But that’s all just a starting point and if you are interested in really improving your breathing then you are going to need a proven framework to help you get there.

Luckily for you, I’ve put such a framework together – and it offers you so much more than any other breathing course I’ve found. In fact, it’s a Respiratory Revolution!

Throughout this series of articles, you’ve learned about the importance of the biomechanic of breathing. Now, you’ll often hear a lot being said about strengthening your diaphragm and using it better in your breathing, but you’ve learned there are a lot more muscles involved in breathing other than your diaphragm.

Almost no one else will teach you that though, or how to actually activate those breathing muscles and your diaphragm so you can even start to strengthen them. A very high percentage of the runners I see really struggle to get even the smallest amount of activation, so how are they supposed to strengthen them and move the rib cage well to allow your diaphragm to work in the way it’s intended?

Being able to create and maintain a strong and stable breathing cylinder with a well mobilised rib cage is a fundamental and critical element of functional breathing for running, whether you are able to transition to nose breathing or not.

I cannot emphasise enough just how important this is, and most breathing courses and systems I’ve found only give this a cursory mention at best: they are missing out a crucial aspect to helping you breathe better when you run.

Calm and relaxed, but left behind…

In addition, as good as they are (and there are some amazing courses and systems available) most breathing courses you’ll come across are designed for the opposite of what you need as a runner. They teach you breathing techniques for relaxation, calm, and keeping your carbon dioxide levels low or within a level. This is fantastic for helping to reduce anxiety and bring in a calm mindfulness, but it just doesn’t help you functionally as a runner. Yes, there are elements of calm and relaxation that you need to bring to your running, and you certainly do need relaxed and well-paced breathing. 

But the reality is that as the duration and intensity of your running increases, you build up carbon dioxide in your cells and blood. If you do not learn to tolerate these higher levels, you’ll always need to slow down and you always risk inducing a feeling of panic and paradoxical breathing. This is what makes my framework different:

Functional breathing designed specifically for running

So with that, here is what you’ll learn on the RunTeach Respiratory Revolution breathing course for runners:

The Respiratory Revolution is an 8-week course, with each module becoming available

each week so you have plenty of time to practise without feeling rushed. In fact, as the course is self-paced, if it takes you 16 weeks or 20 weeks to complete, that’s absolutely fine. Once you have access to the course you have it – there is no time limit. This means you can refer back to the lessons and supporting material whenever you like.

The topics covered in the course are built on the elements that you learned about in the quick guide and articles:

• The Biomechanics Of Breathing
• The Biochemistry Of Breathing
• The Neurology Of Breathing

The topic include:

• Course introduction
• Assessments and benchmark
• Why breathing skills are needed for running well
• What is dysfunctional breathing?
• Diaphragm mobility
• Diaphragm strengthening
• The muscles of inhalation
• The muscles of exhalation
• Why nose-breathe? Discovering the benefits
• Nasal decongestion
• Learn to nose breathe and avoid the panic of air hunger
• Running specific breathing background and techniques
• Breathing Challenges throughout the course to help you learn to breathe better, more quickly

Every module has practical exercises designed to help you improve your breathing right from week 1.

There are also supporting lessons taking you through topics to help you get the most out of the course. For example, do you panic if you hold your breath? Well, I include techniques to help you get over this so that you can take full advantage of the breathing challenges and exercises.

So if you are ready to take the next step on your breathing journey, you can find the course here.

If you would prefer to work with me on a 1-2-1 basis to improve your breathing or other aspects of your running, you can contact me here.

The post Pulling it all together – A framework for better breathing appeared first on RunTeach.

In this article you are going to find out a bit more about some of the chemistry involved in breathing, why it’s important for your breathing in general, but specifically how it can help you improve your running.

You may already know that when you breathe in you inhale oxygen (O2) and when you breathe out you exhale carbon dioxide (CO2). But how does this relate to efficient and functional breathing?

Well, the basic process is that when you inhale oxygen it eventually ends up in the small air sacs deep in the lungs called alveoli. The alveoli actually share a membrane with your capillaries, allowing the oxygen to diffuse across into the blood. From there it is pumped around the body to all of the tissues where it is used to help each cell survive and thrive. In terms of your running, the more oxygen that can be supplied to your working muscles and other tissues, the easier your running will be; also faster and longer. But that’s not the whole story as you’ll discover very soon, but first let’s briefly look at the exhalation process.

