Breathe Better to Swim Better

Service Description

This course is aimed at all levels of pool swimmers, open water swimmers and triathletes. If you feel that you are not improving your performance in events or during your routine swim training sessions, despite working on technique and fitness, your breathing may be holding you back. You may feel that your breathing during swimming is fine, but have you ever considered how you breathe most of the time (on land)? This will directly impact how well we oxygenate our body, how well we can focus on swim cues, how quickly we recover during a swim session or afterwards. The way we breathe also affects the quality of our sleep, our state of mind and our general health. We can also use our breath to prepare our bodies for exercise before getting in the water to sharpen the mind and at the same time feel a sense of calm. If we get breathless during a swim session, we can use breathing exercises to recover quickly, instead of standing at the end of the lane hyperventilating. We can do inspiratory muscle strength training to improve our core stability and posture which is key to efficient swimming. Our daily breathing patterns are not usually addressed in swim/triathlon training or other sports, however, most people have some level of dysfunctional breathing. ​ In this course you will have your own breathing patterns assessed and be given a programme of breathing exercises (based on the Oxygen Advantage technique) to fit into your daily lives and exercise routine to help optimise your mental and physical wellbeing and your swim performance. The first part of the course will look at your daily functional breathing during rest, sleep and light physical movement. We will then progress to learn how to simulate high altitude training to maximise oxygen uptake and delivery, reduce lactic acid build up and improve endurance. ​ You will have access to audio recordings and written resources of all the breathing exercises and swim sets covered in the course, including recordings of all the zoom classroom sessions. The course consists for 4 live zoom sessions lasting 2 hours each. This gives us enough time to cover the science, practice breathing exercises and how this relates to swimming, and time for participant feedback on their progress and for questions each week.