Breathing underwater (read for tip) Have you ever wondered how professional swimmers time their exhale? There are a lot of different ideas about how to do it, and really, most of them are right. It really comes down to 2 things: 1) What effort are you swimming? 2) What works for you? When I am swimming at a higher tempo, I pretty always do what you see in this video… Hold my breath for 1 stroke, then do a quick short exhale as I rotate to breath. But where it gets interesting is when I’m breathi