As the blood comes back around to the alveoli from being pumped around your body by your heart, it contains carbon dioxide that has been generated by your cells as part of their normal function of metabolism and put out into your blood. As the blood passes through those capillaries next to the alveoli, the carbon dioxide is diffused back across from the blood to the lungs. You then breathe it out as you exhale.

Energy Systems

When you run, irrespective of the intensity that you are running at, you are utilising three primary energy systems:

1. Your aerobic system.
2. Your lactate system, also known as your anaerobic system.
3. Your alactic system, sometimes known as your phosphocreatine system.

Your aerobic system uses oxygen and both glucose and fat to help your body’s muscles and other tissues keep you running. It becomes the dominant energy system when you are on your easy runs and the intensity is below your lactate threshold 1 level. The other two systems are still active, but much less so.

As your intensity increases, you begin to transition across your energy systems and your lactate system becomes more active. This system still uses glucose as fuel, but doesn’t use oxygen and doesn’t really use fat (it can but it’s so minor that common teaching is that it doesn’t). This transition zone that includes some upper aerobic system activity and some lactate system activity is where you are usually operating in when you are running a hard 5k and 10k, and in certain places during longer distances as the intensity increases at times. The skill with this transition zone, between lactate threshold 1 and lactate threshold 2 is balancing your effort so that you almost ‘surf the wave’ by keeping enough oxygen and fuel being supplied to your working muscles and the waste products of the cells from energy creation (lactate, CO2 etc) being removed and cleared (or reused in the case of lactate), with pushing hard enough to get the performance you want. This is a zone I like to refer to as the speed endurance zone.

The harder you push, the closer you get to lactate threshold 2 and the less oxygen is available for your working muscles. The waste products from the cells also can’t be cleared efficiently because your blood cannot move around your body fast enough. This basically puts you on a timer before your cells are unable to function as needed. For well trained runners, this timer is around 3 to 5 minutes. For the rest of us it can be a lot less.

For completeness, the energy system that is dominant when you are at your highest level of intensity (think of a 10 second all out, max intensity sprint) is your alactic system. This doesn’t need oxygen, glucose or fat, instead relying on an internal energy source. However, this internal energy source is like a flashbang in that it burns very brightly, but only for a few seconds. Typically, your alactic system can only function well for between 5 to 10 seconds depending on how well trained you are. If you are ever at a running track and watch sprinters training high intensity short sprints, you’ll notice that they take very long recoveries (sometimes 5+ minutes) between each rep. This is to allow that alactic system to fully recharge, otherwise the sprint will be done in the lactate system or even in the threshold or aerobic systems if the recovery is very short. While you will use your alactic system in your normal running (think of finish line sprints, overtaking etc), and you do need to train it, you won’t need to put as much emphasis on it as the other two systems.

So how does all of this relate to breathing? Let’s find out…

Running, O2 and CO2

As you’ve just learned, the higher the intensity of your running, the less efficient your system becomes at both getting oxygen to your body’s cells, and at removing the waste products such as carbon dioxide from your cells. In both cases, this will force you to slow down at the very least.

But for many runners this leads to panic and breathing difficulties. As you discovered in article 3, carbon dioxide is the chemical trigger for you to take a breath in. Because carbon dioxide builds up as your intensity increases, the trigger to breathe can get very strong very quickly. This can cause that feeling of panic and you start to gasp. Unfortunately, this more often than not will result in either hyperventilation or paradoxical breathing (where your breathing muscles are doing the opposite of what they should be). Neither situation is good and can result in your predictive brain learning that running hard is unsafe.

Now, you may think that taking in larger breaths, particularly through your mouth, will lead to more oxygen getting into your blood and out to your cells. Unfortunately it doesn’t really work like that. We’ll look at this more in the next article which is on nose breathing, but for now you just need to know that due to things like respiratory rate, dead space and a simple formula, more air and quicker breaths don’t equal more oxygen. For that, you need to learn to breathe more efficiently to get more oxygen exchanged, and to not react when you get those triggers to breathe in the way that you are currently doing.

