Just breathe! I think that might be a song. Don’t worry I am not about to start singing. Breathing is obviously something we all do. Most of the time it is subconscious. We aren’t taught how to breathe; we just do it.
When stressed or anxious it is calming to take a few deep breaths. When angry, same thing: breathe. When you are happy or excited, sad or scared you breathe a little bit faster, or maybe a little bit harder; it’s not something you think about you just breathe. It would only makes sense that you would want to breathe when your body is under stress as in working out too.
Common sense, right? That is why it always amazes me how many people hold their breath when working out. While it isn’t something we can forget to do why is it I find myself having to remind my clients to do it all the time. I can’t count the number of times I have seen a face turning purple under a weight I know they can handle all because they forgot to breathe.
When training, your body demands more that the usual amount of oxygen to work efficiently. Holding your breath during resistance training or hyperventilating through your cardio workout will not only reduce the effectiveness but will impair your results and may ultimately cause injury.
Holding your breath or improper breathing can cause rapid increases to your blood pressure resulting in dizziness, fainting, headaches, and even stroke, cramping in the abdominals or chest, and nausea.
Learning to breathe properly while working out is vitally important. Are you breathing properly when you workout?
Breathing for Cardiorespiratory Exercise
Regardless of what you are doing for cardio activity, proper breathing means deep and relaxing breaths. Think belly breathing: breathe deeply enough that your stomach (not your chest) rises and falls as you inhale and exhale.
Breathing for Strength Training
Breathing properly for strength and resistance training is just as important. This is where I commonly see poor breathing habits with people holding their breath as they exert.
In weight training, you should exhale as you are doing the hardest work and inhale as you return to the starting position. For example, in a press type exercise you want to exhale as you push weight away from your body and inhale as you bring it back. In a pull exercise (like a row) exhale as you pull the weight to you and inhale as you release it back.
Yes, there are some exercises that may make you think: where is the work? when should you exhale? Stop and think about it if you need to. If it all seems like work and you aren’t able to figure out where you should exhale, just breathe. It is much better than not breathing at all.
Breathing for Stretching
Breathing properly while stretching helps your body relax. Deep, full and slow breaths help relax and can increase flexibility and allow you to stretch more deeply. This will allow blood to flow to muscle tissues and help muscles recover quickly from exercise.
While stretching focus on inhaling through the nose and exhale through the mouth. Your exhale should take twice as long as your inhale. With each exhale try to relax deeper into the stretch.
Breathing isn’t something we have to think about. Breathing during fitness and exercise does require some conscious effort before the proper techniques become automatic. Until that becomes automatic, focus and just breathe!
