Owner's Manual: Breathe Deeper, Breathe Better
Visualizing breathing patterns
By Peter Guare
As featured in the December 2006 issue of Running Times Magazine
A local newspaper where I live was running a Q&A bulletin board for athletes getting ready to run in the Freihofer’s Run for Women 5K last June. One of the questions was from a runner who noted how easily she gets out of breath. The answer she got, in part, was to breathe from her diaphragm. Good advice, but how does that happen? The same way any skill happens. Practice.
Diaphragmatic breathing allows you to maximize the pressure differential between your lungs and the atmosphere. You don’t suck air into your lungs; you create a partial vacuum and the outside air rushes in to equalize the pressure. To exhale you create greater pressure in your lungs and the air is forced out. By using your diaphragm you guarantee the most air in and the most air out, increasing the amount of oxygen getting to your muscles.
Most people, even runners, tend to be high chest breathers, as this is part of the stress response. We spend so much time stressing over (stupid) things that we condition our breathing, and breathing is one of the few things that we can do consciously or unconsciously. By using your chest muscles without your diaphragm, you don’t change the air in the lower third of your lungs.
To target your diaphragm while breathing, use what Optimal Breathing® Development Specialists (www.breathing.com) call the "squeeze and breathe technique." Place your hands at waist level, thumbs in the hollow of your back just above the hips, fingers extending around to the front. Squeeze your hands like you’re trying to pinch your fingers and thumb together and inhale into the area, trying to force them apart. That’s right, your stomach and back should go out on the inhale. Your lungs extend down farther in the back than they do in the front: we want 360-degree breathing. If you’re having trouble with the back thing, then lie down on your stomach, resting your forehead comfortably on your crossed arms. As you inhale slowly and deeply, try to expand your lower back. Visualizing helps. Stress-induced breathing patterns get conditioned very thoroughly. The good news is you can condition diaphragmatic breathing too.
Having mastered the diaphragm, move on to increasing chest expansion. Runners have an advantage here, as they do more deep breathing than the average desk jockey, and your breathing muscles are like any other muscle. Lie down comfortably on your back. Take a deep, easy four-second inhale — using the diaphragm, of course — and a complete, easy four-second exhale, then relax for four seconds while you hold your exhale. Do not hold your breath. That would introduce muscle tension and raise your blood pressure. Repeat the process. Repeat again, but this time hold your exhale for as long as comfortably possible, and then take a BIG easy inhale. By waiting to inhale, you raised the CO2 level in your blood so your body wants more O2 to maintain an optimum ratio. Breathe through your nose, on the inhale and exhale, which is how you should breathe anyway, when not maxed out in a race or during speedwork.
Practice easy deep breathing daily, then at your next race try to spend the first minute or so concentrating on it. You’ll be both efficient and relaxed. As we noted in passing, breathing patterns facilitate or defuse the stress response — and who couldn’t use a little less stress?