One of the first steps of doing that is to increase your tolerance, or reduce your sensitivity, to the build up of carbon dioxide as the intensity of your running increases. In turn, this reduces the panic response, and while you may still have to slow down a bit, it is more controlled and you’ll be able to hold a higher intensity for longer. This is the hypercapnia training that I mentioned in article 3, and is all about training your system to tolerate lower levels of oxygen (hypoxia) and higher levels of carbon dioxide. To begin with this, let’s start with a simple exercise (this is the one from the ebook):

1. Take a slow breath in through your nose for a 4-count.
2. Exhale slowly for a 4-count and hold for a 4-count.
3. You may start to feel a small amount of air hunger near the end of the breath hold, but don’t worry if not.
4. Progress to holding that out-breath for a count of 5 then 6 then 7 to start to experience the feeling of air hunger. You may find it induces panic, in which case just dial it back.

There are many ways of progressing this exercise, and also several variations that I often use with my clients. The first one I start with is to do rounds of these breath holds like this:

1. Take a normal breath in through your nose and then a normal breath out through your nose and hold your nose.
2. Count to 5 and then take a normal breath in through your nose, trying not to gasp the air in, and then out through your nose.
3. Take another normal breath in through your nose and then a normal breath out through your nose and hold your nose.
4. Again, count to 5 and then take a normal breath in through your nose, trying not to gasp the air in, and then out through your nose.
5. Repeat this for a total of 5 breath holds.
6. Continue breathing through your nose for another 30 seconds to 1 minute depending on how much recovery you feel you need.
7. Complete three sets of the above.
8. Aim to do this several times a day for the next week until it becomes easy to do. Then reduce the two breaths between breath holds to just one breath.

With continued practice of all the exercises you’ve learned on the ebook and articles, you will be well on your way to reaping the rewards of more efficient and functional breathing.

In the next article you’ll learn about nose breathing and why it’s important in your life in general, but also why it’s vital to start building it into some of your running.

The post The Biochemistry Of Breathing appeared first on RunTeach.

You can expand on this exercise with a variation that encourages the mindfulness to be even more deliberate. It’s a version of box breathing but the inhale, hold, exhale, hold are not all the same length of time: more like rectangular breathing, but I don’t think that’s a thing… 

Anyway, you can progress the holds so they are longer, but I find most people like to start with shorter breath holds and go from there. So, let’s have a look at the exercise and then we can look at other aspects of how the brain is influenced by your breathing but also how the brain itself can impact upon your breathing.

Paced Breathing Practice

1. Find a comfortable position, seated or standing.
2. Breathe in for a 4-count through your nose and hold for 1 second.
3. Exhale slowly for a count of 4 and hold for 1 second.
4. Continue the pattern of in for 4, hold for 1, out for 4, hold for 1.
5. Aim to evenly pace your breathing across the 4-count of both the inhale and exhale.
6. Repeat for 1 to 2 minutes, allowing yourself to relax into the exercise and avoid becoming tense or trying too hard.
7. When you are ready, you can progress in three different ways:
   1. Extend the holds so you end up with in for 4, hold for 4, out for 4, hold for 4.
   2. Extend the inhale and exhale counts to 5, eventually progressing the holds to a 5-count.
   3. Change the inhale to a 4-count with a 1 second hold and the exhale to a 6-count with a 1 second hold.

Each of these progressions is designed to encourage even paced breathing and build your confidence with slightly longer breath holds.

Up to a point, this and similar exercises help to calm your sympathetic nervous system and are great for bringing you into the current moment. However, if you have some form of breathing challenge including dysfunctional breathing, holding your breath or even trying to pace your breathing for any length of time actually becomes a threat to your brain and this can cause panic and anxiety.

You may notice this panic feeling when you are out for a run and are pushing hard. All of a sudden you feel you can’t breathe properly and you start to panic. This is called paradoxical breathing and is where your breathing muscles are now operating almost in reverse to your inhalations and exhalations: essentially, your chest expands on the out breath instead of the in breath. Learning how to pace your breathing with the exercise above is a great start, but there is often more to it than that.

The brain with its nerves and blood supply

The Brain’s Influence On Your Breathing

Your brain is a prediction engine, using your past experiences, knowledge and learnings to predict what’s going to happen in any given moment. Actually, it makes its predictions and actually puts actions into motion a fraction of a second before you are even consciously aware of it. These predictions involve how you react to what’s going on around and inside you, all of the time. Your thoughts, actions, movements and feelings (including emotions) are all shaped by these predictions. And all of those things feed back in to help shape your predictions for future reference.

Ultimately, your brain’s number one job is your survival.

