When people focus on improving their training performance levels, they often overlook & neglect the most important aspect, ”breathing”. There has been so much focus on diet & workout that we forget that breathing is an important aspect as well. Breathing not only allows more oxygen to enter your circulatory system but also helps in improving your workout posture. When you do a perfect inhale & exhale, it helps you significantly improve your posture as compared to doing a workout with shallow breathing. During aerobic exercise, your body provides oxygen rich blood to your muscles. However to get this oxygen you need to breathe. Every inhalation provides oxygen which is used to burn fats & carbohydrates into energy.
Proper breathing is the reason why athletes do not get stitches & do not build much of lactic acid in the muscles. This makes you workout harder & longer.
We must have observed that what marathon runners achieve seems impossible for many of us. It is important to note that a lot of such awesome performances have a lot to do with breathing since it is necessary to transport oxygen to different parts of the body to achieve peak performance.
The best game plan to track & monitor your breathing is to adopt the inhale exhale ratio, which reflects how you are breathing & helps you improve your performance/reach your peak performance. Ideally, the ratio should be 3:2 which means you inhale every third step & exhale every second step. Another way of having a proper breathing is following 2:2, which means you do inhaling & exhaling every second step. For weight training, this essential means that you breathe in & breathe out for every repetition. Choose whatever is comfortable for you.
Generally high performance breathing is neglected, since you are more focussed on keeping & maintaining high intensity required by the nature of HIIT/MRT. Here, we are not talking about interval training on the treadmill. Lot of people still do not breathe properly from the chest, rather do shallow breathing which does not allow enough oxygen in our body. A new technique is to activate your diaphragm to increase its strength & from there you will start seeing positive effects both for respiratory & functional processes. A good way of training your diaphragm is to lie down on your back with your hands on your stomach & breath-in & breath-out, focussing on diaphragm to breathe.
When it comes to strength training, one method of breathing does not fill in all workouts. Learning how to breathe properly has also been linked to improved performance as you are perfecting the art of more oxygen into your body when it needs the most. During strength training, you should inhale the easy part, hold your breath for a short second as you approach the hardest part & exhale after you have completed. This helps you tighten your core muscles & achieve the proper form.
Discover your personal traits & learn about your specific genetic predisposition to workout & nutrition. By subscribing to our personalised fitness programs, you will not only receive information about genetic response to various aspects of nutrition & fitness but also be coached by an international fitness coach who will cover both genetics powered nutrition & exercise aspects of the program that will help you maximise your fitness potential. Sign up here.
