How Does Breathing Affect Our Training?

Breathing and “breath work” in exercise has grown in its implementation in exercise and sport performance in recent years. Today, we will discuss how breathing can effect chronic muscle tightness, range of motion in the rib cage, shoulders, and hips, and how we can use breathing strategies to improve our lifts and athletic outcomes.

Breathing and Muscle Tightness:

When we breath throughout the day, about 20,000+ times, we use muscles to create and open space for the lungs to expand, decreasing the pressure and allowing the greater pressure of the atmosphere to push air in. When we breath out, we use muscles to close the space around the lungs, essentially decreasing the space and increasing the pressure until it overcomes the pressure of the atmosphere thus pushing air out.

What we should see is that breathing is not a passive activity, we have muscle activity and a moving skeleton that help us do this. As most of us know, the diaphragm SHOULD be the key muscle in creating this expansion and compression of the lungs. By descending, the diaphragm pulls open the pleura cavity, bringing the lungs along with it. This is the diaphragm contracting and us inhaling. When the diaphragm relaxes, it ascends back upwards and closes the pleura space, creating the exhale.

Accessory respiratory muscles (these are important!) include the scalenes, sternocleidomastoid, subclavius, and a few others. Together, these muscles attach at the cervical spine, sternum, clavicle and ribcage. When we need extra expansion and space for the lungs to open, like when exercising or taking a deep breath, these accessory muscles are used to help elevate and open the rib cage. What tends to happen over time for a multitude of reasons is that people begin using there accessory muscles more than they should for respiration. We lose touch with our diaphragm and the control we have over it, instead using superficial and small muscles of the head, neck, and chest to do the work. This is a common cause of tightness and pain in these regions.

Beyond this, when we lose the functionality and control of the diaphragm, we also lose the stabilizing effect it has on the low back and core. Check out our earlier blog article for more on this.

Article 1: Low Back Pain After Lifting?

Article 2: My Back Hurts, Now What?

So, how can we use breathing to help improve our tight superficial muscles, improve hip, rib cage, and shoulder mobility, and improve performance? Well we need to learn how to re-integrate our diaphragm back into our training first.

Let’s start with the breathing exercise from “My Back Hurts, Now What”. This is the hook lying breathing drill. Follow the instructions in the video. The goal here is to learn how to pull the diaphragm down to create breath while keeping all neck musculature relaxed.

Drill 1: Hook Lying Breathing

Next, we want to take this to another level by really emphasizing the rib cage internal rotation and expansion, hence rib cage mobility. Follow the instructions in this video. Keep the neck muscles relaxed!

Drill 2: Hook lying breathing for rib and spine mobility

Now we have created an awareness of the diaphragm and how it feels to use it. We have also began working to rib cage and spine mobility with breath work. What we want to do now is integrate our diaphragm into the stabilization strategy while actively working to stay out of compensations and instead using our rib cage mobility. We will use the classic dead bug for this, but with a clear goal. Maintain positioning and 360deg lower trunk expansion over all else. What this means is we want to create the breathing pattern from our hook lying breathing drill where we feel full expansion in all directions WHILE keeping our low back flat to the ground as we extend the leg and arm. A common issue with the dead bug is people will allow their low back to fly into hyperextension (arch off the ground) and flare their rib cage toward the ceiling. This is not using core muscles, the diaphragm for stability, or mobility in our spine and rib cage. When we keep our low back flat and focus on keeping our rib cage tucked down, we are using all of the aspects we worked on previously!

Drill 3: Dead Bugs

Conclusion

Breathing and breath work can be vital to implement into your training and mobility work. We need to begin understanding how using the diaphragm helps create stability for our training. If we have dysfunction in our diaphragm then we expose our accessory respiratory muscles to extensive exposure and work, creating tightness in areas of the chest, neck and upper back. We can focus on using the breath to create mobility, stability, and athletic ability in heavy lifts. In my experience, this is the starting point most avid lifters truly need to start at, otherwise we build upon a faulty foundation!

-Dr. Nick DC, TPI, CSCS

If you would like to learn more about your body, pain, and performance, send Dr. Nick an email at contact@integratedrpc.com or call at (585)478-4379.