One of the oft-overlooked keys to successful exercise is the intentional and steady regulation of breathing. The majority of gym trainees ignore their breathing during training, depriving themselves of potential benefits--including boosts to both strength and endurance. If you neglect to focus on breathing while training, what follows is advice that will get you on the fast track to mastering this relatively neglected art.
Why Worry About Breathing?
Without proper breathing, your body will not be able to provide your cells with sufficient oxygen to manage the task at hand. This can compromise your overall performance potential, leading to sub-par lifts and run times. Additionally, proper breathing techniques can actually make you stronger in maximum effort lifts--proper inhalation and breath management during lifts can help stabilize your abdominal region by increasing the efficacy of force transfer.
Breathing During Cardio Workouts
According to Stew Smith, a former Navy SEAL and certified conditioning specialist, there is both a right and a wrong way to breathe while performing cardio. The correct breathing method is to meter your inhalation time against your exhalation time in a three to two ratio. Although this might sound complicated, putting it into action is easy. When running at a steady pace, simply breathe in during your first three footfalls (paces) and breathe out during your next two paces. So proper breathing would be (inhaling) , right step, left step (exhaling), right step left step (inhaling again).
Breathing During Routine Weight Training
According to Stew Smith, the key to regulating your breath during weight training is to remember the following: breathe in during the eccentric portion of the lift and breathe out during the concentric portion. The eccentric portion is the lowering phase, such as when bringing the bar to your chest for a bench press or lying back down after a situp. The concentric portion is the lifting phase, such as standing back up after descending into a squat or pushing the bar overhead during a military press.
Intra-Abdominal Pressure
Proper breathing during weightlifting has another component that is often overlooked. When breathing during lifting, you want to maximize "intra-abdominal pressure." This helps to stabilize the spine and guard against muscular and skeletal injuries. To accomplish this, breathe deeply into your stomach (diaphragm breathing) while lifting, as opposed to breathing shallowly into the chest, as you might be accustomed to doing.
Intra-Abdominal Pressure and Force Transfer
Increasing intra-abdominal pressure also can help you lift more weight by providing your body with additional stability during the lift. Breathing into the stomach stabilizes the core, which is necessary to promote effective force transfer during a maximal lift. To illustrate, consider the difference in stability between an ordinary straw and a bendable (or "bendy") straw. Obviously the ordinary straw has more rigidity, and thus can be trusted to support more weight. This example points out the difference between your body when performing abdominal breathing against chest breathing, demonstrating why you must learn to breathe into your stomach if you want to lift heavy weights.
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