What are some good ways to lower breathing counts or improve breathing? I always run out of air when I'm doing a 200 free making it impossible to do flip turns because I feel like my head is gonna explode with no oxygen.
When swimming the 2free, make sure you get lots of air during the first half of the race, sticking to whatever you're comfortable with in practice. Otherwise in practice focus on going longer without breathing. Most coaches have lung buster sets and integrate a lot of hypoxic into the workout but you can do those by yourself too. For instance, if your coach gives you a long pulling set that doesn't seem to have other special purposes, try doing lung busters on those. work your way up slowly breathing every three, every five, every seven, by 50 and then by 100. When you get comfortable with that you can try going up to nines or elevens. The tricky part is to make sure you hold your breath through the walls, the counts don't reset at the wall! If you're on breathing every five and you're at three strokes when you hit the wall, after your turn you still need to hold your breath for the next two. First rule of thumb though is never to breathe on your stroke going into your turn, during practice and races. It'll make your turn smoother and faster, but doing so in practice will help with lowering breathing counts.
Improving breathing is tricky, and has a lot to do with timing. When I went to OTC they had a slide about it. For freestyle, you want really quick breaths early in your stroke. They said that you should be done with your breath by the time you start your catch. And keep a streamline, breath with only one goggle out of the water. And make sure you breathe out all of your air underwater by blowing bubbles before you take a breath, that way during that short amount of time you can maximize your oxygen intake instead of also worrying about breathing out.
Kind of a lot, lol. Hope this helps!!
