Tag Archives: swimming

Nick Gillingham MBE is a double Olympic medallist swimmer, former World, European and Commonwealth Champion setting 3 World, 10 European, 9 Commonwealth and 17 British Records for his breaststroke events…so he knows a thing or two about swimming.

Following this successful swimming career, Nick is now involved in all levels of swimming coaching, from his very own swimming academy to working alongside government bodies. He offers detailed swimming coaching including swimming courses, swimming training plans, his swim academy, online resources and carefully selected solutions to help improve swimming technique, strength, endurance, speed and recovery…one of...

POWERbreathe attended this incredible event alongside Borut Strel, Martin Strel’s son. Martin, aka ‘Big River Man’ (he swam the Amazon River), is a Slovenian long-distance swimmer – and long-time POWERbreathe user! His son Borut operates Strel Swimming Adventures, and Duncan from POWERbreathe was delighted to team up alongside him at this extreme event.

It was the 5th UK Cold Water Championships with 600 swimmers from across the world braving the frosty 0.5C water temperature.

The event is held every two years at Tooting Bec Lido and is ‘a celebration of British masochism and funny hats’.  Full of enthusiastic and sometimes eccentric swimmers,...

More great news from our POWERbreathe friends in the Czech Republic, TruconneXion.

Last week, on the biggest Czech triathlon website www.etriatlon.cz, young amateur triathlete, Lukáš Netík’s wrote about his positive experience of POWERbreathe training.

Lukáš started POWERbreathe inspiratory muscle training in 2011 on his Level 2 Medium Resistance (MR) model. With regular training he gradually increased the resistance load as his breathing muscles became stronger, but he soon got used to this increase in strength.

"I admit that although I trained according to the instructions, it was usually only once a day....

The sport of swimming involves your head being submerged in water most of the time so it is important to gain the correct swimming balance.  The majority of swimmers put a lot of concentration, practice, focus and effort into improving their swimming style. However, if the basic breathing techniques are not being followed all this effort goes to waste and what happens is the swimming stroke will lose its smoothness. It is essential that anyone who swims professionally or swims to get fit follows the correct breathing techniques and exercises.  Initially at the beginning it may be challenging to focus on breathing and executing the swimming stroke, but with...

Here is an excellent blog from one of our bloggers Melissa Brand. Beat your Best winner 2011, Melissa Brand has just finished the Marine Corps Ironman World Championship 70.3 in Las Vegas, Henderson Nevada, in just under a week. Melissa earned the right to participate in the championship when qualifying at an Ironman 70.3 event this year. Read this amazing blog to read all about it. Some great pictures too.

September 9th seemed to come around much sooner than expected.  My preparation for the event commenced way back in autumn 2011, when I started a comprehensive strength and conditioning programme.  The most important element of this was...

In his blog about endurance racing and sport psychology, Andy continues writing about his experience of using POWERbreathe in his training, in the run-up to Challenge Roth; a triathlon race in and around Roth, Germany.

In his latest blog Andy shares his feeling about how POWERbreathe inspiratory muscle training (IMT) may have helped with his swim training.

Here’s an extract from his blog:

“I would certainly suggest that there has been an improvement in my swimming that coincided with a focused regimen of inspiratory muscle training (IMT). After about 3 weeks of training I began to notice how:

A systematic review and meta-analysis was performed in order to determine the factors that affect the change in endurance performance after RMT (Respiratory Muscle Training) in healthy subjects.

The conclusion was that RMT improves endurance exercise performance in healthy individuals with greater improvements in less fit individuals and in sports of longer durations (rowing, running, swimming and cycling).

Read the Abstract for this meta-analysis recently published on PubMed: ‘Effect of Respiratory Muscle Training on Exercise Performance in Healthy Individuals: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis’.

Read more about POWERbreathe respiratory muscle training for rowing, running, swimming and cycling.

Henley Classic now taking place on 8th July.

The Henley Classic is a 2.1km endurance upstream River Thames swimming event, held over the Henley Royal Regatta course, and our very own Duncan from POWERbreathe will be there for the 4.30am start (he gets all the good jobs!).

Please pop over to the POWERbreathe gazebo and see him as he’ll have camped overnight so as not to miss the early birds. He’ll be demonstrating the POWERbreathe K-Series as well as having the POWERbreathe Plus on sale.

Ignoring his tired and dishevelled look (he’d have spent the night in his tent after all), you could test out your breathing strength against others – the K5 just...

The most common question in the tri-athlete world about swimming efficiently usually involves something to do with breathing and inspiratory muscle training. In freestyle, the first step is to get your body position right. Then, for many, you throw in breathing and everything goes haywire! This has to do with lack of balance, using your head instead of your core to breathe, and a few other factors.

Here are the top five challenges in learning effective breathing in freestyle swimming, along with the remedies on overcoming these challenges:

Typically this happens in freestyle a lot and there are a...

POWERbreathe will  be exhibiting at the 10th Triathlon Show, set to be a sell‐out success with a jam‐packed schedule of events and seminars.

The hugely popular Triathlon Show (formally The TCR) will take place on 2nd to 4thMarch 2012 at Sandown Park, Esher.

The leading multi‐sport show, targeted specifically to the triathlete, is ten years’ old this year and attracts amateur, professional and celebrity triathletes in the masses. This year, with over 150 represented brands and exhibitors, the show is a must for all with an interest in triathlon, featuring informative seminars, from Q&As with Chrissie Wellington, to bike set‐up, to cracking...