Breaststroke: Breathing Problems - Head Too Deep

Are you putting your head too deep in the water?

Whilst putting your head into the water will help keep your body streamlined(Link) in the water, new swimmers often put their head in too deep, resulting in them struggling for a breath.

Some will try and solve this by doing extra strokes to get them to the surface, which only compounds the problem as this then conflicts with their kick.

There is a much better solution: keep the back of your head out of the water to avoid going too deep under the water when doing breaststroke.

One way to describe this, it was suggested to me, is to think about there being a frog on your head and this frog only likes getting his feet wet. So you put your head as deep in the water as you can, trying only to get the feet of the frog wet.

Your objective is always to be as streamlined as possible. That means keeping your head as much in line with your body as much as you can, not too deep and not too shallow, as well as keeping your body as close to the surface of the water as possible.

Keeping your body streamline means you move through the water much more easily because there is much less drag and it becomes much easier to do the correct breathing. Correct breathing will in turn make swimming less effort and more enjoyable.

So next time you do breaststroke concentrate on your head position it will help.