It uses your current predictive models to do what it can to ensure that you get through every day without dying or being fatally injured. Sometimes this means it needs to take drastic action like producing an experience of pain, panic, anxiety, fatigue and other outcomes we would interpret as being undesirable. These are simply your brain’s way of reducing or avoiding what it perceives to be a threatening situation, even if it has got it wrong – this does happen which often leads to chronic pain conditions and other health challenges, both mental and with physical manifestations.

So, one of the reasons I always begin teaching efficient and functional breathing by becoming aware of the muscles of breathing and mobilising the rib cage, is that it helps to build more helpful predictive models around how you breathe in different situations. If your brain knows how to move your rib cage in a way that can create more space for your lungs to do their job, and knows that you have good activation and relaxation of the muscles involved, it is more likely to trust that you’ll be safe. In terms of your breathing, this means your brain is less likely to go into a panic state because it knows how to breathe under load.

Brain-safety is super important and part of the reason that you may get panicky when you do longer breath holds, particularly if you’ve just exhaled, is because your brain feels unsafe and doesn’t know when more oxygen will be available: no oxygen = eventual death.

But this prediction isn’t just based on a mechanical trigger, although one of those does exist. Actually, it’s not a mechanical trigger, it’s a chemical one. The longer you hold your breath, the more you will get a build up of carbon dioxide, and this happens more quickly after an exhale breath hold and even more so if you are moving. High levels of carbon dioxide build up in the blood is a condition known as hypercapnia, and this usually triggers your diaphragm to take an in-breath. If you try holding your breath for a long time you will feel your diaphragm starting to activate and it’s very hard to to override, if not impossible.

While hypercapnia training is a very important part of how I teach more efficient and functional breathing, especially for runners and active people, it’s introduced gradually and I always take into account the other reasons that can bring on panic during breath holds.

Remember that the brain is a prediction engine? Well, your predictive models are being shaped continually: every experience in every moment is influencing your predictive models and therefore helping to create how you react in future moments. Perhaps at some point in your life you had an unpleasant or unhelpful experience related to being out of breath. Maybe it wasn’t even you and it was a family member, friend or even just someone you observed. It could even have been a movie you watched, an article you read, something someone told you or something you experienced, read or watched online. All of these things shape your predictive models, and if there was something in there somewhere that caused your brain to believe, rightly or wrongly, that being without oxygen even for a short time would be unsafe, then it’s not going to let you do that.

As soon as you get into a situation where the carbon dioxide build up is even remotely triggering a lack of oxygen, your brain predicts the worst and literally hits the panic button. If you are out running at the time, this may result in you needing to stop or slow right down and reset your breathing. 

And to add to the complexity, because your brain is predicting just ahead of your conscious awareness, other situations where your brain feels unsafe can trigger the same reaction before you have any conscious control. For example, have you ever felt fear and your breathing has gone into a panic state as a result? How about embarrassment triggering the same thing? All of these things can be perceived as threatening and your brain is using panic breathing to warn you to change something – most often it’s to warn you to get out of the threatening situation.

Phew! So, the difference between how I teach people to improve their breathing and the way most other courses and instructors teach it, is that I also take into account the neuromechanics (or neuro-biomechanics) and the neurology and the role that your brain plays in your breathing. I teach extra exercises that may appear to have nothing to do with breathing (such as tongue exercises) but help your brain to feel safe by stimulating specific nerves and neural and spinal pathways. By first teaching you how to move well and use your breathing muscles, you are creating improved brain-body mapping and building more helpful predictive models. These in turn help your brain to feel safe so it can get on with learning how to breathe well. This can often be a challenging concept, but it’s firmly rooted in science and has proven to be highly effective.

Conclusion

This article is certainly more in-depth than the first two, but the role of your brain and nervous system in your breathing is so important it requires you to appreciate the importance of working with them in order to quickly and efficiently improve your breathing. Just spending time on standard breathing exercises doesn’t cut it in my book. It will usually take a long time to get good at breathing and more often than not you’ll give up before you see the real results and benefits.

So, you can influence your brain by how you breathe: efficient and functional breathing helps your brain feel safe and can reduce panic and anxiety, and also helps to improve your performance and overall well being. All of this helps to build more helpful predictive models for future reference.

And, your brain can also directly impact how you breathe and the quality of your breathing – I’m sure you’ve spotted the circular feedforward loop in there where one feeds into the other. 

