While you may do it naturally, breathing can make or break your fitness routine’s success. If done incorrectly – whether you hold your breath, or breathe too fast, deep or shallow – your breathing can affect the exercise itself, how well you perform it, and your mind-body wellness. Let’s take a look at how you should breathe when performing different activities:
1. Strength Training: According to Certified Personal Trainers Jason Anderson and Nicole Nichols, ‘Strength training increases the body’s need for oxygen and automatically results in a faster breathing rate. However, many people have a tendency to hold their breath during strenuous activity like weight lifting. Known as the valsalva maneuver, this can limit oxygen delivery to the brain and cause dizziness, fainting, a spike in blood pressure and other complications. During strength training, the most important thing to remember about breathing is to just do it! Never hold your breath; be aware of how you are breathing at all times, whether through the nose or mouth. Beyond that, fitness experts recommend that you exhale on the exertion phase of the exercise and inhale on the easier phase. The exertion phase is typically the hardest phase of the exercise—lifting, curling, or pushing the weight. The easier phase brings you back to the starting position by lowering or returning the weight.’
2. Stretching: ‘Properly breathing while you stretch after your workouts helps your body relax so that you can return to a resting state, in addition to aiding in the mechanical removal of waste by-products of exercise,’ note Anderson and Nichols. ‘It may also allow you to increase your flexibility because proper breathing during stretches will help you to relax more fully and therefore stretch more deeply. Many people tend to hold their breath during stretching or to take short and shallow breaths, but ideally, we should take deep, relaxed diaphragmatic breaths. Most experts recommend inhaling through the nose and exhaling through the mouth when stretching. On every exhale, try to relax more fully or give into the stretch a little further, but make sure that you never stretch past a seven on a scale of 1-10.’
3. Pilates: Anderson and Nichols detail, ‘Pilates typically involves lateral or ribcage breathing…With your abdominals engaged (naval pulled toward your spine), inhale deeply through the nose without allowing your belly to rise; instead, think about the air filling your lungs and expanding them laterally and into your back while your belly remains tight and flat as if you are wearing a corset. On your exhale, open your lips slightly and push all of that air out of your mouth both forcefully and slowly, making your exhale audible (like a “whoooooo” or “seeeeeeee” sound). This style of breath keeps the abdominals engaged and helps you to perform Pilates exercises with greater ease and better control.’
4. Yoga: ‘Like Pilates, yoga has a unique form of breathing known as “ujjayi” breathing,’ Anderson and Nichols point out. ‘During this slow, even breath through the nose, one should inhale for four to five heartbeats, pause slightly, and then exhale for an equal length of time. The back of the throat constricts slightly to allow the air to create an audible sound. The audible breath serves as a “moving meditation” during a yoga practice…meaning that when poses get difficult, the mind can focus on the rhythm and sound of the breath to stay calm. This breath, which sounds like the ocean, helps you stay in the moment and centred while practicing yoga.’ Stepfanie Romine, a certified Ashtanga yoga teacher, adds, ‘The breath serves as a metronome for the body, each movement timed to the length of an inhalation or exhalation.’
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