Breathe - Ability Part I, The Knowledge
One of the best tools available to you on the road to better fitness is right under your nose. You’ve had it your whole life, and it will be with you until the end. That is, your ability to breathe. Over the next two articles, I’m going to cover what you can do to improve your Breathe-Ability. And hopefully you’ll come away with a solid understanding of how you can use your breath to perform, recover and relax better.
Disclaimer. If you have any cardiovascular conditions (arrythmia, hypertension etc.) Consult with your doctor before performing any of the described exercises.
Breathing is a bit of a hot topic these days. It might seem new, but Yogi’s and martial artists have known about the benefits or rather necessity of proper breathing for centuries. Not just in the context of the movement itself, transferring air into and out of your lungs, but breathing as a part of everyday movement and exercise. Meaning it’s not considered a separate thing. How you breathe is how you move and vice versa. Which results in better strength, performance, peace of mind and overall health.
Good news is, if you want to achieve such results you don’t have to become a yogi or a black belt in Wing Chun. Unless of course that’s your goal. In which case nothing I’m about to tell you will be of more benefit than going through that process of becoming – fill in the blank. To quote my soon to be 3-year-old daughter, “Do that!”
But if you’re not on that Ip Man path, listen up. I’m going to share some things that will greatly improve how you breathe which will translate into better results from your training, both strength and cardiovascular. Also, it will help you to better manage the stress of everyday life.
“Knowledge without action is wastefulness and action without knowledge is foolishness.” -Al-Ghazali
Some Knowledge
First, let’s break breathing down into three elements.
Fig 1 The neuromuscular pump. Image courtesy of Complete Anatomy
1. Biomechanical. Which refers to the neuromuscular pump. This involves the action of moving air in and out of your lungs. It includes three groups of respiratory muscles: the diaphragm, the rib cage muscles and the abdominal muscles. Together, they move air in and out of your lungs, expand your ribcage and aid in spine stabilization.
2. Biochemical. Which refers to the exchange of gas, of which are two types.
A. In your lungs. External Respiration - Oxygen(O2) in. Carbon dioxide (CO2) out.
B. In your cells. Cellular Respiration - O2 + Glucose in. CO2 + H2O + ATP out.
External Respiration includes nose and nasal cavity, sinuses, mouth throat, lungs, bronchial tubes/bronchi, bronchioles, air sacs (alveoli) and capillaries. They process the incoming air. Cellular Respiration is the metabolic pathway that breaks down glucose and produces ATP (energy). Either with O2 (aerobic) or without O2 (anerobic).
3. Psychophysiological refers to the regulation of emotional and mental states. There’s a bi-directional influence between The Psychophysiological << >> Biomechanical & Biochemical. Meaning how you feel will influence your breathing and vice versa.
Fig. 2 Trachea, bronchial tubes, lung diaphragm. Image courtesy of Complete Anatomy
Now let’s look at The Biomechanical Element. When you take an inhalation, ideally, your diaphragm should be doing the brunt of the work. Contracting and pulling down on your lungs drawing air in through your nostrils. Think of your diaphragm like pulling the plunger on a syringe. Rib elevation and expansion is next. As you can see from Fig. 1, your lungs are walled behind your ribcage. For a full inhalation, rib elevation and expansion (excursion) is necessary to allow your lungs to fill. Not to just draw air down, but down and out.
At rest, like while you’re lounging on the sofa reading this, your inhalation is active, and exhalation is passive. Meaning you just stop inhaling and let the air fall out. Ideally.
Things change a little bit during exercise. The inhalation remains active, but the exhalation becomes active as well. You have to force some of that old air out of your bronchial tubes and trachea to allow for new fresh air in. Because during exercise or any physical activity your breathing rate increases as well as your need for oxygen. The passive exhalation strategy that works well for when your passive, doesn’t cut it during exercise because you’d be left rebreathing much of the same air that has already been several times over scrubbed of oxygen. Ideally.
Beyond using air for the function of filling your lungs for that much needed gas exchange. You use it to assist in stabilizing your spine so you can lift heavy things, well and safely! This is done by creating intrabdominal and intrathoracic pressure. Holding a fresh inhalation hostage. Aka the Valsalva maneuver. Which is forcing an exhalation after a moderately large inhalation. But not letting that inhalation out. This allows you to brace your spine which signals your brain that you’re stable, allowing the lift. Ideally.
