When to inhale and exhale?

If you are studying for your test, brushing up for your clients, or just plain curious, here's some key information on breathing to consider.

The average person’s lungs move about 0.5 liters of air with each relaxed breath. That amount can jump to 3 liters during vigorous exercise.

The diaphragm is a dome-shaped muscle beneath the lungs. When you inhale, it flattens and moves downward, pressing against the abdominal organs so the lungs can expand. However, many adults don’t properly engage the diaphragm—poor posture, stress, and other factors lead people to breathe shallowly, moving the upper rib cage more than it should. It can also cause discomfort in the chest and back muscles, weaken the muscles in the pelvic floor and lower back, and disrupt proper movement of the shoulders and spine.

To help clients practice proper diaphragmatic breathing, have them place their hands on their lower ribs so they can feel them rise and fall as they breathe. The majority of the breathing motion should be felt here, not the upper chest, during everyday life and especially during exercise.

Lung disease refers to any condition that prevents the lungs from working properly. People with lung disease often experience shortness of breath and may fatigue sooner during exercise. Here’s a refresher on the guidelines for working with such clients (when their doctor has approved exercise).

✔ Clients with lung disease generally tolerate aerobic exercise at 40% to 60% of peak capacity, three to five days a week for 20 to 45 minutes.

✔ Consider circuit training in a Peripheral Heart Action (PHA) format of 8 to 10 exercises, with one set of 8 to 15 reps per exercise.

✔ Emphasize breathing control; schedule frequent rest intervals.

✔ Consider using a pulse oximeter during exercise to track oxygen saturation in the blood. Levels should be a minimum of 85% but preferably 90%. Below 85%, stop exercise.

Learn More in NASM Essentials of Personal Fitness Training, Chapter 16.

The gold standard during strength training is to inhale on relaxation and exhale during exertion. For cardio, you generally breathe in and out through the nose or, when intensity ramps up, through the mouth. Here, a few breath-control tricks to try with your clients.

✔ For clients who tend to hold their breath, encourage them to count each rep out loud.

✔ If clients experience side-stitches while running, suggest exhaling during the left footfall (not the right).

✔ If your client can’t catch his breath, have him stand tall with his hands behind his head to open the lungs and allow for deeper inhalations—don’t bend over with hands on knees.

✔ To gauge exercise intensity, use the talk test: If the person can’t talk much, they’re in the high-intensity range. If they can carry on a conversation, the intensity is low to moderate.

✔ When cooling down or stretching, deep, slow breathing helps calm the body and aid in recovery.

In respiratory muscle training (RMT), participants perform breathing exercises, often using special devices, in the hopes of building up the muscles associated with respiration. In recent years, numerous studies have been done on RMT, and in 2013, University of British Columbia researchers performed a systematic review of thousands of them, narrowing those eligible for inclusion to just 21.

Their conclusion: RMT can, in fact, improve sports performance—though researchers aren’t certain why, as RMT wasn’t shown to increase VO2 max. Some theorize that it may delay the onset of breathlessness, enabling athletes to push harder for longer.

Jeanne Floresca, NASM-CPT, CES, became a personal trainer online with NASM. She is a life coach and writer for InspireYouthful.com, where she shares the art of ageless living. She is also an EFT and Matrix Reimprinting practitioner.

Patrick Ward, MS, CSCS, LMT, NASM-PES,is a strength and conditioning coach, licensed massage therapist, and founder of Optimum Sports Performance in Phoenix.

I received an email from an Army soldier who was having a difficult time running a few months ago. His breathing patterns were so erratic that he basically was hyperventilating while on his two-mile physical fitness test run. Once he started breathing properly and exhaling fully, he performed better.

"It finally clicked," the soldier said. "Not only was I able to breathe and finish while running, but I was able to run faster without getting tired or cramped at all."

Learning to breathe during exercise has benefits, such as preventing dizziness during activity, improving athletic performance and increasing fat burning.

What is proper breathing while running?

Many experts will say that to oxygenate the muscles and clear the body of carbon dioxide fully, you should breathe a 3:2 inhale-to-exhale ratio; full inhales and full exhales. This means you inhale on the left, right, left foot strikes and exhale fully on the right, left foot strikes.

This pattern is not that hard to turn into a habit, but it may require you to slow down for a few runs to master the technique. You will notice a lower heart rate as you get more oxygen in and more importantly push all the carbon dioxide out of your body.

You may notice that you naturally drop to a 2:1 ratio when you are pushing it to the finish. That is OK. But realize it is difficult to maintain a pace that requires you to breathe at a 2:1 ratio. The CO2 in your body will increase if your breathing patterns are short and hurried. This will increase your heart rate and lactic-acid production, and decrease your endurance in any cardiovascular event (running, swimming, biking, etc.)

