Conscious Breathing: Part Two
Conscious Breathing: Part Two
Coordination and Chemistry
This article is Part Two in a two part series on conscious breathing. In the last article I covered why you might want to breathe on purpose in the first place as well as some of the foundation ideas behind breathing on auto-pilot and how learning to grab the yoke can bring serious advantages to how we respond to stress (MIND in Check Engine Light lingo). All of this along with some practical starting points are availabe HERE if you missed it and want to catch up before reading on.
Here in Part Two we'll take a look at how breathing on purpose can further leverage our performance longevity in two other categories. MVMT which is the body in space and time and MTTR which is the management of biochemistry. Just as a reminder this topic is exceedingly vast and so the aim of this series of articles is to showcase directions of exploration for those who want to put this practice to effective use and quickly.
MVMT
MVMT, a category of indicators and tools I use in my Check Engine Light curriculum, is all about the efficient and effective organization of the human body. Not only to help ensure the best performance under short term demands but to also support long term robustness. For more on that general idea read HERE if you haven't already.
Breath control in the category of movement has multiple applications including both ventilation training as a pursuit unto itself as well as how other forms of movement training integrated with breath control can amplify awareness and coordination. With that said, I feel the need to highlight a critical error that is repeated by breathing coaches often in my experience and usually by those who are working in somatic or rehab/recovery spaces that have never had to work at truly high intensities with an immediate consequence to failure. That error is this: not all movement needs breath control and furthermore breath control should be not always be the focus when moving. This is because there are many situations especially in performance environments where external focus is not only preferable, it's advantageous. An immediate example that comes to mind is during a breathing for jiu jitsu seminar I was teaching a couple of years back. After some introduction to the basic concepts of breathing under real-time stress we were looking for opportunities to breathe during rolling. In this case it was escape from back control. After one of the rounds I asked if there were any questions. A student raised his hand and posited, "What was the appropriate breathing technique if somebody has your neck?". My answer: under those conditions your priority is to stop from being strangled unconscious not search the files for the appropriate breathing technique. Does that mean staying calm with breathing that you already have a history of using under those conditions isn't useful? Not at all. It means the level of the problem at hand in comparison to your available skill determines where you place your focus.
I digress. Let's zoom in on ventilation training as its own practice first.
Ventilation Training
Ventilation is the mechanical behavior of air moving in and out of the lungs. This is powered by primarily the diaphragm, a big dome shaped muscle that attaches to the circumference of the rib cage, and the intercostals which are the sets of muscles between each set of ribs. These work to expand and shrink the container of the lungs based on signals that moving back and forth from the Autonomic Nervous System which we discussed in Part One. In addition to the diaphragm and intercostals many other muscles attach to the rib cage and almost all of them can enhance or limit voluntary ventilation (breathing on purpose). Most specifically the obliques are involved in forceful expiration. This is important to know because breathing on purpose with all of its yoga fanciness boils down to learn another muscular skill and then applying it in different contexts until your body uses it to solve problems automatically. It's no different than learning any other exercise with any other part of the body. What is different is the compounding dividends that come with training ventilation muscles directly.
First and foremost there is quite a bit of evidence that for the full spectrum of people from the anxiety ridden to the high performing learning to breathe as a skill reduces the perception of stress. In high performance this equates to a reduction in RPE or Rate of Perceived Exertion. While this isn't a miraculous shift in endurance or recovery subjective sense of effort has a cumulative effect on willingness to stay in states of challenge and maintain cognitive faculties while there. That alone is worth it in many cases. At this point in class most people will ask me about diaphragmatic or belly breathing. If you're there, hold that thought. We'll get to it. This overlaps a bit with our coming discussion on biochemistry but ventilation training, specifically inspiratory resistance training, has been shown to improve adjustment to altitude. This is not because something special happens at the chemical level. When the diaphragm gets stronger and better conditioned it can pull in a higher volume of air per breath. More air equals more oxygen. Breath teacher Carl Stough was famously hired by the 1968 Olympic Track and Field Team to help prepare the athletes for the altitude in Mexico City. Is strengthening your diaphragm the only thing you need to do to prepare for the demands of higher altitude. Of course not. But it can be an ace in your hand that's for sure.
There are lots of ways to go a bout this but my preference is through two simple routes. First, fill the bucket. Imagine your rib cage as a five gallon bucket that you're filling with water. When you inhale fill the bucket bottom to top and out to the sides. Breathe slow, smooth, and evenly through your nose. Work at intensities where it's challenging but not impossible to fulfill those conditions. Second, purposeful exhalation during high power and high effort movements. Breathing out during high effort is similar to blowing out a stubborn candle. Don't be shy about it. Push air out on purpose. You have to make the muscles work to make them work. Briefly, you may have noticed I didn't tell you to use your diaphragm or breathe into your belly. That's because both of those cues offer little in the way of efficient transferable skill development. I wouldn't tell you to breathe with your diaphragm any more than I'd tell you to run with your hamstrings. There are more specific ways to improve ventilation mechanics than that for sure. Check the link at the end of the article if you want to go a bit deeper.
