The Simplest Way to Make Exercise / Life Easier...Learn to Breathe Better

By Chris Marino, MS, LMT, CMT

Believe it or not, the most efficient way to improve your Cardio-Respiratory Fitness doesn’t involve exercise.  Its learning to breathe better.  Training our ability to take in oxygen, deliver it to the working muscles, and expel carbon dioxide and other waste products is the basic objective of Cardio-Respiratory fitness programs.  Unfortunately, by doing so, we’re often putting the cart before the horse.  If we don’t already breathe well (hint: most of us do NOT) and we force our bodies to breathe more vigorously and frequently, we could be strengthening a poor respiratory pattern further.  

Because respiration is part of your autonomic nervous system and is therefore “automatic” we often take breathing for granted.  Yet, next to a heartbeat it’s the most vital function to sustaining life.

We are often unaware and/or don’t recognize that inefficient or paradoxical breathing patterns can be an underlying cause of persistent pain, injury or sub-optimal function in another system of our body.  Here are just a few issues that have direct correlations to poor respiratory patterns:

-Persistent Shoulder Pain

-Back Pain

-Neck Pain

-Chronic Headaches

-Numbness or Tingling in your Hands

-Poor Posture

In the gym, efficient breathing is essential to stabilizing your spine during all load-bearing exercises from deadlifts, squats, lunges, jumping, and virtually all core exercises.  In addition, cardio-respiratory training activities (i.e. running, cycling, swimming, etc) can be seriously limited by poor respiratory patterns and consequentially weak respiratory muscles.  Simply working on your breathing can result in improved performance, allowing you to train at higher relative intensities for longer periods of time. 

Recently, I’ve been spending more time educating myself on recognizing and improving breathing strategies.  I’m not an expert on the topic by any means, so I thought that it would be better to share a couple videos from people who are. 

The first one is by Dr. Arianne Missimer, a local Physical Therapist, Functional Medicine Practitioner and owner of the Movement Paradigm in Downingtown.  She has a great social media presence and numerous short videos designed to help you improve in a variety of under-challenged areas.

Best breathing hacks - YouTube

The second video is by Wim Hof, who you may recognize from his many superhuman feats that he credits control over breathing for. 

Guided Wim Hof Method Breathing - YouTube

The final video is from Connor Harris, a PRI trained Fitness Coach.  PRI is the Postural Restoration Institute.

How To Improve Your Breathing - A Tutorial For Diaphragmatic Breathing - YouTube

There are numerous breathing exercises that you will find, and quite a few opinions on the subject.  If you’re a client you may have already been given some new breathing exercises recently.  Hopefully, this helps clarify some of our reasons for taking a step back in order to move forward faster.