The TRUE meaning of Hypoxic sets (not what you think)…

by CoachSuzanne

Swimming at altitude provides a challenge above and beyond practicign other sports at altitude. You cant simply "swim slower" and take long deep panting breaths. Your breathign stroke must be seamless and flawless, and you must be able to take one every 2 strokes if needed due to the increased oxygen demands at altitude.

I’ve learned the true meaning of hypoxic training with swimming…has nothing to do with breath-holding sets (it never did, but that’s another essay)…and has everything to do with perfecting your technique.

**I’ll be shocked if anyone reads this to the end. But enjoy…
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Today’s entry
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More time spent with singular focus on breathing. Drills were done not by distance but until I felt that I had "gotten it", that I had felt the sensation I needed to move onward.

It’s a constant game of balance, playing with it, destabilizing, re-stabilizing, overcompensating and coming back into neutral (is it a new neutral?)

My breathing is better that its ever been, but it is now a conscious focus for me.

I calculate that in a 500 yard focused set (4×25+3×50+2×75+1×100) if I’m taking an avg of 16 SPL and breathing every 3 strokes, I’m only taking 100 breaths…50 to each side.

Considering the number of perfect repetitions it takes to make a new movement an effortless part of your movement repertoire, that’s a lot of swimming ahead of me. But that’s OK. It feels great, I’m continuing to improve (just when I felt I’d reached a plateau).

My fastest "altitude" 100 last week was a 1:40/100, and today it was 1:32/100 with open turns and a noticeable slowing and breakdown of form on the final 25. I’ve been here less than 2 weeks and full acclimatization usually takes me about 3 to start feeling ‘normal’.

IN any case I’m eager to return home and try out my improved breathing stroke.

This practice, I worked on breathing every stroke, just to get more repetitions of breathing in (increased number of breaths by 33%).

Drills I started with:
-superman glide to skate with head nod
*notes – during the glide and the skate I experimented with the amount of pressure I exerted on the water with ny head vs. the amount of pressure the water exerted on me (yes, I know they are equal). But I was able to reduce the effort I was expending, relax my neck even more and still find my hips were horizontal and near the surface of the water.

With the head nod, I again held skating position with my head turned looking to the side of the pool, experimenting with how much pressure I was using to push down towards the bottom of the pool, and had the remarkable sensation of the water pushing back on my cheek once I relaxed my neck muscles. I truly felt as if my head was resting on a pillow…my head was another inch closer to the surface of the water. but I could have sworn to you in he past that I already WAS completely relaxed. Well I learned that I could relax even more and still maintain balance.

Amazing how swimming is a constant refinement of skills and balance and fine motor movements. I now have an entire new set of muscle movements to work into my muscle memory, which will require more drilling and practice and experimentation.

(all this and I’ve only written about the head nod…)

-skating to head nod to risky breath +/- sweet spot.
**I would typically start this drill rolling to sweet spot, getting my balance with head as low as I could comfortably get it and my mouth above the water, neck relaxed and then gradually rotate my body back towards the side, then bottom of the pool while still reaching air with my mouth.

As I refined this movement I rolled less to sweet spot and eventually maintained skating position as much as possible with a head nod then quick rotation of the neck just a hair extra to grab some air.

While practicing this I found that the positioning and timing of my kick/legs and feet made a big difference in how well I could maintain rotational balance (or rather, maintain my edge without rolling onto my back or rolling flat in the water).

The sensations that led to the best risky/sneaky breaths included a very slight muscle tension on the side of my neck as I rotated just a tiny bit to air…not a pain or stress, just a sensation of the left side of my neck stretching as I rotate my head ot the right ( assuming a right breath).

AS for my feet, again assuming the breath to the right, I felt a stretching through the top of my leg all the way down through and out of the top of my left foot, which ( I think) was slightly behind my right foot when viewed from directly above…a very slight "tripod" position with my head at the apex (turned to the right), my left foot to the left as viewed from above and my right foot to the right as viewed form above…not a splayed position, but simply relative to the mid-line of my body.

Were I to be swimming, rather than one-armed drilling, my lead arm would be reaching it’s most forward spearing position and STAYING THERE as a got my breath as the true apex of the tripod…out in front and not pushing down toward the bottom of the pool to buoy my head up.

Focusing on this full body stretch all the way down the front of my body, through the top of my left quad and top of the left foot and out the toes really helped me keep my head in alignment, in that supported ‘pillow’ position with almost no effort.

So, a lot of new sensations going on with just a little bit of drilling. You can see why doing "drills" as read from a workout list is really not that helpful without some sort of direction on what you should be looking for.

-Single arm swimming
**these have now become my favorite drills for a number of reasons. First, because I used to suck at them, and now I don’t. But there is so much to learn from doing them, especially doing them slowly. I was sad to seek a stroke doctor video that advised against them because he felt they were too complicated for the average swimmer without a coach on deck to guide them. Well that may be true. It wasn’t until my coral springs trip that I felt I was doing it correctly, but it only took 2 25s with coach feedback to stop feeling like I was going to drown. Now that I can perform the drill without having a panic attack, I can make best use of it in all sorts of situations.

Like breathing…
First I breath to the opposite side by extending the arm, focusing on the full body stretch through the top of the top foot, finding the ideal body rotation and then just a quick head nod to the opposite side to grab a bite of air (sometimes water though). When breathing to the opposite side, I time the breath to coincide with the slight bobbing back up to the surface of the air. I think the bob is caused by the recovering arm itself coming out of the water (which then pushes the rest of your body underwater a bit), and then as the arm enters the water, then buoyancy returns bobbing yo back to the surface of the water. If the rotation to the opposite side is timed with this return tot he surface, the breath is very seamless. In two armed swimming, the sinking should be less pronounced as the opposite arm acts as an outrigger. Nevertheless, being aware of the up and down movement of the body (and trying to minimize it with a low profile ‘zen’ switch style recovery) has to be beneficial.