Coordination
Next up is movement coordination. Rhythmic breathing that is coordinated with movement can help to synergize muscle groups towards particular outputs. The part of the brain the controls conscious breathing and voluntary muscle movement are one and the same (pre-motor cortex). In physical training environments purposeful patterns of breathing can be used to encourage movement cadences and tempos that illicit more consistency. Additionally, breathing on purpose during movement dials in mental focus which is certainly a crucial factor in movement quality although not a direct effect as such. The effect of conscious breathing coordinated with movement is nothing new. Martial arts and spiritual practices like yoga have been onto this secret for some time. Due to the elaboration of these practices into the sometimes impractical and even hokey people have thrown the baby out with the bathwater.
There are certainly exceptions to these rules where the intensity of the load or the fatigue demands become great enough that ventilation control better left to the autopilot. However, even under conditions of max effort breathing can be a powerful asset as we see in strength athletes that use the Valsalva maneuver to increase intra-thoracic pressure in an effort to stability the torso.
A simple way to start using breathing as a coordinative enhancer is to inhale during eccentric (stretched) phases of exercises and exhale during concentric (shortening) phases. For example, inhale as you descend in a squat exhale as you come up. Inhale as your arms bend bench pressing or doing a push up, exhale as they extend. No doubt this is easier to do during motions that are slow and controlled and probably the best way to begin applying them. They can be used in movements that require and develop speed and power but are best done after some experience has been applied to slower motions. These examples are by all accounts incredibly simplistic but will do the job of getting you started.
Two-Way Communication
The number one job of your nervous system is to protect you. That is - protect you from outside forces and to protect you from you. There are emergency brakes in your neuromusclular system that maintain limits on end ranges of motion to prevent soft tissues from exceeding their limits. To expand those limits does require them to be challenged but often when I see athletes using strategies to expand their movement capacity whether foam rolling, stretching, or some other mobility work they are in states of distress. They feel if they just run a hot, spikey, iron over this tissue or yank on the end of the rope, things will get better. No. These tissues are alive and so have self protective mechanisms. Which by the way we often ignore and as such limit the outcomes we might otherwise get from any intervention we choose. With that said, in order to get the body to change you have to challenge the tissues, right.
So how do we stay in a zone of challenge without sending the wrong message to the protective response? We can use breathing as a two way radio to the nervous system. On one hand we can listen. If we find it very difficult or impossible to breathe slow, smooth, and even as we challenge tissues for new ranges it might be too much. Sweating blood with your left eye half popped out while you're stretching is not marker of legitimate progress. I don't care what worked for Van Damme in Kickboxer. On the other hand if we want to spend more time in zones of development we have to get the nervous system to feel that what we are doing isn't potentially harmful. How can we do that? Pump the brakes through slow, smooth, even breathing. In fact, one of the initial responses to range of motion techniques is simply an increased tolerance to stretching. Sound familiar? (If not, reread the beginning of this article).
Breathing is both a way to listen to the body and a way to send it messages about how we want it to respond. In this particular instance we are talking about breath control in the context of MVMT but the principle stand elsewhere too. In application, there isn't much difference between breath control for one use or another when you get down to it. Only the context it's being applied in. Next let's talk about how breathing can effect some of the fundamental chemistry of the human body and why, when, and how we can use it to our advantage to perform better.
MTTR
Respiration is a key modulator of our internal chemistry. We all know we breathe to bring oxygen in but equally as important is the expulsion of carbon dioxide. Breathing is the primary way your body manages pH, the crucial balance of the alkaline and acidic compounds that allow for the myriad of chemical reactions in the body to take place. It does so through the constant feedback loop that manages the balance of oxygen (O2) and carbon dioxide (CO2). Yes, there are other mechanisms in the body that manage pH but respiration offers a real-time adjustment mechanism through the adjustment of the volume and frequency of breathing. Specifically, reducing ventilation increases CO2 levels (hypoventilation) and increasing breathing reduces CO2 levels (hyperventilation). This fact of chemistry is made a bit more complex in application with some contextual factors that we'll get into shortly. Learning to tune into and manipulate this relationship has great potential for enhancing performance longevity. Let's look at how the basic physiology we discussed applies in some base life scenarios and then scale those into performance longevity applications.
Mouth Breathing Baristas
Imagine for a minute you're walking up a steep hill. At first it probably won't hold much of an issue (assuming you're decently healthy). Then after a few minutes of walking uphill your breathing starts to change. You're breathing deeper and maybe even faster. After another minute or two walking uphill your breathing heavily with your mouth open and you stay that way not only until you reach the top but for a few minutes after. Why does this happen? As we discussed you breathe more to offload the acidic waste that is accumulating from the increased workload on your body. This is a perfectly normal and natural thing. Especially when your muscles are working really hard walking up a steep incline.
