While most of the time you may not think about your breathing (unless of course you’re in the middle of a gassy WOD), paying attention to your inhales and exhales can provide some real benefits to your performance—particularly if you focus on nasal breathing.
Breathing through the nose is a healthier and a more efficient way to breathe.
Why is the Nose Important?
- It acts as a filter, trapping small particles such as pollen and dust
- It warms and humidifies the air, preventing dryness in the airways and lungs.
- It encourages diaphragmatic breathing controlling how fast and deep we breathe- helping to ensure a slower, more regular pattern.
- It helps with speech and voice control and with eating and drinking
- It produces Nitric Oxide which is important for healthy breathing.
Nitric Oxide helps the body’s immune system to fight infection as it has antibacterial, anti-viral and antifungal properties. It improves the lungs’ ability to absorb oxygen and helps the body transport the oxygen by causing blood vessels to dilate.
Check in right now – are you breathing with your mouth open? Are there any pauses between each of your breaths? Do you find yourself gasping for air or with a high respiratory rate during exercise? If so, read on!
You should be nasal breathing throughout your day and night (yes, during sleep!) to eliminate over breathing habits. Mouths are for eating and talking. If you’re not doing those things, keep it closed. Now, I’m not telling you to start nasal breathing during all of your workouts – if you did you would see a dramatic decrease in the amount of work you can produce. And it may not be the appropriate style of breathing for prolonged maximal effort instances. But I would pick 1-2 workouts/week and start dictating your pace on them via nasal breathing only. You will go slower at first. That’s okay, give your brain’s receptors time to recalibrate.
If increasing your exercise capacity is important to you – a lot of factors come into play like nutrition, training volume, strength development, skill acquisition and efficacy, and recovery. What’s missing from that list? Efficiency in breathing. Nasal-only breathing during exercise is a tool (amongst many others!) that you can incorporate into your training to improve your engine and aerobic capacity.
When first integrating nasal breathing into your exercise program it is vital that you UNDERSTAND THE INTENT of the session.
The purpose of nasal-only breathing during exercise is to acclimate the body to an increased accumulation of CO2. When starting off, nasal-only breathing will greatly dampen the pace that you can maintain (but you might surprise yourself after just a couple of weeks!). That may be frustrating if you are used to max effort/high intensity workouts that leave you gasping for air. If you give up on the process because you refuse to slow down, you’ll never reap the benefits of this process.
Things to focus on when nasal-only breathing during exercise:
Be a confident nose breather at rest- regularly check in with your breathing, notice as you using your nose or mouth? If you are unable to maintain consistent nose breathing at rest it will be impossible to maintain during a workout.
Nasal breathing should connect you to your diaphragm. Try to feel the air make its way to the belly and expand your lower ribs, rather than seeing a heavy upper chest/shoulder rise and fall.
You may feel anxious or panicky at first, as if you’re not getting enough air. Try to find a flow state and pay attention to the natural breathing pattern that should emerge – inhale/exhale/pause vs inhale/exhale/inhale/exhale.
Practice nose breathing when walking- aim for a 15 min nose breathing walk daily.
– Let the urge for air dictate your pace, if you feel a strong desire to open your mouth to inhale or exhale, you’re probably going too fast for your current CO2 tolerance. This works best to start with single aerobic based exercises, like a 20:00 ride on the bike, rower or ski erg rather than heavy or explosive movements like snatches, ring muscles-ups, and burpee box jumps.
I hope you rethink your breathing and experiment with this to see how you can affect your training, and actually, how it carries over into your everyday life as well.
Ellie