Ideally these things would be happening naturally. Unfortunately, for most modern folk, it’s not the case. The need to do anything more physical on a daily basis than opening a car door is a distant memory for most of us. That is, outside of regular exercise. Which is typically confined to one hour of the day 3-5 times a week, if at all. The body will adapt to what it’s doing most frequently. Couple that with stress responses that are not satisfied or don’t end in a physical resolution, and a daily posture that reinforce poor breathing, you’re pigeonholed into breathing strategies that aren’t ideal for physical activity or simply relaxing. More on what to do about it later.
The Biochemical Element
Fig. 3 Alveoli Image courtesy of Complete Anatomy
So, what’s happening in between inhalations and exhalations? The gas exchange of Oxygen and Carbon Dioxide. At the end of your bronchial tubes are your alveoli. In these alveoli of yours are capillaries (blood vessels). These capillaries are carrying blood that was pumped back from circulation via your pulmonary vein. Blood that contains carbon dioxide. The carbon dioxide passes through the capillary wall into the alveoli. While the capillary takes up the oxygen from air in the alveoli shuttling it into circulation via your pulmonary artery. An easy way to think of this is to think of O2 and CO2 as shift workers. CO2 is clocking out and taking the next exhalation outta dodge. While O2 is arriving on the inhalation express.
Fig. 4 Muscle Fiber - Mitochondria in blue. Image courtesy of Complete Anatomy
Where’s this O2 headed? To every cell in your body that needs oxygen. But for our purposes, and my expertise, we’ll stick to the fitness realm. Another exchange happens on the cellular level in your muscle fibers mitochondria. The O2 arrives bound to hemoglobin in your blood cells delivering O2 to your mitochondria so it can generate more ATP (adenosine triphosphate). One of the “waste” products from the ATP generation is CO2. Which diffuses through the cell membrane and back into the blood stream of which some will be carried out on your next exhalation. Waste is in quotes because CO2 is not all junk!
Yale Applied Physiology Professor, Yandell Henderson, PhD (1873-1944), noted "Carbon dioxide is the chief hormone of the entire body; it is the only one that is produced by every tissue and that probably acts on every organ." CO2 is not the problem, in fact CO2 is the solution in a lot of situations. For one, it’s needed to get enough oxygen into an active muscle fiber! To do this your CO2 level needs to reach 40 mm Hg of pressure. This reduces your blood pH(alkali), which allows the oxygen bound to hemoglobin to be released to your muscle cell. The Bohr Effect.
CO2 also has a calming effect on your nervous system, helping to get you into a parasympathetic state. (Necessary for recovery). And improves blood flow, as it causes your blood vessels to dilate allowing more blood to flow freely. But don’t get it twisted, too much CO2, like too much of anything can be harmful. So don’t go huffing car exhaust to unwind! There’s a better way, stay with me.
The Psychophysiological Element
How your breathing affects your mental state, and your mental state affects your breathing. The stress response, if you remember from last week’s article, can be brought on by a thought or physical activity and your body will react just about the same. This is normal, this is a valuable feature ingrained in our nervous system because of the principle of, better safe than sorry. If you’re in the woods, it’s better to mistake a squirrel for a bear than a bear for a squirrel.
One of the feeds from the biomechanical element is the expansion of your upper chest during breathing. When breathing shallow (air only reaching upper portion of lungs), it triggers panic receptors, queuing your brain that it’s go time. That is if a thought or a valid threat didn’t initialize the response. In the latter case, there’s a path to resolution. Think happy thoughts, or the threats gone. The former keeps you in a partially heightened state for no good reason.
Another feed from the biochemical element is twofold. How our bodies react to O2 and CO2. I’ve already mentioned how CO2 has a calming effect on your nervous system. O2 has the opposite, excitatory. Which again is valuable. Getting rapid fresh hits of O2 is a must when it’s time to get, gettin from a deadstart.
Captain Carbon
To Be Continued…
That’s it for this week. Next week I’ll tie all this together and give you some breathing exercises to practice. Both stand alone and with your training that will help you to breathe, perform, recover and relax better.
But before you go, a test. How long can you hold your breath?
You’ll need a timer or a stopwatch. Sit upright, comfortably and breathe normally. Cycle 5 normal breaths (inhale/exhale). Nothing excessive. On the 5th breath, exhale normally. Pinch off your nose, hold your breath and start the timer. Hold until you have the first clear reflex to take the next inhalation. Pay attention to your stomach and chest. You’ll feel a twitch of sorts. Stop the timer, breathe and record your time. You’ll find out what to do with this info next week.
Happy Sunday!
Coach Adam