I was holding out to see if some of our real fish would chime in first, but I hate to see a post hanging... so...

It sounds like you're doing great. Being able to breathe on either side can be useful, whether or not you're doing bilateral breathing. Biomechanically speaking, breathing bilaterally can help keep you from muscle issues you might get if you only breathed to the same side all the time.

When people are swimming shorter distances really fast (as you might see in Masters), they'll more likely breathe more frequently since the harder/faster effort is using more energy and air.

If, on the other hand, you're going for a speed you can sustain over a longer distance (like you might find in triathlons), then pacing yourself and breathing every three can be a great way to go.

At least that's all my understanding of breathing and pacing... hopefully tomorrow some of the real swimmers will chime in. I'm just working on my guppy stripes. (They do make striped guppies, right? )

Stick with every 3 strokes. If you have to breath every 2, you are probably well above aerobic range. In a race you may breath every two because you are working harder.

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Sometimes we do drills where we breathe every 2 (or 4 or 6 or 8) but only on the bad/weak side.