Training Your Breathing: An Introduction to Breathwork

By: Noah Hayden, PBC

Characteristic breathing patterns correlate with specific moods. When we are anxious or stressed, our breaths become short and shallow. Compare this to the deep sighs of relaxation when we climb into bed after a fulfilling day or the deep breaths we take after a good belly laugh. These patterns reflect our current moods, but deliberately controlling our breathing can work in reverse—to influence our moods and alter our performance. While many bodily processes are beyond our control, breathing can be a powerful tool to change the body’s state when we consciously manage it.

In everyday life, our default state is an exhaled state: meaning, we inhale moderately, relax the diaphragm to passively expel air out of the lungs, and exist in that exhaled state (called a “neutral lung”) until the next breath cycle begins again. This “accentuated exhale” is a great breathing pattern for everyday life because exhaling is relaxing, and it is good to be relaxed most of the time.

Most of the time is not all of the time. We do not want to relax while lifting, for example. Appropriate breathing for lifting changes your body’s state to be ready to perform that specific task. If the task changes (say, to conditioning work) or if you want to improve other aspects of your life, breathing has no less important a role.

So, I will introduce some basic breathwork concepts that apply to training, overall breathing quality, and can help improve physiological control in other areas of your life.

Breathing and Lifting

Of all the things to think about while lifting, breathing may seem like it needs the least amount of attention. We have been breathing our entire lives, so we have had some practice at it by now. Being such an automatic process, it is easy to delegate this responsibility to the background and take for granted whether we are breathing the best way for the occasion at hand.

“Just breathe naturally” is exactly what we do not want to do during lifting. As I mentioned above, a natural exhaled state encourages our muscles to relax—which is the last thing we want during any heavy, compound barbell movements. Since most exercises involve transferring force from the feet to the hands, we want the torso-bracing muscles to remain tightly contracted and rigid, making the torso a more effective force transmitter for the extremities. The torso muscles are intimately connected to breathing patterns.

We can best maintain rigidity during lifting with an inhaled default state: a big, held breath. It needs to be as big as possible, and the torso muscles need to be braced hard against it, for reasons illustrated here.

From this big, held breath, we start the cycle over by quickly and forcefully expelling maybe 10% of the total lung volume, immediately followed by a maximal inhalation that we again brace against. This breathing pattern minimizes the relaxing aspects of exhalation and feels very much like simply holding your breath for the entire set, which is a good thing for mechanical efficiency.

The downside is feeling the uncomfortable urge to breathe. Being able to calmly endure this feeling is one of the execution skills that need to be learned as we develop into more experienced lifters. After decades of practice with “normal” breathing patterns, deliberately straying from this can send the body into panic mode. Of all the impulses we feel, the urge to breathe is one of the strongest (and hardest to ignore). Changing ingrained habits is difficult work, but it can be accomplished. It can help to know some facts about the situation to better inform us of what is actually going on.

The Need for Respiration

There is not much actual need to breathe for the 30-second window it takes to perform most sets. Most metabolism being utilized during a heavy barbell set is anaerobic—meaning oxygen is not necessarily being used to a great degree. A lifter wearing a pulse oximeter during a set would see steady blood oxygen saturation levels around 97%—despite feeling out of breath. So, where does the increased need to breathe after the first heavy rep come from? I think this is simply the body trying to start the coming aerobic “recharge phase” as soon as possible. Again, the body is acclimated to the regular activity and breathing cycles it has been chronically exposed to over the years.

The human body is bad at sensing oxygen levels but very good at detecting CO₂ concentrations. The urge to breathe is caused by the buildup of CO₂ in the blood, not the absence of oxygen. So don’t panic! It is an uncomfortable sensation (especially at first), but there is no real danger of asphyxiation.

Also, we do not have to actually hold our breath the entire set! Luckily, we get to exchange a little bit of air between reps, which helps lessen the discomfort and gives us the opportunity to re-tighten all of the bracing muscles. All of this amounts to a very achievable breathing habit for efficient and effective lifting.

Most barbell lifts will benefit from this style of breathing, but HIIT is definitely an exception. When pushing a sled, carrying a yoke, sandbag, or similar object, you still need to brace your torso—but you also need to breathe continuously. Conditioning exercises of the HIIT variety are still mainly exploiting anaerobic metabolism to do the work, but our goal here is to tax the aerobic system’s ability to recharge these anaerobic systems, so rest periods are restricted. This means we need to continually breathe because the body is behind on its aerobic duties (by design).

How do we brace the torso and breathe at the same time? By forcing air in and out of our lungs while holding our abdominal muscles as tightly as possible. This is a compromise, of course, because we could more effectively perform work (and brace) if we completely held our breath. But breathing is not optional for these exercises, so we do what we can. Many strongman carries require this form of breathing, and strongman competitors often refer to this breathing technique as the “air pump:” Simply brace like normal, and try to maintain that level of muscle contraction while forcing air to move into and out of your lungs. It is not easy at first.

