Breathing Swimming Drills for the
Freestyle Swim Stroke

If you have trouble breathing swimming the freestyle stroke correctly, the drills on this page teach you this skill in a nice progressive fashion.

In the freestyle stroke, as in most swimming strokes, breathing is a technique in itself. That's why correct breathing can be learned or improved by the practice of specific drills.

Breathing Swimming Drills

Drill #1: Stand in shallow water, so that you have water up to the waist. Bow down to the front, so that your chest and face are submerged in the water. Keep your arms at your sides. Now exhale in the water, then turn your head to the left to inhale. Inhale, then turn your head back down, and exhale. Turn to the right, inhale, and turn back down to exhale. Repeat this several times.

Drill #2: Is the same as drill #1, except that you now add freestyle arm motions. So when you bow down to the front, extend the arms in front of you. When you turn your head to the side to inhale, start the arm's pull motion with the arm on the breathing side. When you turn your head back down to exhale, recover the stroking arm to the front. Then start the same motions on the other side.

Drill #3: Put on swim fins, take a kickboard and hold it in front of you. Push off, so that you are in a prone position, with your face submerged and turned to the bottom of the pool. Kick gently with your fins and exhale in the water. To inhale, rotate your head to the side and breathe in. Rotate your head back down and exhale. Then inhale to the other side, and so on.

Drill #4: Try to swim the full freestyle stroke with fins on, and breathe to the same side the whole length. Alternate the breathing side each length. The swim fins will ensure that you have no trouble keeping your legs up and moving down the pool. You can then focus on synchronizing the breathing technique with the arm and head motions.

Drill #5: Is the same as drill #4, except that you now alternate breathing sides by inhaling each third arm stroke. This ingrains the habit of bilateral breathing, which is important to get a balanced and symmetric swim stroke.

Conclusion

You should now have learned basic breathing swimming coordination in the freestyle swim stroke.

A good place to go from here is to go to the freestyle swimming drills to improve your freestyle.

There are also basic breathing while swimming tips and swimming and breathing tips for the four swim strokes available.