Tater

I'm new here and slightly new to swimming. I just got done with my first season.
I want to practice on my own time but I just have a concern, regarding my breathing.

Mid practice I would sometimes have loss of breathe- I want to say it's clastrophobia and i feel like I'm in a slight panic, but I'm not one to normally be so. It's like I'm not getting enough air in my lungs. I don't have asthma, and I try to keep a steady breathing pattern from breathing every 3rd stroke to every 5th stroke depending on how hard I'm working.
Usually I would just stop and catch my breath, then continue; never really made a big deal out of it. I was just wondering if something might be wrong to cause this?

Typhoons Coach

As you say in your signature, "Oxygen is overrated".

Either way, are you continuosly exhaling, or are you holding your breath?

Tater

It's quite true :]

I try holding my breath as long as possible.

Typhoons Coach

You would be my worst nightmare to coach in that case. I teach my swimmers to continuously exhale. You want to make youre breathing as normal as possible. Think about it this way: if you were walking or running your want your "non-working" body parts to be operating as normally as possible (face relaxed, continuously breathing, etc). Just my opinion.

WSIT

If you don't exhale you will never be able to swim any longer distance. If you continue to hold your breath, you are in danger of passing out.

Learn how to breathe in a variety of different stationary positions or with a flutter board. Bobbing is one of the first basic exercises. With feet secured to the bottom, bend at the knees, go under the water and blow bubbles, not just with your mouth, but with your nose as well. (By learning to blow out through your nose, you will prevent water going up and the panic that normally comes with it.) Come up and take a bite of air and go down again. Do about 20 before your swim, so that you are relaxed and conscious of a good breathing pattern. You can also choose to hold the side of the pool, turning your head to the side to breathe and then down to exhale and then advance to combining the breathing with kicking using a flutter board.

Good luck and remember not to adventure out into deep water until you have reached your comfort zone.

Typhoons Coach

We appreciate your response and participation in the forum, but try to read through all the responses prior to replying yourself. This post originated mainly as an endurance question with regard to breathing (nothing about depth or learning how to breath). Great response for a beginner, but I think (based on her posts) that we are beyond the bobbing point.

Tater

Haha yeah, a little beyond that but it's funny because I remember making bubbles in the water right before workouts, listening to the coaches, for like the first two weeks. xD and I pray to god and every other deity that I do nothing farther than 100 yards! Strictly sprinter.

Worst nightmare aye?
Well I see what you're saying, I'll definitely try continuously breathing, its makes a lot more sense when you compare it to running. Trying to regulate a calm breathing pattern and such.
Thanks, I'll letcha know how this goes lol

Typhoons Coach

I can almost be sure that it is going to be rough; if you have made holding your breath a habitual behavior when you go to try to continuously exhale you will throw off your timing. Let me know, though...

WSIT

Contrary to your belief (Typhoon Coach), I did read all the comments before posting, including yours. The writer did not make it clear that s/he was a speed swimmer. I try to stay out of things I don’t know. In fact I found that it was confusing that the comment was found under the injury category. I speculated that it could have been meant more for either the training category or the beginner category. As training would be a category that I would think a speed swimmer would make their posts, I chose the latter. Beginners often make these same complaints and therefore yes, the comment was made for a beginner.

Speed swimmers often hyperventilate and therefore are not stimulated to take a breath. However, this did not sound like hyperventilation to me.

So, my apologies if you are offended.

Tater

Yes I probably should have put this in training or beginning, my bad. If you're talking to me about being offended- don't worry it's all cool- nothing to be offended by.

I am a sprinter, always will be, I don't think anything will change that; I have neither the stamina nor the desire to.
Distance is part of practice though, and although I may not want to do it, I do simply because it's a part of swim; if your going to do something do everything. Skipping out on sets is just as bad as those slags on the team that show up to practice whenever they feel like it.

The problem's not frequent just every now and then. It is on the longer, harder workouts that it happens most definitely, and we have those every now and then. Like I said, never made a big deal out of it, it's just irking that I have to stop and compose myself and breathing. When I do I'm perfectly fine.

'Speed swimmers often hyperventilate and therefore are not stimulated to take a breath.', I'm just curious, isn't hyperventilating over breathing? I would think they would be stimulated to breath, if not excessively?
I did happen to Google it, many of the articles I read dealt with hyperventilation before swimming. My case is during, but many of the symptoms/situation are similar.
It's funny because that's what I do when it occurs. There was also tingling and cramping in the symptoms. For me not so much the cramping, but-
I always took the tingling in my hands and/or feet to be lack of protein.