-one armed swimming with same side breathing
** This is a different skill altogether and sometimes a bit trickier than opposite side breathing in my opinion.

First of all, because of the slight sinking that happens when the recovery arm comes out of the water, you have to be even more conscious of this. I felt at several times that the action of the arm recovering caused a wave to come back up towards my face, filling in the small bow wave that gets created by a horizontal head. I’m hoping this goes away with a higher velocity, but time will tell.

After practicing all of these drills with both arms, until I felt I’d optimized my improvement *for today*, only then did I proceed with full stroke.

The first 2 x 25 of full stroke I did breathing to the same side, every 2 strokes (once per cycle). Each side felt seamless. I thought that were I to have an attentive audience, I should have received a standing ovation for my performance. Alas, no one really cared but me.

AT this point I swam this classic 500yd set:

4×25+3×50+2×75+1×100

Each small increment in distance proves to be a test of skill…can I keep my newly found technique despite slight increases in fatigue as the distance goes up?

All in all I found today’s practice to be a great success.

July 16th, 2010 CoachSuzanne. 2

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http://swimmingimmersion CoachMark

Seems like a long time since Coral Springs… I’m amazed everytime I check out the TI website and see you blogging your way into history!
Anyway, had some VERY similar experiences to your ‘breathing at altitude’ and ‘head pressure’ exercises I thought I’d share…
There’s nothing like having multiple ‘TIO’s’ eh? I was practicing to get my head into a more neutral position (hanging my head, not looking up or out, just allowing myself to FEEL the h2o supporting my head, and VOILA…. MY NECK FINALLY RELEASED ALL THE TENSION AND I WAS ABLE TO SWIM freely and easily, not having to support that 8lb dummy!! I was instantly amazed at the ease of effort acheived by just NOT holding my head up anymore. I grooved this by not breathing for a while of course cuz it felt so gooood… I used no tempo trainer and did not rush, but neither did I ‘plod’ thru the workout at a slow tempo, but had a brisker pace than usual (the workout was using this fp per 1000yds- 4×25, 4×50,4×75,4×100). i added breathing, staying very conscious of my ‘zen’ head position and totally relaxed neck, turning to the R only and VERY SLOWLY keeping 1 Goggle Wet. The 1 Goggle Wet really helped me turn minimally to air and made it easier to keep my head in a released position. Consciously ‘viewing’ the pool underwater with the submerged eye kept me from over-rotating my breathing motion and kept it more in my wake as well. The last thing I did, was to make my breathing continuous…. that is, NO breath holding on exhale or inhale!! I had been trying to hum to make sure I was steady in my exhale, even humming louder/exhaling more forcefully just before breathing… HOWEVER, this didn’t work for me. Once I began rolling my head w/ my shoulder to ‘just enough’ to clear the water w/ 1 goggle and head the that PNP (perfect neutral position), I found I not only needed less oxygen, (using much less energy both to hold head ‘up’ and turning it hardly at all to breathe), and that I was able to breathe in and out continuously, as if I was on land w/ no interruption in the breathing. Wow, you might try it sometime. kind of like a fish must feel.
Another FP I used while practicing this head released breathing, was to notice the ELBOW of the recovering arm on my R/breathing side and the sensation of “pulling it forward from the water surface”, using a small wrist ‘snap’ to release it from the surface tension. I used the image of Fiona Laughlin’s super streamline position (on the dvd/book covers) which helped me maintain the right amount of core rotation for this. Focus on the elbow ‘leading’ from exit to entry seemed to allow my mouth to inhale air for a ‘much longer than necessary time’, which felt great! I never remember such a feeling of having all the air I WANTED, let alone needed, throughout a swim. It felt like I had an eternity to breath, all the while ‘viewing’ the underwater world with one eye, keeping my head level and relaxed. As you know, there’s nothing quite like an effortless swim to make one feel alive…..
CoachSuzanne

Mark, thanks for your comments! You had a nice breathing stroke in Coral Springs, it’s great read your sensations that you have while working on it.

Today I had yet another BEST SWIM EVER. I thought of your comments and how you had the sensation of getting as much air as you could want. I warmed up with some skating, nodding, risky breaths and one-armed drills, then did the 1000yd set you described (Why didn’t I think of that set, it’s so simple its genious).

The 4x 25s felt OK, the 4x50s a little better. But something incredible happened on the 3rd lenght of my first 75. I SAW the bow wave. I had been focusing on keeping one goggle underwater and suddenly I could see the bow wave clearly through the goggle out of the water. It was a perfect half sine-wave with a trough right where my mouth was headed. For the rest of the set, this was my focus…to look for the bow wave.

Occasionally it was not there, or seemed to be filled in quickly from the back by the water being pushed off my shoulder as my recovery arm came forward. So I started to make a point of breathing just a hair earlier in the cycle, and no more problems with that.

It was incredible. All I had to do was turn my head so my mouth was in the trough, which I could clearly see with each breath…not just hope that it had mysteriously formed.

Amazing. The first 3 100s were 1:40 on the nose, with sole focus on that bow wave, breathign every other stroke and alternating sides. My last 100 was a brisk effort at 1:32. Again, I’m very happy with my progress here in just a few short workouts of all less than 1000-1500yds each.