Quality of Breath

Most adults inhale shallowly, only into their upper chests, and this tends to devolve into small mouth- and throat-panting breaths in the elderly. (As an aside, I think this speaks to one reason why the elderly tend to be more susceptible to pneumonia: Unused lung tissue easily fills up with mucus, which the atrophied diaphragm cannot clear out during a bout of respiratory infection.) Conversely, children tend to use belly breaths, naturally utilizing their lung tissue more effectively. Of course, these are heuristic descriptions. The point is that, as we age, we tend to utilize less of our lungs’ surface area for breathing—to our detriment.

When we are in stressful situations, we also tend to breathe more shallowly in our upper chests. With the professional lives most adults lead, it is no surprise that many breathe like this chronically. We should retrain ourselves to breathe more usefully. You might be surprised by how much lung capacity you actually have.

Retraining your breathing pattern starts with the quality of each breath. Initially, inhaling should expand the belly out. The chest should not rise while this is happening. After the belly is pushed out all the way, the chest rises to continue the inhale. To exhale, reverse this: the chest falls, then the belly deflates. You may find that the simple act of breathing this way and paying attention to it helps clear the mind and bring focus back to the moment.

Going a bit further, by developing just a few breathing habits, we can learn to calm down, fall asleep more easily, or prepare for a performance.

Breathwork for the Rest of Life

The following breathing patterns tap into our natural responses to encourage a transition to a different mental and physical state. Recall that breathing while lifting uses an extended held breath, accentuating the readiness that comes from inhalation. Relaxation breathing, in contrast, often focuses on exhalation—much like an extended sigh.

There is a wide variety of groups that discuss and practice breathing patterns: free divers, yogis, Buddhist monks, Navy SEALs, and those who practice cold exposure, to name a few. Collectively, this is known as breathwork. Breathworkers use a fairly standard notation to describe breathing patterns.

We will use “box breathing” as an example to illustrate: Think of four equal sides of a square. Inhale evenly over five seconds, hold your breath for five seconds, exhale evenly over five seconds, and finally, maintain a neutral lung for five seconds. This basic technique has been used by military forces for a long time to calm soldiers’ nerves in stressful life-or-death situations, helping them perform more effectively. This pattern would be notated as 5-5-5-5. After starting like this, you could experiment by lengthening the time up to maybe seven seconds if you like—or only lengthening the breaths (the vertical lines of the box), or only lengthening the breath holds (the horizontal lines, called apneas).

The next pattern to explore is “bottom triangle” breathing. Starting in the bottom left corner of this imaginary isosceles triangle, inhale evenly for five seconds (approaching the point at the top), exhale evenly for five seconds (descending down the other side), and maintain a relaxed neutral lung for five seconds (the horizontal base). This would be notated as 5-0-5-5 since there was no full lung apnea. Notice that this pattern approximates the breathing of everyday life and has the potential to be very relaxing if approached deliberately. A common variation is 4-0-7-8: a short but even inhale followed by a long, controlled exhale—and a slightly longer neutral lung. This forces us to linger on relaxing aspects of breathing, which tends to activate the parasympathetic nervous system and can lead to a calmer state of mind. I personally employ 6-0-15-5 when I feel frustration or annoyance coming on. Breathing in through the nose and slightly parting the lips to control such a long exhale works well. Best of all, I can do this in public (when someone is being obnoxious) without anyone noticing.

“Top triangle” breathing works in reverse and could be helpful when you need to get motivated or calmly prepare a state of alert readiness. Using the same five-second periods: Inhale evenly, hold a full lung, exhale, and repeat. There is no neutral lung hold (5-5-5-0). This pattern focuses more on the inhaling aspects of breathing and tends to excite the sympathetic nervous system. This prepares the body for performance and confrontation. Notice that barbell lifting employs a top-triangle breathing pattern.

A variation on this pattern I have found useful is 6-4-1-0. Inhale through the nose maximally, focus on a big belly and chest during the inhaled hold, and forcefully expel everything in one contraction. Relax the diaphragm and feel a small amount of air return, then repeat.

The last breathing style I will mention is what I call “I” breathing. There are no apneas here, only continuous (or nearly so) breathing: up and down the two vertical lines. This pattern is used during endurance exercise, in HIIT and strongman as the air pump, and also by many to acutely prepare immediately before a difficult physical or mental task. Practitioners of cold exposure often use this style of breathing during training.

Practice Makes Perfect

It can be helpful to practice and experiment with breathing patterns to a metronome. When a social situation makes a metronome inappropriate or inconvenient, use your heartbeat instead. Of course, a heartbeat is variable, but this can be used to our advantage. With an elevated pulse, it is harder to maintain breath holds for long periods of time. Conveniently, the heart-metronome has quickened. As we relax and bring our bodies under control, the pulse slows—which naturally allows us to lengthen our breathing with it, further enhancing the calming effect. Aside from all of this, focusing on breathing and pulse for any amount of time (no matter what breathing pattern is used) will help us regain focus and body awareness.

All of this only scratches the surface of breathwork. It may be surprising just how deep this topic goes, but the above information should be enough for orientation. Set a metronome (yes, there is an app for that), try a few of these examples, and see what happens. People tend to react differently to the same breathing patterns, so a fair amount of experimentation is needed to find the ones most useful to you.