length with your EYES CLOSED! Open your eyes when you're five strokes before that strokes-per-length number. Can you do it without hitting any lane lines? Do you continually hit the same side lane line? Does your balance tend to drive you off-line in the same direction all the time?Some more on breathing:In order to maintain that head-in position, as your roll to breathe, your chin has to stay in tight towards your armpit. Baseball players often have a big problem of pulling their heads up and away during their swing. This pulls their eyes away from the ball at the last moment and they often miss. They have a classic training technique to keep their heads in throughout a swing to keep their eye on the ball. They put a tennis ball under their chin and hold it during the swing. If the ball falls out, they're pulling their head. We can't swim with a tennis ball under our chin, but we can think about it and use the imagery to keep our heads tucked in tight. You have to think about keeping your chin in tight as if to hold a tennis ball in place.The stroke:
Let's do the breathing as an example from the RIGHT side. You can do this right now, sitting at your desk. Both arms are extended in front with your thumbs touching. As you start the right side pull, you begin to roll towards the right (left shoulder down). Now your left arm is fully extended with your shoulder extended (as if reaching for the mug in the back of the very top shelf) never flat to the bottom with your arm out. As your right thumb touches your thigh, your right elbow bends and begins to rise out of the water. Since you are rolled to the right and your head is down with your chin towards your chest, the only place for your chin to go is towards your armpit. As your right elbow comes up high out of the water you find your face looking almost behind you. This is how you sight the swimmers BEHIND you trying to catch you! You'll also find with a good roll, a high elbow and your chin in your armpit, that a big space of air at your mouth has been created. Now you breathe in! Make sure you've been exhaling through your nose while your face is under water. Do not waste any time exhaling with your mouth in the air. This is for intake only!Now for the most important part! Remember, you’re not a planing motorboat. You can't rise up and plane over the water, so don't try to! We talked about the right arm during the pull, so what do you do with the left? IT STAYS FULLY EXTENDED OUT IN FRONT OF YOUR BODY! The most common thing beginner swimmers (and even experienced swimmers) do during the breathing stroke is to begin the pull on the other side too early. They do this not to pull water back and propel them forward, but rather, to push water DOWN to push them up and out of the water to breathe. It's a natural instinct to want to push yourself up higher out of the water to breathe, but don't do it! That's what will slow you down and ruin your rhythm. Not pulling during the breathing stroke with the extended arm is a very difficult thing to do. In order to do it - you have to have balance in the water. That's where your drills come in. You have to do those side-balance drills so that you can breathe with that left arm fully extended and not pushing down to raise you up. Achieving this one thing is the most important and dramatic portion of your swimming stroke that will make you go faster. We'll address this again in #9. It's THAT important!
As soon as your face goes back underwater, start exhaling and continue until you empty your lungs. This does two things. It allows you to completely blow off the carbon dioxide in your lungs, thereby preventing the build-up of lactic acid in your muscles and keeping you from getting tired. And it makes breathing faster and easier because you're not wasting time exhaling with your mouth out of the water when you should be inhaling. See if you can practice swimming with this pattern: breathe in on the left, left stroke, right stroke, left stroke, breathe in on the right. If it's close to your normal breathing rate, great! Those two strokes wi