Breathing is so automatic that it usually escapes our notice – which is a good thing as your autonomic nervous system normally does a very good job of keeping you breathing without you consciously having to think about it. Indeed, in the last minute you’ve inhaled and exhaled between 12 to 18 times hopefully without effort. So why bother trying to learn how to improve your normal breathing if your body appears to take care of it without your involvement? Energy is the answer.
Most of you will know about the importance of drinking enough water and eating the right foods and you will be aware that this hydration and nutrition is fuel for your body to keep it working properly (and to keep you alive). But to turn this fuel into energy that your body can use, you must add a third input: oxygen. Oxygen enables you to get 18 times more energy from the break- down of glucose than doing so without oxygen. So if you are carefully drinking eight glasses of water a day and eating a balanced diet but walking around with a slouchy posture and shallow breathing then you aren’t getting the full benefit from your fuel. It’s like paying for super unleaded but letting a blocked air filter stop the oxygen getting into your engine – a waste of energy and money. Most people breathe only with the top part of the body, which means that they are not fully lowering the diaphragm and expanding the lungs and so are not making the full use of their lung capacity. It helps if you understand a little about how the diaphragm (the big muscle that sits underneath your lungs) works.
One of the commonest mistakes people make when (if ever) they think about breathing is that you are somehow ‘sucking’ the air into your lungs. Air is drawn into your lungs not by a sucking action but by the change in air pressure as your dome shaped diaphragm muscle contracts. As your diaphragm flattens downwards, the space inside you (the thoracic cavity) gets bigger, the air pressure becomes lower than the air pressure outside your body, and as a result air rushes in and fills your lungs to equalise the air pressure inside and outside your body. While exhaling, the opposite happens: your diaphragm relaxes and increasing
its curvature and making the space inside your chest smaller. This raises the pressure and air rushes out.
Poor posture can limit how much room your diaphragm and lungs have to work in. Less room, means less air pressure, which means less air in each breathe which means less oxygen is going into the process of turning fuel into energy. Get it?
Good posture involves practice but, briefly, keep your shoulders back and your stomach pulled in. Gently contract your abdominal muscles. Gently! Don’t suck in your stomach so that you think you’re going to faint. Avoid locking your knees and spread your legs so that the gap between your feet is equal to your shoulder width. Try moving your head slightly back too so that it is sitting above your shoulders and not sticking forward. This will feel a little strange at first but persevere because soon you will naturally adopt this stance. For more posture advice see www.spinalcarecentre.co.uk/up_and_at_em
Now try abdominal breathing. Place your hands on your stomach. Does it swell when you breathe in and sink when you breathe out? It should. Babies breathe like this – it is only as we grow older that we fall into bad habits. Imagine the air going into your lungs like a bottle being filled with water from the bottom up. Breathe from your abdomen first so that your abdomen rises, then your chest, and then up to your shoulders. Exhale through the nose and try to empty the lungs completely before taking the next breath.
At first, remembering to adopt a good posture and practising abdominal breathing will require a bit of concentration and catching yourself lapsing. But after a while it will simply become your natural stance and your normal mode of breathing. And then you can reap the benefits of a better functioning body using its supply of energy more efficiently.
Now saying all this is great, until you decide to try lifting a heavy weight! Try a dead lift or a front squat whilst you are tummy breathing and it all goes out of the window. I know this from experience and this is the only time we recommend a slight modification. In general, people are stronger when they exhale and since it’s harder to lift a weight than it is to lower it, it makes sense to synchronize the breathing with the difficulty of the movement. So you exhale when the weight is being raised and inhale when the weight is being lowered. However, during lifts that load the spine (e.g. squats, dead lifts, overhead press and many others), it’s critical that the spine be supported to prevent injury, more so as the weights get heavier and/or the repetitions get lower.
Obviously all those muscles and ligaments do their part but this discussion is about breathing, so here goes. The key here is something called Intra-abdominal pressure. How do we do this when lifting then? The primary way is by performing a Valsalva or Partial Valsalva maneuver; this simply refers to exhaling against a closed glottis (windpipe). A bit like holding your breath.
More specifically, to increase this pressure while lifting, the following should be done:
- The lifter should inhale into the belly (note: this is different than breathing superficially into the chest) filling the stomach with air.
- The lifter should then try to exhale but without letting any air escape because the windpipe is closed off.
As noted, the major benefit of breathing in this fashion is spinal safety, the spine is supported from the front by the pressure created in the abdominal area. The drawback is that, at least acutely, this can cause blood pressure to spike, plus if the weight is heavy and you stumble or try and do a “superman” without the core muscles supporting the spine being strong enough (mainly from rushing into heavy abdominal work and bypassing the core work) you have a higher risk of putting pressure on the lower lumbar spinal disks! It’s also worth mentioning that many lifters myself included wear a belt to help with the development of this mechanism, not to mention the general low back safety issues! With a belt worn tight enough and I mean REALLY tight, the abs can be physically pushed into the belt; this helps to further develop that pressure and stabilize the spine/core while under heavy load.