What is the Best way to breathe during Exercise?

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The issue on breathing is it is partially voluntary control by you, so you can detect when you breathe.


The best way to breathe during exercise is not to try too hard to control it because when you try and manually sort to take over and start to think you can take big breath over and over, you may start to get what is called the dysfunctional breathing pattern because you get out of sync with the natural breathing pattern that the body is trying to create. 


There is lot of what we call chemo receptors around the body that will detect when our muscles are working hard, it will detect that you are producing may be a little bit C02 because you are walking a little bit harder and that will send messages to your respiratory center which will increase your breathing frequency and the depth of the breath.

Why should I breathe through my nose when exercising? 

If you breathe in through your nose you can humidify the air and you can also reduce the nasty stuff that gets into your lungs so things like pollutants and allergens you can filter them out.

Why do people groan during exercise? 

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People typically groan when they are trying to lift really heavy weight and it has to do with something call the valsalva maneuver.


What happens when you are lifting weight is that you close up your gluteus – the area where your vocal cords are, you end up trying to blow out against a close gluteus.


Now with the groaning what is actually happening is some of the air is actually escaping so that’s what you hear with the groaning sound.


The reason people might do that valsalva maneuver is because by doing so, they can actually increase their stability so theoretically is easy or more stable to lift heavy weight.


Another reason why people may groin or shout is that it is thought that will somehow allow you to recruit more muscles or it could reduce the inhibitory input that occur so that’s the reason why people might make some noise but that’s controversial.

What happened if you don’t breathe during exercise?

No breathing during exercise can actually make you light headed   because you reduce the amount of blood going back to your heart and you reduce the amount of blood being pump out by the heart and you are then at risk of a black out.

Are there any reasons why our gym instructors tell us to breathe through our nose?

Doing exercises at the gym like weigh training you are told to breathe in through your noise and out through
your mouth.


Most of us just follow these instructions without asking why.


There is a reason why ideally when you are breathing in you want to breathe in through your nose.


Now the problem with that is your noise is quite small and you can get a lot of air through your nose.


So as soon as you start working hard or even slightly hard like doing a light jug,   you need to breathe in through your mouth because you simply can get as much air as you need into your body via your nose. 


The other advantage they tell you to breathe through your nose is that you are much likely to take deeper breath which really contract your diaphragm and deeper breath are more efficient because when you breathe in not all of the air that you breathe in makes its way into your lungs, so where the oxygen is transferred across your blood take place in your alveoli.

Is breathing out as important as breathing in when exercising? 

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Breathing out is very important because when we breath out we are breathing out our waste products of carbon dioxide.


The body finally regulates the amount of carbon dioxide in the body and what is doesn’t want to do is get rid of all the carbon dioxide because what actually happen is the actual pH of the blood start to rise and you may start to have knock on effects, sinking effects and blood floor to the brain.

Breathing slowly and deeply versus breathing shallow and fast during exercise

Some of the air you breathe in roughly around 150mils will get stuck in your nose, mouth and breathing passages, and there is nothing you can do about that.


Now if you do a short sharp breath, a larger proportion of your breath is getting stuck in that death space roughly around 150mils.


So if you take a bigger deep breath that means more air is making its way to the alveoli where that gassy exchange takes place.


So breathing slow and deep rather than shallow and fast is a more efficient way of getting oxygen flowing around your body.


You can breathe just as deeply through your mouth but inhaling through your nose can really help you concentrate on getting those deep breaths in.

Why do we have to pay attention during exercise of how we are breathing? 

When exercising, a lot of people want to work hard and breathe really fast to get more oxygen in but actually, if you are breathing really shallow and really fast for the activity or exercise that you are doing that’s going to mean that you breathe off to much carbon dioxide and that’s going to lead to sensations of dizziness and if you keep going you might end up passing out.

How you should breathe out through your mouth when exercising 

Okay I know this sounds controversial base on all what I have being saying so far. 


But a lot of people chose to breathe out through their mouth because you can manipulate the air flow a little bit more and it comes down to more like personal preference.


One of the main things to think about when breathing out is try not to just doom the air out as fast as you can because what usually happens is when you doom the air out suddenly your next response is to breath back in and that can trigger off a shorter breathing cycle and you may start to develop mild hyperventilation from that.

Breathing muscle training 

If you are just sitting down resting, you breathe mainly using your diaphragm, the sheet of muscle that sits under your lung but when you are exercising hard, your body needs other muscles to help.


The breathing muscle trainer is a device that helps you optimize your breathing and is by targeting the actual muscles involve in breathing.


If you are exercising by running that will naturally make those muscle fitter and healthier to certain extend but if you want to really target your breathing muscles, you will need breathing muscle training.


There are lots of muscles around the rib cage and our back muscles to support us when breathing. If you are working very hard you will have excess to about 80 muscles helping you to breath.


The principal aim of breathing muscle trainer is to help those other muscle do a better job.


There is kind of a high rock in the body as to what areas gets blood flow and hence oxygen and then nutrients that we need and the breathing muscles are really important in that.


So let’s say you are running really hard, and your legs are going I want more oxygen, if your breathing muscles are also saying I want more oxygen, your breathing muscle are going to have priority.


So what happen is that they steal that blood flow away from your walking legs. One other thing that happens with breathing muscle training is that they reduce that conflict that is you can train your breathing muscles to become more efficient and that means there is more oxygen available for the rest of your body.


It is not just about having stronger muscles but it does have a knock on effect on exercise performance.
Proper studies done with trainers have proof that breathing muscles go to improve performance by about 109% which just go to show how important your breathing muscles are for exercise.

Related Questions 

What is the best way to breath during weight resistance work?

The general rule of weight resistance work is that you breathe in on the easy bear and you breathe out on the hard bear and that’s to try to make it easier for you to try and lift those heavy weights because by actually breathing out what you are also doing is utilizing your core muscles because those expiratory muscles like your abdominal muscles are around your core, you are forcing those muscles to contract. So that aids the stability.

How to breathe during yoga practice? 

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In yoga there are so many kinds of breathing, there are techniques that teaches you how to increase the rate of breathing, there is noisy breathing, there is silent breathing, and there is breathing while chanting etc.


The common effect of all this completely different techniques is slowing down your spontaneous breathing rate.


What you have to do during yoga is to breathe very slowly and deeply. 


By breathing very slowly you can activate the calming branch on your autonomic nervous system and that will have effects on other things in your body like slowing down your heart rate, you can reduce the blood pressure and you can reduce inflammation etc.