Don’t Forget To Breathe When You’re Lifting Weights

August 28 2014

Don’t Forget To Breathe When You’re Lifting Weights!

When you’re trying to lift 200+ pounds off your chest, it’s easy to forget about breathing. The body’s natural instinct under this type of pressure is to stop breathing — at least temporarily. But whether you are performing chest presses, squats, curls, deadlifts, bent-over rows, or any other strength training exercise, you must remember to breathe!

Why Breathing Is Important

Aside from the obvious reasons (i.e. you need it to survive), there are several other reasons why breathing is important when you’re working out. For starters, holding your breath or breathing too shallow will limit the amount of oxygen sent to your brain and muscles. In turn, this decreases performance and gains, which is something most people want to avoid.

Another reason why breathing is important is because it helps to prevent injury. People who hold their breath while they work out are more likely to suffer a black-out, stroke or aneurysm

How To Breathe When Working Out

A good rule of thumb to follow when working out is to inhaling when performing a rep and/or raising a weight and exhale when lowering the weight. If you are performing bicep curls, for instance, you should inhale when raising the dumbbells or barbell up to your chest and exhale as you lower it. This is a simple rule that will ultimately improve your workout sessions by promoting blood flow throughout your body, and subsequently creating larger gains.

Don’t be afraid to huff and puff when you’re at the gym. Some people are self-conscious about their appearance, but ultimately you should be focused on your own needs and goals. Find a rhythm in which you can inhale/exhale while performing reps.

Biomechanics and kinesiology expert Stuart McGill states that spine stabilization is achieved by the ”ability to cocontract the abdominal wall (abdominal brace) independently of any lung ventilation patterns. Good stabilizers maintain the critical symmetrical muscle stiffness…Poor stabilizers allow abdominal contraction levels to cycle with breathing at critical moments when stability is required. Grooving muscular activation patterns so that a particular direction in lung air flow is entrained to a particular part of any exertion is not helpful. This would be of little carryover value to other activities; in fact it would be counterproductive”

So in other words, your core muscles play a critical role in your body’s ability to breathe during workout sessions.

Weights at the gym photo courtesy of Eric McGregor via Flickr Creative Commons.