Why is Breathing while Working out Important?
Something I see far too often as a trainer.. People not breathing during their workouts!!
You Have to learn how to breathe while performing workouts.
But Why?
When you hold your breath you don’t get any oxygen. When you don’t take in oxygen blood doesn’t move as fast, stopping it from getting to your muscles. Your muscles then build up more lactic acid creating an even worsened burning sensation. Not breathing can also affect your heart and lead to other issues like getting a hernia.
So what are the benefits of controlling your breathing during your workouts?
- When you breathe you’ll actually build more stamina and be able to do more reps. By not breathing you’ll simply gas out faster.
- Lactic acid builds up. You know when you’re laughing really hard and your stomach is on fire? It’s because you’re not breathing! Lactic acid rushes to the muscle and the only way to release it is to get blood to the muscle. How do we get blood there faster? By breathing!!
- Breathing will improve your focus. When you’re not breathing it’s hard to focus on anything besides finishing the rep. When you’re breathing you can really focus and have that mind to muscle connection in order to activate the correct muscles.
How do I learn to breathe?
One thing I tell my clients is exhale on the “hard” part of the motion and inhale on the easy part. So for example, if we do a pull-up the hard part is pulling up. Therefore, we’d breath out on the way up and in on the way down for every rep. Another example is dips. Pushing up is the hard part right? So we’d breathe out on the way up, in on the way down.
Of course there are times when we are absolutely gassed and in order to get that last rep we hold our breath. That’s okay. As long as 99% of the time you’re breathing on each rep, you’re good and will have even better workouts!
Start learning to breathe on every rep!
You Got This!
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