What about breathing and PT/lifting?

Proper breathing during exercises where you exert yourself -- such as lifting, pushing or pulling -- is much easier to remember and control than the 3:2 ratio during running long distance. Always exhale on exertion. When you are pushing a barbell off the chest during the bench press, you exhale on the push and inhale as you bring it slowly down.

When you are doing a pull-up, you exhale on the pulling up motion and inhale on the way down. Breathing during exertion is important in preventing internal injury such as hernia, blood vessel strain and high blood pressure. Because weightlifting and PT can be potentially harmful when done incorrectly, it is advised to get clearance from a doctor before performing too much, too soon. To decrease that pressure, focus on breathing deep all the time -- during workouts and in your daily activities.

How does more oxygen help burn more fat?

Basically, the body needs water and increased oxygen to burn fat as an energy source. The water intake should be anywhere from a half gallon for women and up to one gallon a day for men, and the increased oxygen consumption will assist with the other part of the equation. See the "Water Plus Oxygen Equals Weight Loss" article if you are concerned about drinking too much.

As you add more water and oxygen to your system, your body will use the retained water for excretion, prompting almost immediate weight loss of retained water and toxins. This is not the same as sitting in a sauna and sweating, which actually dehydrates you. Adding water will rehydrate you and enable the body to burn more fat (as long as you increase your oxygen intake by doing some form of exercise). Walking, swimming, biking, jogging, calisthenics and even yard work can help with working your cardiovascular system.

Try the deep breathing rhythm during running and see for yourself how you will run at a lower heart rate and have more energy for a strong finish.

Stew Smith is a former Navy SEAL and fitness author certified as a Strength and Conditioning Specialist (CSCS) with the National Strength and Conditioning Association. Visit his Fitness eBook store if you're looking to start a workout program to create a healthy lifestyle. Send your fitness questions to stew@stewsmith.com.

You probably don’t really think about breathing very much. It’s a subconscious process that just kind of… happens. It should be effortless, steady, and relaxing at times. If taking a deep breath is difficult or uncomfortable for you, you’re probably making a pretty common mistake. To diagnose it, let’s first take a basic look at the respiratory system and what keeps it going.

There are three things working together to make it possible for you to draw breathe: the lungs, the diaphragm, and the intercostal muscles.

When you breathe in, your diaphragm contracts downwards towards your belly. That allows your lungs to expand and take in oxygen since there’s more room in the chest cavity. The intercostal muscles, which run in between your ribs, help the chest cavity expand.

To breathe out, the diaphragm relaxes back to its original state, causing the lungs and chest cavity to contract and expel carbon dioxide. You can see the whole process in the diagram below.

If your breathing is shallow, you’re not getting oxygen all the way down into the bottom part of the lungs, which is where many of the small blood vessels that deliver oxygen to your cells live. That’s why breathing deeply can help slow your heart rate and stabilize your blood pressure.

Stop and take a deep breath. Do your shoulders go upwards and elongate your body as you inhale? Then, when you exhale, do the shoulders come back down and contract your chest?

If you answered yes, you’re doing it wrong.

That’s called vertical breathing. While it might feel like you’re really opening up those lungs, you’re only getting air into the top of them.

The correct way to breathe is called belly breathing, also known as diaphragmatic breathing or horizontal breathing.

What you do is inhale using your belly. Your belly should come outward as you take in air, and you’ll feel your lungs opening up. This draws oxygen all the way down into the bottom of your lungs. As you exhale, your stomach will come back in, and your rib cage will contract. This uses the diaphragm muscle to make sure you get the optimal amount of air.

If you’re now learning you’ve been breathing incorrectly, you might be wondering how it happened. After all, breathing is a subconscious process. It’s just something your body does automatically, so how did it start breathing the wrong way?

Here are a few possibilities:

No matter what the cause of your breathing pattern, there are a couple of simple exercises that can help get you back to proper breathing practices.

The first option is called pursed-lip breathing. For this exercise, you’ll need to sit down and relax your shoulders and neck. Then, slowly breathe in through your nose for two seconds. After you’ve counted to two, purse your lips like you’re going to whistle and slowly breathe out for four seconds. Once you’ve finished, repeat those steps over and over again. This slow and controlled method will help you relax and see how a correct breath should feel.

