you told me before we started recording that your breath has gotten faster. So you spend approximately 23% or a quarter of the time of a stroke cycle in a not perfect position, not perfectly balanced position.

First of all, have you ever thought about how much time you spend or is it just a reaction?

And how do you think that is in comparison to other people? Um, I don't know how it is in comparison to other people. Because I mean, these statistics are actually relatively new for me. But I definitely do think about when I'm taking a stroke so I can make them that breath as quick as possible because as you said, it's not the perfect position to be in. It's not the fastest. So I mean spending less time there's going to make the overall stroke Craster right. And NC State we work on it. Day in day out of quick breath drills. We do it with different equipment, we do different speeds, but essentially, the end goal is to make that breath as fast as possible because the philosophy behind that is breathing is not the perfect position and you want to get out of it. You want to get in and out

Over the fastest possible Oh, it's kind of like an open turn like you don't want to hang on the wall because then you're wasting time. Similar thing with breathing is if you're stuck breathing, you're wasting time. And you need to take that breath as quickly as possible, as efficiently as possible, get out of it, and back into your normal stroke. So you can continue racing fast.

The other thing that's interesting here, and we have covered this in another chapter is your exhale. Now fast breath or breath timing is going to be very, you've got to make sure you have all the air out or else you can't get a fast breath. And so when we look at this video, very, very states, you see how much you're you're breathing out.

And then how quickly the head comes back in. And then we see that there's a very slight delay right here. And then before your arm reaches extension, we do see the air is now starting to come out of your nose again, right there. And by the time the it's exposed, it's a constant flow, and you're bursting out again. So again, for a quick breath, do how, again, I know that you've we've talked about this before, but just the thought of the exhale to make sure that you can spend as little time as possible in the breathing position.

Right now, that has changed significantly, you saw that delay, the delay is no longer there. It's almost like I'm normally breathing to be completely honest with you. Because the second I've taken on air, it's already going back out. I breathe in my head may not even be back in the water fullier at back to center, I'm already breathing out because that breath has gotten so much faster now that I don't really have time for a delay.

My thought process on that with the exhaling though, in terms of quick breath, is that you don't want to be exhaling while you're breathing, you really should simply just be to inhale the breath. Because if you're spending time, notice, emphasis on the word time. And if you're spending time breathing out and breathing in on your stroke, or sorry, on your breath, you're wasting time. So I'm why not use the rest of that stroke to continue to begin exhaling

to make that breath a little bit quicker, it also actually makes it smoother for me. Because then I actually, I don't want to say I feel like I'm breathing, because I'm not Well, I kind of am and that I'm not. But it makes it more fluid so that the oxygen that's going in is being used and then being blown out. And it's just being constantly refreshed, which makes my lactic acid build up a little bit later, it just helps overall, with keeping the stroke FAST and me being strong throughout the entirety of the race.

Beautiful. So I'm gonna stop that. I'm going to show one more video. And this will give you an idea of this is this is a young athlete, a good swimmer.

And so when we look at this freestyle, can you see that playing? Oh, no, I haven't shared it yet.

When we started it over again. So this is this is a very good young freestyler young swimmer, but very nice stroke.

And he does swim a lot of freestyle. Now I've done this with probably four or five athletes that I have in the backyard, and stopped so we don't put him on the spot too much. And just to give you an idea, when I asked you the question, do you think 23% is a good percentage, the average that I'm finding is somewhere between 40 and 50%. And this particular athletes 43% of his time is spent in the non balanced position or the non head position. So knowing that you're already a quarter of a percent better than most people. Now, what's your goal? Get it lower? I mean, you said what are your thoughts on 23%? It's like, well, how much lower? Can I get it? At the end of the day, the only way that I'm gonna get faster is by reducing the numbers and the time I take to do certain things. I mean, we're looking at 23%. Now, I'm not quite sure if the accurate number is but whatever it is, I mean, you can go lower. I mean, there's always ways to improve.

I again, this statistic is new to me. So I'm super curious to see if we're going to analyze with your app, other high level swimmers like Bruno Fratus, or maybe even Caleb Dressel, who has an insanely quick breath. I mean, we look at Nathan Adrian, who's kind of the founder of the whole thing.

Just kind of looking at them and seeing where those numbers are, and then how do I better my numbers to compete with them better.

I know that it's something that I really, truly try to work on with people here in lessons. And the biggest thing is that you can take an incredibly quick breath, but get nowhere. So the big trick there is making sure that there's that balance between a very quick breath and good oxygen exchange. So yeah, fantastic stuff.

Thank you so much and we'll keep going


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DC Talks Breath Timing