To achieve efficient and functional breathing when running, and in the rest of your life, you need to help your brain feel safe and this involves training it in complementary ways and providing it with the most helpful predictive models you can.

In the next article we’ll look in more detail at carbon dioxide and the biochemistry of breathing.

The post The Neuromechanics Of Breathing – The Role Your Brain Plays appeared first on RunTeach.

You can find the first supporting article on the Muscles of Inhalation here.

As a reminder, we look at the biomechanics of breathing, we really need to be looking at:

1. The muscles of inhalation
2. The muscles of exhalation
3. The skeletal components such as your rib cage
4. The integration and control of all of the above, and you ability to effectively use them under different conditions

This article takes a brief look at the muscles of exhalation.

Exhalation

Exhalation, or breathing out, involves a number of muscles including:

Some of the muscles of exhalation

As with inhalation, exhalation involves a lot of muscles that need to contract to help change the size and shape of the breathing cylinder. As important though, and often overlooked, is the ability of all of these muscles to relax.

For the rib cage to expand up and outwards during inhalation, the muscles of exhalation need to be in a relaxed state to allow this to happen. Equally, for your rib cage to come down and in, the muscles of inhalation need to relax.

It is this coordination of tense/release that allows fluid movement of the breathing cylinder, helping to form the foundation of efficient and functional breathing. It is always my starting point when working on improving someone’s breathing, as even if they don’t get some of the other techniques right away, I know they will have good quality movement in this area.

High quality movement is amazing for reducing the overall threat that your brain experiences in every moment of every day. And given that you can only handle a certain amount of threat before you begin to experience undesirable outputs such as pain, panic, anxiety, fatigue and a whole host of other stuff, deliberately practising high quality movement throughout your body is an essential element of achieving and maintaining a high level of health and wellbeing.

To experience the muscles of exhalation, you can use the same exercise from the first article (see below) as it is a fantastic awareness exercise. Just shift your focus to the exhalation aspect, making relaxation a deliberate action. This can seem a bit strange at first as focussing internally can result in more tension in your muscles. One way to get around this is to close your eyes and imagine the contraction of some of the muscles of exhalation while also allowing a smooth relaxation to occur. This takes a bit of practice but is worth doing. 

This is also a fantastic mindfulness exercise that can help calm and settle you.

1. Stand or sit with your back straight, shoulders relaxed.
2. You may find that lying on your back can be a useful position for this version of the exercise.
3. Place your hands around the base of your ribs.
4. Inhale slowly through your nose.
5. Exhale slowly, feeling your ribs come down and in, reducing the size and shape of your breathing cylinder. 
6. Repeat the exercise a number of times to get a good idea of how well you are activating and relaxing the muscles that help your rib cage to change shape and position.
7. Do you notice a difference between your right side and your left?

Now change the position of your hands so that they are half way up your rib cage and repeat the deep, slow exhalations. Do you feel your rib cage moving at this level?

Now move your hands to your upper ribs, just below your collar bones. Repeat the inhalations and observe how well your rib cage is moving.

What’s Next?

Take some time to practise both versions of the awareness exercise: inhalation and exhalation. Doing this daily is a great way to add some mindfulness while at the same time bringing in body awareness. It’s absolutely fine if you can’t move smoothly at the moment as it takes some deliberate practice and good coordination between relaxation and contraction.

And this coordination skill is the subject of the next article as we look at the role of neuromechanics and your brain in helping you to breathe better and more efficiently.

The post The Biomechanics Of Breathing – Muscles Of Exhalation appeared first on RunTeach.

Can The Weather Affect How I Breathe?

I wrote a post on breathing and running here, and as part of my research into it I couldn’t avoid finding out all about how weather can affect our breathing.

I separated out the content as it really is a full post in itself. I trust you will find it useful.

It also inspired me to become an advanced breathing instructor and write my own breathing course, which you can find here.

Hot Weather

The truth is, we don’t really know why hot weather makes it hard for some of us to breathe, but here are some of the theories:

• Inhaling warmer air can cause our airways to narrow and this can trigger coughing and shortness of breath. This is known as a bronchospasm and causes inflammation in the airways making it harder to breathe.
  
• Hot weather can increase the amount of pollutants and mould in the air.
  
• Hot weather and the summer season can increase the pollen count. Currently, much of the UK is experience extremely high/severe levels of pollen.
  
