1.3. Why is Breathing while Swimming so Difficult?

When you’re not used to a regular rhythm of inhaling and exhaling, you might feel like you’re suffocating – and that’s completely normal.
Before I tell you why this happens, let’s go over a bit of theory.
The most important thing in swimming is to find the balance between the amount of inhalation and exhalation – one should not be significantly less or more than the other, otherwise, we naturally start to suffocate more and more.
The air volume is similar to running. But – in swimming, there are a few differences that make the learned breathing habits useless.
The first problem is that we exhale into the water, so the lungs push against resistance, which we don’t have to deal with in any other sport. It’s like trying to push against something with your own breath, and if we just “passively” exhale, we never breathe out as much as we need to for swimming – and stale, unexchanged air stays in the lungs.
And the second problem is that breathing in swimming is completely reversed compared to running.
While running, we inhale through the nose (inhale) and exhale through the mouth (exhale).
In swimming, we inhale through the mouth (inhale), because if we inhaled through the nose, drops of water would get into the nose and sting the brain – so we exhale through both the nose and mouth (exhale).
However, at lower speeds, during really relaxed swimming, it’s enough to exhale through just one – either the nose or the mouth – because we’re not that out of breath. But at higher speeds, the tempo would no longer be enough.
So once again – in swimming we inhale above water only through the mouth, and exhale into the water through both nose and mouth at the same time, actively pushing the air out with force, to overcome the water pressure.