Your Breath & Health

Breathing is something you just do, no thought involved right? A lack of movement variability (prolonged desk sitting, sedentary lifestyle, etc.) leads to altered breathing patterns that affect the amount of oxygen you receive and thus your health.
To regain diaphragmatic breathing without restraint it takes practice and exercise. The diaphragm, after all, is a muscle.

When your breathing is patterned well it connects all points of movement.
When there is pain, stress, or fear it changes the way you breathe. Think of the last time you were hurt- you likely took a sharp inhale and held your breath or breathed shallowly a lot until the pain subsided (this is why practicing breathing for labor is important for the expecting mother).

Keep in mind that most everyone is under chronic stress due to the majority of people employed in jobs that never end (desk work) compared to the laborer whose job is done when the object is created and ready to ship or object is repaired. Chronic stress also lends toward altered breathing patterns which present in bracing and tension in the neck.

"Breath is key to consistent, quality movement." ~Gray Cook

To retrain your body to engage in diaphragmatic breathing, first let's get acquainted with the diaphragm. This umbrella shaped muscle is located under the lungs and when contracted pulls down so the lungs can expand outwards.

Note how the lungs expand towards the arms during inhalation. The most common form of breathing is into the chest, where the chest rises to the ceiling and the neck muscles tense up in response. An ideal breathing pattern not only leaves the neck musculature out of the equation, but also massages the organs and is a 360 degree event (the ribs widening in the back should also be felt).

Since poor breathing mechanics and poor movement mechanics affect each other, it might not be easy to switch over to using the diaphragm without first opening up the thoracic spine and pelvis.

Dead hangs are an excellent way to loosen up the thoracic spine as well as lumbar in addition the shoulders! You can also perform floor angels where you lay on your back, arms spread as if doing a snow angel, and while keeping just below the shoulder blade area pressed against the floor, gently raise your arms overhead.

For the pelvis, performing deep prying squats will help create space (if you're unable to get into a deep squat position without compromise, use a bar or ledge to hold and assist). There certainly are other methods for training the breathing muscles, these we will be covering in our classes.

Breathing & kettlebell

When we train everything helps perform the lift and this includes your breath.
The breath, specifically the biomechanical breath, generates tension in the abdominal area (bracing) when loading weight and maintains the tension during the work phase.

Take the squat, for example, as you descend into the bottom of your squat you need to fill up with air to generate tension throughout the abdominal cavity, at the bottom of the squat grunt to ensure tension is in place and exhale forcefully on the way up. This is biomechanical breathing.

Check out this article from StrongFirst's Director of Education Brett Jones on How to Sync Your Breathing for More Kettlebell Power. There is a great video where he shows exactly what this looks like for the kettlebell swing.

Again, we will be covering this skill more in our classes, so be sure to check the schedule!