Darn that ribcage

[green m&m]

I started swimming recently, and found that I have trouble taking in full breaths of air. ...when i'm out of water and stretch out my concave side, I can take in a full breath w/o feeling the restriction from the concave side.

Anyone have any tips or tricks I can use in the water so I don't feel like I'm not taking enough air in with each breath. (As of now it's hard for me to breath every 4 strokes, which I'd prefer so I only breath in from one side only)

I'm def. asking my ortho, but wanted to hear your experiences.

My follow up is next week, and I'm so afraid my curve would have progressed further... cause I recently realized spinal fusion for me might not be possible or it'll be a difficult surgery due to all the nerve sheath tumors around my spine with a few in my neural foramen, cause as luck would have it, the largest tumor is from T9 to T12...all basically my t-curve is. boo.

[briarrose]

I have a similar problem when I do pilates/yoga. When I lean to the right I can't take in a full breathe. It's kind of scary, especially since I have asthma too. I don't know how you would remedy this!

[JamieAnn]

Hm... I'm not sure if maybe it's from something else, but I was a swimmer (about 8 years ago at this point), but I couldn't really breath from my left side. I would only breath on my right. I found that I couldn't really twist well to the left, and it was maybe more of a habit to just go to the right. I think you're saying that on one side you can't breath as well - if I'm understanding right, maybe just don't breath on that side? That's what I did, and it was fine.

Also, on the swim team, we had specific training to sort of "expand" our lung capacity, if I remember correctly. It might also be that you have to work on the breathing aspect, as swimming is such an intense exercise.

Anyway, good luck and let us know if you find an answer to this!