When to breathe on both sides (and when not to).

A coaching client recently asked me if it was better to breathe on both sides while swimming.  The answer is, of course, "It depends."

This is a good one. PRACTICE breathing on both sides. RACE breathing one-sided if you feel it's faster.

Why?

If you can't breathe both sides, you are setting yourself up for several problems:

1. Unbalanced workout. 
2. Needing to follow the shoreline on the opposite side that you breathe on and you're too much of a landlubber to know how to breath on that side. Now you can't look left without stopping and lifting your melon out of the water. Lame!
3. Waves and wind coming from one side and smashing you in the face. It'd be nice to be able to breathe without that guy kicking in your airhole.

Tips - practice bilateral breathing for parts of your workout. Warmup, cooldown, whatever. Just do it and do it enough so that you can do it on race day without it being a problem.  You are probably faster breathing on one side (depends on the individual) so pull it out on race day just like you pull out your race wheels.