Please note: we are dealing here with problems of breathlessness or breathing difficulties in the “normal” context, i.e. without any pathological notion or consequences of illnesses.
Of course, the following list of solutions is neither exhaustive nor personalized, but it does provide food for thought and ideas on how to improve the situation.
Out-of-water solutions to breathlessness
Stress management
Stress is a determining factor in shortness of breath, without even needing to raise the metabolism. When I'm stressed, my heart rate speeds up, my breathing rate increases, my diaphragm contracts, my stomach hurts...
To fight stress, there is nothing like mastering simple breathing techniques such as cardiac coherence or square breathing.
Practicing cardiac coherence on a daily basis will enable you to relax and effectively reduce stress and its negative effects. Practice cardiac coherence minutes before swimming will allow you to “reset” your inner tension.
Fear of water
Fear of water is a source of stress (see article on reptilian brain). This fear may come from past events, from stories we've heard, or simply from beliefs. It can also arise when conditions change (from a swimming pool to open water, changing weather conditions, more people...). Our reptilian brain doesn't like water, which it sees as a source of danger.
How to fight it? You need to try to pacify your situation, and why not take a course to combat aquaphobia. You can also start swimming in favorable conditions, with few people around, plantar support (the ability to stand upright) and making gentle, gradual progress.
Children are usually unaware of the dangers of water, and are therefore quite confident (sometimes too confident). Adults, on the other hand, are more complex, and learning to swim at a later stage often requires them to overcome their fears.
It can sometimes take long sessions before you can put your mouth and face in the water, before you are willing to swim at great depths, before you can swim with people at your side, and then in a natural environment with wind, waves, currents, algae...
Warm up properly to limit oxygen debt
Warm-up is essential to allow the body to prepare itself for an intensity that can be progressively higher. Taking the time to start with simple, low-speed exercises is therefore essential to bring the systems (ventilatory, circulatory, nervous, muscular.....) up to temperature and be operational.
An effort that is too sudden and violent will immediately lead to a lack of oxygen in the exchanges that supply the muscles with the energy they need. Then, I run the risk of switching to an anaerobic type of effort (without oxygen) and soon find myself with a deficit to make up (find out more about the concept of oxygen debt).
Remember that the more progressive and well-constructed the effort, the less deleterious the effects of oxygen debt will be.
Work on routines
We have seen above a number of simple reasons that can lead to breathlessness.
It is vital to identify the factors that make me feel out of breath and to put in place strategies (or routines) to avoid finding myself in situations that are stressful or anxiety-provoking for my brain or my body.
Respecting few steps and implementing them systematically will enable me to limit stress and uncertainty, and thus limit breathlessness. However, it's impossible to limit breathlessness if I'm working at high or very high intensity. I will be able to limit or delay factors, but never make them disappear.
In this article, we have focused on solutions out of the water against breathlessness. In the next part of the article, we will look at solutions to be done when we are in the water.
This article is part of a series of articles about breathing and breathlessness. Visit here for other articles.