If a very fit person walks up that hill they may begin to breathe heavily much later or maybe even not all. If they're fit and accustomed to walking up steep hills they might even maintain idle chit chat while you sweat and curse them with your inner dialogue. What if a person was making you a cappuccino at your favorite java joint was breathing heavily just from the simple physical tasks required to brew your medicine? Would that be a sign of health? I think not. We intuitively know on a broad scale that the way our breathing reacts to various circumstances of physical output is a clear indicator of how well we can manage the work required for that situation. Practically that means you can use respiration as an indicator light for how your body is dealing with the energy demands of a particular situation. There are other complexities in place for sure but paying attention to your breathing is a plain and functional heurisitic for your ability to manage pH demands. This is especially true in realms of low to moderate effort.
To corroborate this with a common aerobic fitness standard I'll use the "conversational pace" rule. Zone 2 cardiovascular exercise is a common prescription to improve fitness with the maintenance of a conversational pace as a loose rule for knowing if you're in the correct zone of work. Being able to conversate as a matter of fact means you can control the flow of air out of your face well enough to talk. In other words you're not working so hard yet that heavy breathing is occurring.
Shnoz Play
The ability to breathe well through the nose is a natural part of respiratory function. If you can't breathe well through your nose, especially during normal activity that is an issue that needs to be addressed with the guidance of a healthcare professional. You absolutely can breathe through your mouth but doing so too much skips over incredibly important functions provided by the nasal airway. It's too much to outline in this article but you can read another piece I did on the subject HERE. What is more important for the purposes of this article is that tuning into nasal breathing during various physical activities at a variety of output levels can create a deeper awareness of your physiological stress tolerance. While not as precise as other metrics like HRV nasal breathing during activity can provide a window into how your autonomic nervous system is reacting to CO2 on a daily basis (CO2 sensitivity) and therefore offers some reflection into the ANS.
Practically speaking that could work something like this. Every day when you get to the gym you ride the stationary bike for 5-10 minutes as a warm up. During that time breathe slowly, smoothly, and evenly at a consistent pace. If you do this for a week you'll find a range of RPMs or watts that establish a baseline. Over time you can start to pay attention to how your breathing response adapts to the work or vice versa according to the effects of other contextual events. I.e. sleep, stress, etc.
In addition to that breathing through the nose while exercising can be an effective constraint for manipulating stress. Before all the sports science nerds jump on this I'll just say it up front. You don't have to breathe through your nose to get more fit or well conditioned. It's one tool that can be used to compound the effects of training time. See the article referred to above to get my full take in performance environments. Onward. During bouts of effort, forcing yourself to breathe through your nose in spite of the natural desire to breathe with your mouth is by point of fact forcing an increase in acidity. As we established just a few paragraphs ago breathing more heavily is a natural consequence of increased work. By not allowing this response to occur we can increase relative stress in a variety of situations.
Why the heck would we do this? First, you get warmed up faster. I've used this with a slew of different athletes and clients and it cuts warm up time down even for crusty middle aged dogs like myself. Secondly, bumping CO2 up by restricting breathing lights up the sympathetic a bit and can be used for rapid increase in focus (dosed correctly of course). Second, it provides a way to get to the chemistry without beating up the hardware. Nasal breathing during work can act like a governor on output. You can build the engine while you keep from beating the hell out of the chassis. The research on using nasal breathing is all over the place and there's no clear consensus on effects or dosages just yet. With that said I highly recommend trying it yourself.
Here's how:
Warm up. Breathe through your nose in all your cardiovascular. If you're not doing the type of exercise that requires a warm up fix that first. Then breathe through your nose while you warm up.
Breathe through your nose in all conditioning exercise for the next 30 days. At first this will severely decrease your capacity for work so if you're a competitive athlete who is preparing for a competitive event, don't do this. Wait until you're on the other side of competing and do it then. It will suck at first. You will suck at first. But in my experience most who can endure the stress and shame slingshot out of the other side with renewed stress resilience and a new gear in their conditioning. Don't take my word for it though. Try it for yourself.
One Breath
This article represents about one breath's worth of introduction to the topic of conscious breathing. By no means does this cover the vast applications that are available in even the simplest of directions that you can pursue in the application of breathing techniques. Much of this work is still being researched and we are far from consensus on many of these topics.Â
I encourage you not to take my word for it but instead to experiment for yourself. Maybe we'll do a breathing personal health experiment in the near future? Let me know what you think about that and this article in general in the comments below. By the same token ask questions and get clarification if something is too vague.
For a deeper dive into all my breathing articles click HERE. Stay tuned next week for a write up on how my own personal breathing experiment turned out.
Thanks for reading,
Rob
If you dig my writing check out my book Check Engine Light!