The In’s and Out’s of Breathing?

Breathing is such an essential part of life. It’s what allows us to move, function and repair our bodies. But many of us don’t realise how powerful a tool that breathing can be in our daily lives. Today, I want to focus on some points regarding exercise, encouraging good patterns of breathing and trying to deter those of us who forget how important breathing is.

For many of us our natural tendency when working out, particularly when doing something that is a bit of a challenge, is to hold our breath. Research tells us that this is because it helps us to engage our core muscles better so makes us feel stronger when doing an exercise. But holding our breath isn’t a great thing to do, we don’t really want people getting lightheaded due to lack of oxygen when exercise, or worse, passing out. Most of the time we breathe without thinking, but when it comes to exercise sometimes we need to make that conscious effort to breathe more regularly.

With sports like running, maintaining the 3:2 ratio of inhale vs exhale is what helps us to settle into a rhythm, which then can help us feel more comfortable settling into a stride which can be maintained for longer periods of time. With a sport like running when you have a rhythmic pattern it is easy to follow breathing in for three steps, then breathing out for the next two. Maintaining this pattern can allow it to turn into a habit which we then no longer have to think about how we are breathing. By maintaining a more relaxed style of breathing rather than trying to rush through it with every step it helps to lower your heart rate and ensures that you are adequately removing the carbon dioxide from your body as well as ensuring you have enough oxygen to keep going. This technique can also apply to any sport when the focus is on cardio, find a rhythm and settle into this, adapting your breathing to fit around the continuous movement.

Sports which don’t have that same repetitive nature gives us a different challenge when it comes to breathing, particularly lifting activities. As a general rule we want to breath out when we are exerting ourselves or doing the most challenging part of the movement. This might be if you are having to lift, push, pull or when you are at the biggest point of stress through the movement. The benefit of breathing during this point of exertion is to protect your body and prevent if from injuring itself. When you aren’t breathing, internal pressure increases which can cause a rise in blood pressure, put more strain on muscles or blood vessels or even cause come more medical issues like a hernia. The main thing to ensure with lifting is that you aren’t overstressing your body by not breathing with lifting, or lifting too heavily, because there is never an ideal time to get injured.

So, there we have it. A few small tips to help get you started on your mission of achieving better breathing in exercise, hopefully gives you something to ponder on. Or even allow you to run without getting as short of breath! Whatever this may do to you hopefully we have sparked an interest, because our breath is so simple yet so effective and is something I hope to continue to explore with you next time.

Bridget Stewart is a physiotherapist working in our clinic in Johnsonville.