The Importance of Breathing
You couldn't stop breathing even if you tried.
It is the most ignored part of lifting and an important part of exercise technique in any lift. While breathing techniques might seem easy, when first learning to lift, they can be the most complicated part of exercising. With practice and repetitions, improving your breathing can be the next thing that adds a couple of repetitions or pounds onto your lifts.
“Not exhaling will starve your brain and muscles of oxygen”
How Not to Breathe
The main thing to be avoided when weight training is holding your breath. Not exhaling (breathing out) will starve your brain and muscles of oxygen, which is the opposite of what you need when trying to be as powerful as possible in your lifts.
How TO Breathe
When lifting weights, you want to time your breathing with specific parts of your lift. Before starting a movement, we want to take a deep breath into the belly (not the chest). Once we begin lowering the weights, we want to hold our breath in the abdomen. When it comes time to press the weight back upwards, forwards, or both, we want to exhale and release all of the built-up tension.
You will want to hold your breath while lowering the weight to increase the pressure within your core. We want high pressure within our core when stabilizing heavy weights because it keeps us stable. The more tension we can create in the core before lowering, the more sturdy we will be during the lift, and the easier the exercise will feel.
Pop Quiz
Stand tall, take a deep breath, and make sure the breath expands your belly. Then, with that breath in your core, perform one squat, holding in the breath as you lower. Once at the bottom of your squat, begin pressing back upwards, release your breath and stand tall.
Think of a rocket; when exploding upwards into the sky, it releases all its gas (but just let go of your air, don't release gas on the way up). You will especially notice the difference in breathing technique when performing heavy-weighted movements. Still, this squat demo is a good start!
Breathing is something to be mastered when weight training. If you have yet to give it much thought, start keeping in mind your breathing and how you time your breaths throughout your exercises. With consistency and patience, your workouts may be much more enjoyable and efficient once your breathing technique is improved.
