1.4. Two Reasons why I’m Choking while Breathing and how to Fix It

Now let’s get to the reasons why we might choke while breathing.
There can be two, and both are related to an imbalance between inhaling and exhaling. Many people don’t even consider this could be a problem because breathing is supposed to be automatic. But it isn’t.
The first cause of choking is insufficient exhalation, in other words, not emptying your lungs completely, so old used air remains and accumulates.
If we don’t exhale the old oxygen-depleted air, we don’t have room to inhale fresh oxygenated air, and sooner or later we’ll pass out from suffocation.
When I teach beginners, they always try to convince me they’re exhaling, but I look at them and see only two or three tiny bubbles coming out, and when they do push their lungs, maybe five bubbles emerge.
But you need a thousand. Let’s look at the difference.
With each exhalation, you need to create a whirlpool in the water and forcefully exhale as much air as possible. This is something to focus on if you’re convinced you’re exhaling, but in reality, not enough.
Or I see beginning swimmers who exhale too slowly and deliberately, which is fine when you’re first trying it at the edge of the pool, but then when swimming there’s no time for such slow puffing because the breathing rhythm in freestyle is much faster, and again you’ll have the same problem – you won’t manage to exhale everything that’s necessary.
And conversely, the second cause of feeling suffocated is the completely opposite problem, which is sufficient exhalation but unfortunately too small of an inhalation.
This happens most often when the swimmer has poor body position or bad breathing timing and when turning the head to breathe, doesn’t manage to inhale enough, or worse, doesn’t have the water surface there at all 🙂 However, this problem isn’t as common, even though most swimmers have the impression that this is exactly their issue.
It’s necessary to try different exercises for both causes, find yours, and focus on it.
Solving the lack of air due to small exhalation is simple – you need to exaggerate the amount of exhalation, push your lungs with all your strength, and patiently find your balance. Try to exhale the largest amount of air as quickly as possible in the water – forcefully, and try it 10 times in a row, but without intermediate breaths like I’m doing at a faster pace.
Then try it for a minute and longer. If you still keep getting out of breath and choking, it’s not possible to move forward. This exercise is fundamental, the absolute minimum, so work on it until it becomes easy.
Solving the second problem with insufficient inhalation might be more work, more searching for causes, especially when self-teaching, but we’ll explain everything and learn it in the following chapters. The goal will be to improve body position during rotation, because often what happens is that at the moment you turn your head to breathe, your whole body sinks deep toward the bottom and the surface disappears from view.
We’ll discuss body position in the water in chapter 3, which has a big impact on breathing comfort.
If you’re learning to swim on your own, I recommend asking someone to record you and then try to evaluate for yourself what your problem is.