How many people believe that thinking about your breathing actually helps

Budd Coates wrote a whole freaking book on breathing.

never trust runners world wrote:

It's come to my attention that there seems to be an considerable confidence in "breathing techniques". Two people I know who seem like reasonably smart people came out to me recently about how they believe that thinking about your breathing is actually performance enhancing. One said that its the one thing he focuses on during races. The other thinks that letting your body breathe on its own rhythm after a hard effort is "the worst thing you can do for body". You must only take deep breaths on your own.

Pls people lets get this out of the way-- we did not evolve controlling our breathing and if we did the lions and tigers would have killed us all while we were busy trying to inhale every 2 steps and exhale every 3 steps. JUST BREATHE PEOPLE.

It wouldn't surprise me if focusing on breathing makes someone otherwise distractable and poor at focusing able to settle into a rhythm better. But, then, the focus is doing the work there, not the breathing.

the last thing you should ever do is take deep breaths on purpose. Chances are you don't need them, and all they will do is expel excess CO2 from your blood. CO2 concentration is used to regulate blood vessel diameter. If it's too low, the blood vessels in working muscle won't dilate enough which impairs performance.

One of the body's ways of dealing with acidosis is overbreathing. When the blood can't clear acids fast enough, the lungs make a last-ditch effort to raise blood pH to compensate. It works for a little while but then vasoconstriction occurs and impairs working muscles, reducing your daring fast lap in the 5000 to a slow jog the next few laps, from which you can't recover until the overbreathing stops.

Bad wiggins I agree with you 100%. The science part is interesting but to me you don't even need that to understand that you will never be better off taking conscious control of your breathing. No one is better than their brains at regulating your levels of co2 O2 etc.

I was typing this late at night and forgot a whole line in my original post. I meant to say that this is what my friend believed-- she said you must only take deep breaths on your own. I told her she was crazy to which she responded she had learned this at a tennis academy where you must pay thousands of dollars to get in. Grinds my gears.

No one is better than their brains? How does that make sense?

Never trust runners world wrote:

Bad wiggins I agree with you 100%. The science part is interesting but to me you don't even need that to understand that you will never be better off taking conscious control of your breathing. No one is better than their brains at regulating your levels of co2 O2 etc.

I was typing this late at night and forgot a whole line in my original post. I meant to say that this is what my friend believed-- she said you must only take deep breaths on your own. I told her she was crazy to which she responded she had learned this at a tennis academy where you must pay thousands of dollars to get in. Grinds my gears.

Depends what you mean by controlling your breathing. It is vitally important in hard training and racing to control your pace to avoid getting out of breath.

Think again please. We are not our brains we are the mind that lies within our brains. Only 3% of our brains is conscious meaning that the other 97% is outside of our control. That 97% takes care of things of the things in our body that we don't need to take care of-- digestion, heart rate, hormones, breathing etc.

Breathing is obviously not a conscious thing and and making it such will only make you worse off.

It's not biologically or physically beneficial, but I think taking deep breaths or thinking about your breathing for a few seconds is beneficial mentally. It gives runners something to think about to take their minds off of doing something fast.

Thinking about breathing is not going to help you or hurt you. It's not a big deal.

I tend to agree that thinking too much about breathing, or breathing in a mechanical manner, does not bring about the best results. However, should at least some attention be paid to one's breathing? Does not shallow breathing cause problems? I try to breathe from the diaphragm, but I also try to avoid thinking too much about breathing.

never trust runners world wrote:

It's come to my attention that there seems to be an considerable confidence in "breathing techniques". Two people I know who seem like reasonably smart people came out to me recently about how they believe that thinking about your breathing is actually performance enhancing. One said that its the one thing he focuses on during races. The other thinks that letting your body breathe on its own rhythm after a hard effort is "the worst thing you can do for body". You must only take deep breaths on your own.

Pls people lets get this out of the way-- we did not evolve controlling our breathing and if we did the lions and tigers would have killed us all while we were busy trying to inhale every 2 steps and exhale every 3 steps. JUST BREATHE PEOPLE.

I am not sure exactly what you mean by "thinking about" breathing. That said, I can think of 2 different scenarios where I do think about breathing and it seems to help.

#1 When running intervals where I am consciously changing pace (say a 1600m where every 400m the pace changes), the thought of establishing a breathing pattern at the new/different pace is something I consider. Not for long, maybe the first 30 to 50m but since I am changing a lot of things at this time (stride, arm swing, etc.) the thought of the new breathing pattern does tend crossed my mind. I see this more of a "check" than a conscious o.k. "breath now" kind of thing.

#2 On longer tempo runs, I will consciously think about breathing from my diaphragm for a a bit - maybe 3 or 4 conscious breaths every so often. Just like sometimes I will shake out my arms or tweak my stride length, a few full, deep breaths every so often seems to be beneficial.

Not sure where this puts me on the "thinking about breathing" spectrum but I find some conscious thoughts about breathing helpful.

For what it is worth, my Mother in Law was in a doctor's office and he gave her an x-ray or did some procedure with imaging.

He said, "Why are not breathing." "Breathe"

"I can only see a grey-ish cloud or blurry image in your lungs".

"You are obstructing the process by holding your breathe in your anxiety"

So please do breathe and deliberately. On long runs I like expelling all the air and intaking; once every hour or so for about 20 inhales.

never trust runners world wrote:

It's come to my attention that there seems to be an considerable confidence in "breathing techniques". Two people I know who seem like reasonably smart people came out to me recently about how they believe that thinking about your breathing is actually performance enhancing. One said that its the one thing he focuses on during races. The other thinks that letting your body breathe on its own rhythm after a hard effort is "the worst thing you can do for body". You must only take deep breaths on your own.

Pls people lets get this out of the way-- we did not evolve controlling our breathing and if we did the lions and tigers would have killed us all while we were busy trying to inhale every 2 steps and exhale every 3 steps. JUST BREATHE PEOPLE.

My yoga instruct tells us all the time to focus on our breathing. she looks so hot in those tight yoga pants, I do what she tells me. We even close one nostril, do deep breaths with the other and then change it. makes me light-headed but that also happens when she does the downward dog right in from of me.