Breathing for Athletic Performance

Could breathwork provide you with that cutting edge?

Is your breathing pattern complimenting or curbing your athletic performance? Breathwork for athletes has gained increasing recognition over more recent years and rightly so, but for many it is still something that is not fully (if at all) taken into consideration with regards to improving overall performance levels. The power of the breath is something that has been used since the beginning of time in a variety of different cultures and traditions, and most if not all of what we know today stems from these ancient practices. For a large majority of people, it seems that perhaps we have forgotten the importance of this fundamental function, or at least don’t give it the attention it so deserves.

In our busy modern-day society, it seems that the race to do better, achieve more, work harder and faster and gain more, has taken its toll on our health. Mirroring that, our breathing patterns also seem to reflect this trend in the belief that breathing faster and harder is going to give you more oxygen and therefore more energy.  This couldn’t be further from the truth! In fact, it could be holding your rate of progress back more than you might realise.

In athletic competition this element of breathing for health, performance and focus has largely been overlooked by most training programs, with a failure to make the correlation between your efficiency of breathing day and night and the effect this will have on your overall health and therefore, your optimisation of performance.

Learning to breathe functionally and efficiently is the key to resolving many underlying health-related conditions, including reducing inflammation in the body and providing greater balance and resiliency in the central nervous system. Not to mention the improvement in sleep quality which ultimately influences all aspects of physical, mental and emotional wellbeing.

Breathing is the fundamental mechanism that works to bring oxygen into the body and deliver it to the working muscles to sustain energy and of course optimise performance levels.  If this process is dysfunctional or below optimal, then the implications can be far-reaching and ultimately health, sleep, energy, concentration, and training will be compromised.

It is often taken for granted that breathing will take care of itself.  After all it is controlled by the autonomic nervous system and is one of our vital functions. However, breathing patterns change and develop during our lifetime in response to things such as illness, trauma, stress, poor posture, habits, and for most people, the way they breathe just becomes their ‘normal’ and therefore, unquestioned, and unnoticed.

So, let’s question it. What is dysfunctional breathing and how do you know if you are not breathing efficiently or properly?  Take a moment now to watch, feel and listen to your breathing (placing one hand on the chest and one just above the navel to give you a reference point).  Without changing anything, consider, how you breathe.

• Do you breathe through the mouth or the nose?

• Do you breathe into the chest or deep into the lungs? 

• Does the hand on the chest or navel move on the inhalation?

• Is your breath rate fast or slow?

• Is your breathing audible or silent?

• Is your breathing calm or agitated?

Breathing expends energy and if you are mouth breathing hard, shallow, and fast then you are simply going to run out of energy sooner and ultimately disrupt your energy, sleep quality, stress levels and overall health and wellbeing.  As Swami Sivananda so eloquently puts it - “A yogi measures the span of life by the number of breaths, not by the number of years”.  So, breathe too fast and too hard, you may just run out of breaths a little too soon.

The emphasis should initially be focused on breathing for health.  Learning to breathe through the nose, slow and deep into lungs.  Just from making these subtle changes will bring about tremendous benefits in terms of nervous system regulation, improved sleep quality, better energy levels, higher stress resiliency and greater focus and concentration. How can this not impact your overall performance in a positive way? One simple method of testing your breathing efficiency and level of breathlessness is using the BOLT score (Blood Oxygen level Test). This would be a valuable test for any individual to use regularly to assess their breathing functionality and work to increase this to optimise health and then performance. As a breathwork coach, this is a valuable measurement and base marker that would start each session.

