Hypoxic or Endurance Training

Instead of breathing every 3, 5, or 7 strokes by 50s, try breathing every 5, every 3, every 2 by 25s. Try to remain just as fluid on the last lap of each interval as you are on the first.

If you normally breathe to one side, and if any hypoxic work is too much for you, swim the set breathing only to your opposite side. You'll be pleasantly surprised at how easy this will become after just a few laps, and at how it can help streamline your stroke once you return to breathing on your "normal" side.

Since excessive or improper head movement is the stroke error with the greatest potential to hurt your body position and balance, one of the most effective and simplest drills to correct it is to swim short distances with the head held absolutely still. Try swimming 25-yard repeats, taking 0 to 2 breaths per length. For 50-yard repeats, aim for 3 to 4 breaths per length. On longer distances, try to breathe every 3 to 5 armstrokes, BUT GO VERY EASILY in order to swim without feeling distressed or tense. Tune in to how this smoothes out body movement and what your stroke feels like when you do so.

You may find that when you do hypoxic sets, your body seems hungrier for air on the first repeat, but becomes progressively more comfortable with each repeat. This is because your body is adapting to the reduced oxygen availability by identifying and letting go of needless tension. Tension is nothing more than useless and involuntary muscle contractions that use oxygen without helping your swim faster. By relaxing and letting go of tension, you teach your body to use the oxygen that's available more efficiently.

Hypoxic sets are most often assigned with pull buoys. That's because the largest (and oxygen-hungriest) muscles in the body are your quadriceps or thigh muscles. Stop kicking and it gets easier to swim further between breaths. But unless you anticipate being able to use a pull buoy in your next race, you're better off training your aerobic and nervous systems to perform without the aid of extra flotation. To take the load off your thigh muscles while doing hypoxic work, think of your legs as passive, and simply do less overt kicking. If you use hypoxic training, do it with the awareness that the benefits will be in technique, not physiology. While you're swimming further between breaths, concentrate on better balance, controlling your head movements, and learning to relax more while swimming.