• Your body is using more energy to maintain body temperature, so there is less energy for breathing. If you suffer from a breathing illness, you already require a higher energy resource just maintain stable breathing, so this starts to suffer. We become less efficient at adapting to higher air temperatures as we age, so we may suffer more breathing issues as we get older.

Some of the suggestions that may help in hot weather:

• Keep cool to preserve more energy for breathing. Some strategies are:
  • Apply a high factor sunscreen.
  • Splash yourself with cool/cold water at regular intervals, especially on the back of your neck.
    
• Avoid exercises between 11:00 and 15:00 as that tends to be the hottest part of the day.
  
• If applicable, keep taking your medication as prescribed.
  
• Drink at least eight glasses of water per day, and eat more cold food. Fruit and salads are a good choice as they contain water and contribute to your hydration.
  
• If required, add some electrolytes into your water to avoid over-hydration on plain water. We lose electrolytes when we sweat, but we ordinarily replace these through our normal diet. However, during excess sweating, under stress or diarrhoea or vomiting , we may lose more than we replace. In addition, if we are drinking large volumes of plain water, we are diluting the electrolytes in our system. In these cases, it is important to take additional electrolytes. There are numerous electrolyte products on the market and it may take some experimentation to get it right.

Thunderstorms / Air Pressure Changes

Again, why thunderstorms affect our breathing is not fully understood. Some theories are:

• The higher humidity breaks up pollen, mould and other pollutants into smaller pieces. As we breathe these smaller pieces in, they go further into our airways and irritate them. If it is windy, these are then blown about more than usual so the effect can be greater.
  
• Changes in air pressure can make it more difficult to breathe. Usually, the pressure inside our lungs is lower than the pressure in the outside air. As air moves more easily from an area of higher pressure to an area of lower pressure, getting air into our lungs in our usual environment is fine. However, a slight pressure drop in the outside atmosphere, and it can become harder to fill pour lungs, as we have to work our diaphragm and lungs harder. The extra effort is felt much more if we suffer from a respiratory condition.

Most of the advice for dealing with thunderstorms in relation to breathing, is to keep an eye on the weather forecast and stay indoors if possible. Other suggestions include:

• Avoid exercising during a thunderstorm.
  
• Avoid other respiratory condition triggers such as alcohol and stress.
  
• Change and wash your clothes as soon as you can so that you wash away the pollen and other pollutants.

Cold Weather

Cold weather issues seem to be better understood, and according to Asthma UK, some of the reasons are:

• As we inhale cold or damp air, it causes our airways to spasm. This in turn can cause wheezing, coughing and shortness of breath.
  
• There is also an increase in mould spores  in damp and cold conditions, and these can trigger breathing problems.

Some the tips that Asthma UK suggest include:

• Wrap a scarf loosely around your mouth and nose. This will help to warm the air up before you breathe it in.
  
• Breathe in through your nose rather than your mouth. This also helps to warm up the air.

Conclusion

It is clear that weather and changes in atmospheric conditions can affect our breathing, whether we are running or not. I just need to listen to the people around me to hear how they are suffering in the current heatwave.

There are some practical tips above when it comes to general breathing difficulties from weather conditions, but when you add in running and other exercise, the challenge can become much greater.

Some of the runners I know have taken to running on a treadmill to avoid the pollen and other pollutants outside. This works great for many runners, but not everyone has access to a gym or a treadmill at home. If this is the case for you, you could try:

• Hot Weather
  • Running early morning to avoid the heat
  • Choosing an alternative route that provides shade
  • Choosing a route that has a potentially lower exposure to pollen
  • Taking a cooling buff or similar, so you can keep the back of your neck cool. I know runners who choose a route with water stops (or a clean river) where they can splash water on themselves or soak the cooling buff to use while running
    
• Thunderstorms
  • Avoid running in thunderstorms
    
• Cold Weather
  • Although perhaps harder to do while running, loosely wrap a thin scarf or buff over your nose and mouth to help warm the air
  • Practice nose only breathing. Although challenging, it is a recognised technique to train the diaphragm and lungs. The added benefit in cold weather is that it will warm the air before breathing in

In all conditions, you may also have to accept that you may not be able to run as far or as fast as you would like. Adapt your session/training plan to accommodate the weather conditions.

You can also take a look at my breathing course which you can find here.