Most avid sports people would undoubtedly presume that the health of their diaphragm muscle (the dome like muscle that sits under the rib cage, which powers the breathing process) would be strengthened with all the cardiovascular work they were doing, in much the same way they are strengthening the rest of the muscles during regular physical exercise.  Unfortunately, this is not entirely the case as the diaphragm requires a load to be applied directly to it to respond, adapt, and strengthen.  Through specific breathwork practices it is possible to strengthen the diaphragm, apply load and prevent diaphragmatic fatigue.  Research by breathing expert Patrick Mckeown found that 50% of all elite athletes were prone to this type of fatigue resulting in declines in performance and the inability to sustain intensity during competition. These athletes would generally tend to burn out/ blow up quicker, experience high levels of breathlessness and in turn, negatively impact their performance economy.  In very simple terms, just breathing through the nose will create resistance and therefore help strengthen the diaphragm.

The diaphragm is the powerhouse of the respiratory system and if this muscle is not able to function optimally other elements of performance (and of course health) could be compromised without even knowing. The way in which we breathe affects our spinal stability, core stability, pelvic floor function, oxygen delivery to the working muscles and cells and the efficiency and economy of our motor skills. Dysfunctional breathers are far more likely to be prone to injury, due to inhibited motor skills, than those with more functional breathing habits.

An athlete would not only see improvements in general wellbeing, but performance markers will quite likely begin to improve.  As a result of prescribed breathwork exercises, more oxygen is released into the working muscles and brain because of the focus on increasing the carbon dioxide tolerance in the body. 

Carbon dioxide is not just the waste gas it is commonly made out to be and it plays an integral role in the oxygenation of the muscles and cells. It is not enough to just have oxygen in the blood, we need to be able to off load that oxygen when and where the body requires it. Carbon dioxide is required for the haemoglobin to release the oxygen to cells and according to the Bohr Effect, increases in partial pressure of carbon dioxide will result in a lower infinity of oxygen to haemoglobin and a greater delivery of oxygen. Breathwork techniques designed to increase carbon dioxide in the blood will therefore support and enhance the process of oxygen delivery, thus sustaining performance intensity.

Those who breathe too hard and too fast, through the mouth may be off loading far too much carbon dioxide, upsetting the pH levels in the blood.  This in turn will make the chemoreceptors in the brain very sensitive to the build-up of carbon dioxide in the body, and therefore trigger the body to breathe at a higher respiratory rate.  This higher respiratory rate sends the body into sympathetic response, raising physical, emotional, and mental levels of stress. Unless this level of stress activation can be balanced and arousal levels restored to optimal, the body and mind will stay somewhat stuck in fight, flight, freeze or fold response. This is not only a severe disruptor of health if experienced over a sustained period of time, but over-arousal can destroy the possibility of an athlete reaching their ideal performance state during competition if they cannot learn to become aware and implement strategies to regulate these internal processes through the breath.

Carbon dioxide is also a vasodilator, meaning it will open up the blood vessels and allow for greater distribution of oxygenated blood.  This is commonly experienced when doing breathe light exercises and can be felt physically in the hands and feet, as the increase blood flow raises the temperature in the extremities. Carbon dioxide also activates the relaxation response, allowing balance and safety to return to the over-aroused nervous system. It is imperative that athletes learn how to optimise their physiological response to an increase in stress levels, recognising the signs that the body is heightened and have the tools required to bring it back into an ideal state of calm, relaxed yet fully alert and mobilised.

Athletes may also see an increase in VO2 max (maximum aerobic capacity), as a result of working with their breath. This is again linked to the oxygen carrying capacity in the blood.  Due to an increase in anerobic buffering capacity, athletes will also benefit from a decrease in the onset of lactic acid building up in the muscles, which will ultimately delay the arrival of fatigue.  Athlete’s often report faster recovery and less intense muscle soreness as a result of prescribed breathwork techniques.

Once you have mastered the task of breathing optimally to meet your metabolic requirements, then you can begin to explore the more advanced practices. For example, simulating the effects of training at altitude using simple breathwork, without having to purchase expensive equipment or head off to the mountains. Breath holding techniques place the body under regulated stress to create adaptations in the body. By increasing the levels of carbon dioxide in the blood, you create a hypercapnic response.  By creating this state of hypoxia, blood saturation levels will naturally decrease, forcing the body to produce more red blood cells to maintain homeostasis. An increase in erythropoietin (EPO) will legally be produced in the body, therefore enhancing oxygen carrying capacity in the blood.