Your second method is known as the book breathing exercise. To try this one, lay on the ground and place a few light books on your stomach. You can just put both of your hands there if instead of books if you prefer. Now take a slow, deep breath in through your nose, feeling your stomach push the books (or your hands) upwards. Now slowly breathe out through your mouth, taking about twice as long as you took to inhale.

Repeat that for five to 10 minutes. If you notice the books or your hands aren’t rising as you inhale, that’s your cue to remember to do your belly breathing instead of vertical breathing.

It might take a while to train your body how to breathe properly again. Take some time every day to do one of those exercises or just slow down and focus on how you’re breathing. Some people will start to notice the effects of diaphragmatic breathing pretty soon. Others will take some time and gradually start to feel the difference.

How to breathe for maximum efficiency. The general rule of thumb is to inhale through your nose, so the air enters your belly, right before the eccentric (muscle-lengthening) part of the motion. Exhale during the concentric (muscle-shortening) part of the motion completely through your mouth.

Here are four tips that can help you to breathe better and make the most of your body.

Breathe into the stomach

As I covered in more detail on my blog on breathing exercises, breathing into your stomach is far more effective at bringing oxygen into your body than breathing into your chest. This is because it engages your diaphragm, the muscle responsible for squeezing and expanding your lungs, instead of using the limited movement your chest is capable of. Diaphragm breathing lets you breathe deeper, which gets more oxygen into your bloodstream.

If you’re having difficulty engaging your diaphragm while breathing, I highly recommend that you try some of the breathing exercises in the blog mentioned above, which can be done without any training from the comfort of your own home.

Exhale on exertion

For most strength training exercises, the golden rule is to exhale on exertion. For example, if you’re doing a squat, you’re going to inhale slowly on your way down, then exhale on your way up. For a curl, you would exhale when you lift the weight then inhale as you lower it back down.

It’s easy to remember: inhale down, exhale up.

The exception is with pulling exercises, such as using a lat pulldown machine or rowing machine. In these cases, you inhale on exertion. When you’re doing a pulling motion you want your chest expanded and your shoulder blades pulled together, which is far easier if you’re inhaling.

Time your breathing to your steps

For cardiovascular exercises such as walking, jogging or running, a technique that I’ve found to work fantastically with my clients is to time your breathing with your steps, called the Russian breathing ladder.

You start by inhaling for one step then and exhaling for one step and keeping up this pattern for around a minute. Then you increase the pattern to every two steps for a minute, then three steps and so on. With practice, most of my clients can maintain around ten steps inhaling and ten steps exhaling before they start feeling light-headed.

This takes a lot of concentration to keep up, so I recommend practising while walking before attempting the Russian breathing ladder while jogging or running. It’s definitely worth a try if you enjoy these kinds of exercises, especially for long distance endurance running. I’ve even had clients with only one lung able to get back to running using this technique.

Don’t smoke, seriously

We’ve all heard people talk about friends or relatives who have stayed healthy their whole lives despite smoking. Maybe they’re out there, but I can say in all my years of training I’ve never met a smoker who can keep up with my programme.

Whether they’re in their twenties or their eighties, I can spot smokers a mile off. If you smoke, your lungs simply won’t be able to meet the demands of exercise, and your body will become exhausted far quicker than it should. Nearly every client of mine who’s a smoker quits eventually. You simply can’t train and smoke, you have to give up one if you’re going to keep the other, and when people feel the benefits of exercising and breathing properly, it becomes an easy choice.

Quit entirely or switch to e-cigarettes; either way, smoking needs to be the first habit you get rid of if you want to improve your fitness.

Breathing right is the just first step to making the most of your body. If you want to take it further, get in touch with us at info@westlondonphysio.co.uk  or 0207 937 1628  to find out about our functional training programmes that are perfectly tailored to your lifestyle, passions and objectives.

Ryno Erasmus

Functional Trainer

The general rule of thumb is to inhale through your nose, so the air enters your belly, right before the eccentric (muscle-lengthening) part of the motion.

Exhale during the concentric (muscle-shortening) part of the motion completely through your mouth.

via Gfycat

Take the squat for example: You should inhale just before you begin to lower down, and exhale as you extend your legs back to the starting position.

Or the pushup: Inhale, bend your elbows to lower your body down to the ground, and exhale as you rise back up.

Making a habit of holding your breath can cause your blood pressure to rise, possibly resulting in dizziness, nausea or even a heart attack.

Instead, use your exercise as a time to practice deep breaths. Deep breaths can lower your blood pressure, enhance relaxation, and may even play a role in how our bodies break down sodium.

Get connected to your breath with breathing techniques — like the ones detailed here — and become more cognizant of how and when to breath during strength training.

After some practice, it’ll be second nature.