Chris O’Brien
RunTeach Founder

The post Why does the weather affect my breathing when running? appeared first on RunTeach.

With the glorious weather we have been having in the UK over the past few months, many of us have been experiencing breathing issues when we are running. Looking at breathing through a wider lens, I often see questions being asked about breathing patterns for running and if there is a correct way to breathe to be more efficient and perform better.

Please remember that none of this information is intended to be medical advice. You should always seek professional medical advice and/or attention from a qualified medical professional if you suffer from breathing difficulties.

Writing about breathing inspired me to train as an advanced breathing instructor so I could help runners in more ways. This in turn led me to creating what I believe is one of the most robust ways for you to improve your breathing and therefore reach your running goals easier. You can find out more here.

Separation

First off, I want to separate out breathing related to weather and breathing directly related to activity. Breathing related to weather can affect us even if we are not running or otherwise being active, however any issues we experience can be amplified with activity intensity and duration.

Breathing problems also tend to be worse if we already have a respiratory condition such as asthma or COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease). According to the NHS, some 900,000 people in the UK suffer from COPD.

I deal specifically with weather and breathing in a separate post that you can find here.

Breathing and running

What does breathing do for us when we run?

This may at first seem like an odd question as we all know that we need to breathe to stay alive. But if we look specifically at running, what is happening that makes it so important to sort our breathing out?

Well, when we breathe we take in oxygen. This oxygen is taken by our blood to the working muscles. The majority of the energy that our muscles need when we run is generated using an aerobic process. This aerobic process requires fuel (such as glucose/carbohydrate) and oxygen. Without oxygen, the energy for our muscles cannot be made for more than a few minutes. So from this one point alone, breathing is pretty important!

Don’t We All Breathe When We Run?

I hope So! But there are efficient ways to breathe and inefficient ways to breathe. In fact, there is quite a lot of different opinion on how we should breathe to get the most out of our running. For example, let’s take patterns of breathing…

Breathing Patterns

Some of the popular breathing patterns are:

2-2, 3-3,  4-4

These are even patterns, where we breath in for the required number of strides, and breath out for the same number of strides. For example, the 2-2 pattern dictates that we breathe in for two strides and then out for two strides.

Some coaches and sports scientists argue that a breathing pattern based around an even number of strides for an in-breath and an ou-breath is the most efficient. They state that it fits most neatly with the running rhythm and our arm swing. It may also be easier to adopt than a pattern based around an odd number of strides.

3-2, 2-3

The argument against the even patterns is that we are always taking the in-breath when the same foot is starting it’s stride. It is argued that this puts more emphasis on the same leg with each breath and therefore could lead to us landing ever so slightly heavier on it as we start our count. However, there is not actually any research or evidence to back this up, and at the time of writing this post it is pure conjecture by those who promote an uneven breathing pattern.

That said, uneven breathing patterns seem to be just as effective as even ones and there is no reason to avoid them.

You may have noticed both 3-2 and 2-3. This indicates more of an emphasis on the in-breath (3-2) or more of an emphasis on the out-breath (2-3): clearly this depends whether you start on an in-breath or an out-breath! But, the point is, with an uneven breathing pattern there is more of an emphasis either in or out, and this is another point of disagreement as to which is better.

Given that the air pressure in our lungs is lower than the outside air pressure when we breathe out, it makes logical sense to emphasise the out-breath. This lowers the inside air pressure further, and creates more room for a higher volume of air in our in-breath. As air moves from areas of high pressure to low pressure, this could make taking in more air easier.

Add to this the fact that we can only emphasise the in-breath for so long (due to finite lung capacity) before we have to take a reset breath and start again, and the logic of emphasising the out-breath makes even more sense.

The Best Breathing Pattern

Ultimately, the best breathing pattern is the one that works for YOU. So, it is definitely worth giving them all a go to see which one you find the most efficient. You may find that you use different patterns depending on the pace and intensity of your running.

Agreement

While there is certainly disagreement on the best breathing pattern to use, there seems to be universal agreement on the style of breathing. Everyone agrees that deep belly (or diaphragmatic) breathing is far superior to chest breathing.

Chest Breathing

Chest breathing, where we breath from our upper chest or even our mid-chest, is too shallow to provide us with the oxygen we need for running. We need to be inhaling a larger volume of air so the we not only take in more oxygen, but are better able to control the rate of our breathing – especially as the intensity of our exercise increases.

