Evox Fitness Concept

DO YOU KNOW HOW TO BREATHE?

From the moment we are born, we know how to breathe. It's something natural, but it changes throughout life. Do you know how to breathe well?

You must be thinking this is a trick question, and you're absolutely right. We all know how to breathe, but there is a high probability that we do not realize the importance of this action in our well-being. Whether doing a housework or training.

Breathing has been the subject of study for many years. Correct breathing will influence the data received by our Autonomic Nervous System (ANS), which controls the unconscious actions in our body. Related to the ANS is digestion, heartbeat, blood pressure, among others. So, logically, breathing can affect all these mechanisms of our body for good or for bad.

In addition, it is scientifically proven that breathing, when done well, can reduce muscle tension, stress, fatigue, can promote energy and concentration and can even improve sleep. This is precisely why practices such as Yoga, Tai-chi and conscious breathing are so important to the human being and are so in vogue.

The principles of breathing come from an ancient technique related to Yoga, called Pranayama. There are several types of breathing, and we will not explore them all, but the most basic is diaphragmatic breathing. It is, in essence, what babies do and what is visible with the rise and fall of their bellies. In other words, it's breathing from the belly instead of the chest. Throughout our lives, we tend to lose this breathing technique that we were born with due to the cultural environment that surrounds us and the development of bad habits, such as bad posture, more precisely, the bending of the back.

We already know that oxygen powers any performance. Whether in a race through the park or in a competition, the importance of breathing is always the same. Running, for example, makes your body use more oxygen and often the tendency is to resort to shallower breathing. This makes your body feel more stressed. That way, the ideal is to “breathe through the belly”, which will give you more energy.

Using the chest to breathe generally causes a shorter, shallower breath, as opposed to a longer breath that brings more oxygen to the muscles. It is precisely here that the most common errors in breathing at the time of physical exercise are centered: breathing from the chest, shallow breathing, lack of rhythm and holding the breath.
Typically, the tendency to hold your breath is primarily found in strength exercises such as weightlifting, sit-ups, and planks. In the latter in particular, the act of holding the breath is used to stabilize the torso and maintain shape as the exercise continues. The truth, however, is that in doing so, we are producing the opposite result, as breathing allows the frontal muscles, such as the obliques, to do their work more easily, making it more effective. For HIIT training - high-intensity training -, breathing through the nose is the most suitable, since the excess of fast air that enters through the mouth causes the cells to not be able to receive all the oxygen at the same rate.

Now that we've talked about the importance of breathing in physical exercise (and in life in general), it's time to examine your habits and become more aware of the way you breathe. There are numerous benefits to doing breathing exercises and it is essential to give them due importance.

 

Alexandre Ichim