How to breathe during running time: rhythmic breathing

One problem beginners runners, which annoys particularly strong - the inability to breathe correctly while jogging. I think you have to remember the great air burning throat, lungs burning and the feeling that a little more - and you just suffocate. But it turns out, the problem is not with the breath only when your muscles do not have enough oxygen to function properly. Sometimes permanent injury to the same side may also be caused by improper one-sided breathing.

As an example, we present the technique of rhythmic breathing from the book Running on Air: The Revolutionary Way to Run Better by Breathing Smarter Budd Coates and Claire Kowalczyk.

According to research by Dennis Bramble and David Carrier, the strongest stress on the runner comes at a time when his feet touch the running surface coincides with the beginning of exhalation. This means that if you start to exhale every time your left foot touches the ground (and so constant), then the left side of your body will constantly suffer the greater load than Right. And it is on this side usually will occur injury. The same thing will happen with the right side, if you are constantly exhaling at the right step.

The fact is that during the run time your foot hits the ground with a force that is greater than your weight in two or three times, and when you do this and more on the exhale, the impact increases even more. This is due to the fact that during exhalation your diaphragm and the muscles that are associated with its relaxation, reduce stability in your cortex. A weakened stability during impact creates almost ideal conditions for the occurrence of injuries.

This is the same as that of a backpack loaded with heavy books and laptop and hang it on only one shoulder, which will receive a large load. In order to equalize the situation and back, you need to put the straps of a backpack on both shoulders, then the load is evenly distributed.

Rhythmic breathing evenly distributes the load on the body and helps to avoid additional stress. Moreover, rhythmic breathing allows us to focus on our breathing patterns and use it as an additional source of energy to achieve the best results.

Yoga teaches us that control breathing helps us to control our body and calms the mind. Rhythmic breathing and focusing on it - it is in its own way also a meditation that allows us to subtly feel our body and push out the negative on the exhale. When we fall out of rhythm, we lose touch with the body and begin to get distracted by the numbers in the running application, completely ignoring the signals that our body sends us. And this, in turn, increases the likelihood of injury.

So, before you understand the skill of rhythmic breathing, you need to learn to breathe stomach (diaphragm). People tend to breathe or chest, or abdomen. During inspiratory time your diaphragm moves down, and chest muscles expand the thorax, increase the volume of the chest cavity and pulls air into the lungs. Work on the diaphragm and the expansion of its capacities allow you to inhale a larger volume of air. The more air you breathe, the more oxygen your muscles will get. Many runners do not pay much attention to how they breathe, and prefer to use thoracic breathing, depriving themselves of an additional portion of oxygen, which would give a breath diaphragm.

In addition to the smaller volume of oxygen, chest breathing is another disadvantage: the intercostal muscles are smaller and get tired faster than diaphragm muscle, that is, you start to feel the shortage of air much earlier than with abdominal breathing, so you need to learn to breathe diaphragm. You have to breathe through your diaphragm while sitting, standing or lying down, at work and at home, in transport or at meal time - you have to breathe it all the time!

But to begin with:

• Lie on your back.
• Try to make the upper body and chest did not move.
• Focus your attention on your abdomen during inhalation.
• Lower abdomen on the exhale.
• During breathing, try to inhale and exhale through the nose and mouth at the same time.

Creating a breathing model

Many runners use option 2: 2 - inhale two strikes, exhale in two strokes. Some use Option 3: 3 (three beats at a breath, exhale for three beats). But in both cases the result is the same - exhale constantly gets on the same leg. Your task is to choose an option breaths, which in turn would exhale got it to the right, then the left leg.

The book is recommended to choose an option in which to breath gets more hits than exhalation. In this embodiment, there are two advantages: firstly, during a longer inspiratory your muscles get more oxygen, and secondly, because as in the expiratory muscles relax while the bark and increases the risk of injury, reducing the time of expiration, you reduce the likelihood of getting the best injury.

For starters, you can try to use option 3: 2 - inhale and exhale three steps to two. Best practice on the floor:

• Lie on your back, knees bent, feet flat on the floor completely.
• Hands should lie on his stomach in order to help you make sure that you use a diaphragm breathing.
• Inhaling and exhaling is done through the nose and mouth at the same time.
• Inhale for three and exhale counting to two.
• Concentrate and try to breathe in such a way without interruption.
• Then, a little complicate the problem and begin to breathe, lifting serially feet, thus simulating walking.

Once you make sure that you can breathe in a rhythm almost without thinking, try to get up and breathe a little so during a simple walk.

Such breathing embodiment may be comfortable during standard and not very long runs. If you need to run up the hill, you begin to breathe more quickened, as you have to put more effort and muscles need more oxygen. Breathing quickens, and the rhythm gets off. In such cases, try to go to option 2: 1, that is, two steps breath, exhale - one. After climbing over and breathing calmed down a bit, go back to version 3: 2. Also, breathing in the rhythm of 2: 1 is very useful during speed workouts or competitions.

Another option: you can breathe using option 3: 2, then at accelerating use of 2: 1, but if you feel you need to breathe faster and deeper, try the rhythm of 2: 1: 1: 1. That is two steps breath, exhale one, then inhale and exhale for one-on-one, and then two breaths. That is, once you repeat exhale at the same pace, but then again it me. This option is ideal for climbing up steep slopes or final acceleration before the finish line.