Bilateral drinking

I arrived at the club this morning around 5:15 for my first of 2 planned swims this week. This would be the short one - 1750M. I'm kind of a slacker when it comes to swim training. I've always been somewhat of a strong swimmer having participated in many hours of lessons since I was knee high to a duck. So I always wait until I've got one toe in the pool to decide what the workout will be. I call this Just-In-Time-Training (JITT). Today I decided on a 250 warm-up followed by 500 (25 free / 25 pull), 400 (25 free, 25 kick), 300 (free), 200 (Hard), 100 (cool down) while staring down the swim lane from inside the pool.

Since I started triathlon training I've learned a lot about what it means to be a really good swimmer. Mostly I've learned I am not one. About 200M into the warm up I thought "This would be a good day to work on bilateral breathing." You see, in all my years of swimming lessons I either a) never learned bilateral breathing or b) learned it, forgot it, and permanently blocked it from my memory. I am locked in to breathing on my right side. This makes sighting kind of a challenge on "Left turn" swim courses. It also causes me to steer slightly to the right in open water.

I don't exactly know why I decided that today was the day. Perhaps it was part of the whole JITT methodology or something.

My body tends to go into autopilot mode when I swim freestyle. Breathing, kicking, arm movements, hip rotation. It's all pretty robotic which is great because I can sort of "stand back" and observe my arm entry, leg kicking motion and make small tweaks as I go. I flex my abs to force the air out and aid in the arm movement and hip rotation resulting in a last second turn of my head and inhaling a chest full of air. This autopilot mode, however, is not good while trying to learn bilateral breathing. My first attempt came around 150M into the 500M leg.

What a sight it must have been.

I brought my left arm over in anticipation of a quick head turn and -- GULP! I drank two gallons of pool water. This resulted in a quick, spastic move to get my feet to the bottom of the pool which then resulted in me shooting out of the water like a synchronized swimmer. Nice job.



The second attempt came at 100M into the 400 leg and 50M into the 200 leg. Both had the same result. Although, I don't think they were as graceful or entertaining as the first attempt. There were no further attempts.

I'm guessing that my overall form must be more prone to the right breathing motion than I had originally thought.

I know some of you out there are great swimmers. Help!