Chest breathing is also thought to contribute to us getting a stitch while running, and can lead to very rapid breathing as we fight to get in enough oxygen. This is turn will slow our running down and can leave us short of breath and feeling like we just aren’t very fit. But, change how you breath, and you could well change that perception.

Deep Belly Breathing

Deep belly breathing works by using the diaphragm more fully to regulate our breathing. We are able to inhale a far larger volume  of air, and this also means we can control the rate of breathing far better. At the very least, we have the flexibility of being able to take large breaths to reset any rapid increase in breathing rate.

Deep belly breathing involves your belly rising on the in-breath and falling on the out breath. When practicing, we try and keep the chest as still as possible.

To practice deep belly breathing:

• • Lie on the floor on your back

• • Place one hand on your belly and the other on your chest

• • As you breath in, allow your belly to rise as you consciously use your diaphragm to breathe

• Keep your chest as still as possible

Once you have mastered this lying down, practice it standing up. Once you are an expert while standing, move to walking and running.

You may find that you need to take a reset breath every now and again while you practice, and it’s fine to go back to your old breathing pattern if you get tired. Build up the new pattern until you can run using more of a deep belly style than a shallow chest style. In reality, it would be quite hard to run with your belly coming in and out all the time. But, the conscious practice should mean that you are taking deeper and more efficient breaths without thinking about it.

Strengthening Your Breathing

There are some mechanical devices available that are designed to help people for all kinds of sports and activities to strengthen their breathing. Three of these are:

UltraBreathe	PowerBreathe	RespiBelt

Besides the mechanical devices above, there are a whole host of breathing exercises that can help strengthen your breathing. Many of the exercises are for asthma or COPD sufferers, but are great for general strengthening as well. Pilates, in particular, has some great exercises to help with breathing such as:

• The Hundred

• The Swan

As simple Internet search will pull up examples of these and lots of other breathing exercises.

Nose Breathing

One way that we can add a bit of resistance to our breathing while running, and therefore strengthen things up a bit, is to use a technique known as nose breathing.

And yes, it really is as simple as it sounds. You literally close your mouth and breathe through your nose. But, as simple as it sounds, it can be challenging to do while running. You have have to slow your pace down a bit while you practice. You can build it into your training sessions like this:

• First 5 minutes and last 5 minutes of your sessions

• Build up from that: 10, 12, 15 minutes at the start and end of your sessions

• It will be uncomfortable, but will also force deeper breathing. Use Deep Belly Breathing.

Other Tips

One of the techniques that I use to calm my breathing down while running, is to use the tip of the tongue trigger. This has the added benefit of reducing your heart rate, so is great for recovering between intervals or when you’ve put a big effort in to get up a hill or fly past another runner.

The technique is very simple and involves you placing the tip of your tongue behind the top row of front teeth, about where the gum line is. Hold it there and you will notice both your breathing and heart rate start to reduce.

You can deepen the calming effect by anchoring it during meditation. For example, sit and relax for 5 to 15 minutes. Become very, very relaxed, and then activate the tip of the tongue trigger. Hold it for 10 to 20 seconds and release. Take some deep breaths and again become very relaxed. Activate the tip of the tongue trigger again for 10 to 20 seconds. Repeat once or twice more. You have now anchored a deeper sense of calm and relaxation to the trigger, so when you activate it when running (or at any other time), your mind and body knows it’s time to calm things down.

The great things about this is that you can calm down your heart rate and breathing while maintaining your running pace, or dropping it only slightly. Definitely one worth practicing!

Visualisation is also another fantastic technique to help regulate breathing. If you find you are reverting back to chest breathing, or your rate of breathing is too fast, see in your mind’s eye your lungs taking control and taking deeper breaths. Combine this with visualising your heart rate lowering and you can regain control quite quickly. Again, practice with this technique means that you can do this without altering your running pace too much.

The final tip I have from is recovering between intervals. I find that very slow jogging (even almost on the spot) helps to regulate my breathing much quicker than staying still or even walking. You don’t need to jog the entire recovery, just enough to get control of your breathing.

All of this, and much more, is included the my Respiratory Revolution approach to getting control of your breathing while running. You can find it here.

Well, that’s all for this post. I trust you found it useful – happy breathing!

Chris O’Brien
RunTeach Founder

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