This application of controlled stress on the body will do wonders in reducing perceived external and internal threat to the individual, which in turn will induce greater levels of physical and emotional resiliency, as well as increasing alertness by dilating the blood vessels to the brain.  For every 1 mm drop of carbon dioxide, blood flow to the brain is reduced by 2% (Patrick McKeown, 2021). For those with anxiety there can be up to 50% reduction in oxygen reaching the brain due to over-breathing and hyperventilation, which is causing carbon dioxide levels to drastically reduce. The amount of carbon dioxide in the lungs will reflect the amount of carbon dioxide in the blood and a lack of carbon dioxide causes the haemoglobin to hold onto the oxygen, as appose to releasing the oxygen to the working muscles as previously discussed.

What is the best way to get started? Well, I believe the fundamental thing is first to close your mouth and simply slow the breath down by breathing in and out through the nose.  The focus should be to improve how you breathe 24/7 and resetting the body and mind in a more efficient and functional breathing pattern.

Many athletes worry that intensity of training will be compromised if they are unable to breathe through the mouth as the session continues and this is a legitimate concern, so it is important to integrate breathwork into the program, but also be alert to the fact that raising intensity during training will in most cases eventually lead to an athlete mouth breathing in the latter stages of training and competition.  However, nose breathing to increase arterial oxygen uptake is the way to go is a priority for the rest of the day and night.

Through a structured breathwork program it is possible to:

1. Measure and reduce the effects of breathlessness. Breathing is often the main thing holding an athlete back and bringing awareness to this is a tremendous first step.

2. Establish functional breathing both day and night to improve, support and optimise overall health and wellbeing.

3. Improve tolerance to carbon dioxide and promote greater distribution of oxygen throughout the body and brain.

4. Improve overall aerobic capacity.

5. Naturally increase EPO (erythropoietin) in the body.

6. Increase performance efficiency.

7. Decrease recovery time (including better quality sleep).

8. Delay the onset of fatigue due to increased anerobic buffering and a decrease in the onset of lactic acid.

9. Increase respiratory muscle strength.

10. Improve mental focus and emotional resiliency through recognising and controlling underlying autonomic nervous system responses to a perceived threatening situation (competition or match day).

To implement training to competition. A pre-competition routine is vital. Here the body and mind will begin to instinctively respond to them and naturally create an ideal performance state. This may include a combination of relaxation, strong breath holds, and cleansing breaths as prescribed for the individual.  During competition it is vital to retain nose breathing for as long as possible, although as discussed in most cases,  it is unrealistic to maintain this 100% of the time due to the added resistance the nose brings to oxygen intake.

Breathwork practices are also something that injured athletes can continue to participate in whilst sidelined, which will help maintain base line aerobic and anaerobic fitness levels and support the athlete emotionally whilst injured.

There are many ways to incorporate breathwork techniques into your daily life and your training schedule without adding another element to your existing load.  It is often possible to ‘piggyback’ these techniques during warm-up and cool down, or even incorporating them into daily activities such as walking from the car to the office/gym each morning. Learning to breathe slow, low and through the nose with breathe light exercises can have a significant effect that can be observed relatively quickly.  Add to this the breath holding techniques, brain balancing and focusing practices, and you will begin to experience that there really are many positive advantages to pursuing breathwork in your training schedule, and really experience that ultimate ‘cutting edge’ over your competitors.

If this article has spiked your interest in pursuing some of these techniques and you would like to have a no obligation chat to discuss possible implementation for yourself or your athletes, then reach out and contact Lea at Rise to Shine Wellbeing for more details.

Rise to Shine offers

-       personal one-to-one coaching

-       group breathwork training sessions

-       group information presentations and workshops

-       online courses, click here to see the date of the next ‘Cutting Edge’ Online Course