Would you run with a tape on your mouth to improve your perfomance?

Thanks for the informative post.

I have the functional equivalent of a piece of tape over my mouth every night while I sleep, for the whole time. Mine is an oral device that seals off the mouth just behind the lips and allows absolutely no air into the mouth while wearing the dental appliance. It was prescribed by a dentist who specializes in treating sleep disorders, in my case, sleep apnea. I have worn it while sleeping for over a year now, no problem. It cuts down snoring to just about to nothing in my case.

It works really well (with noticeable improvement in minimizing the sleep apnea) but I cannot say that it has improved running performance in any way.

As i said before, I did read a book (on the recommendation of the dentist), and the book ("The Oxygen Advantage") has a whole chapter's worth of running exercises to promote nasal breathing. I tried them and felt they were good exercises backed up by sound reasoning, though I haven't continued with them at all.

Oh absolutely, I would do this! If I was frikkin' retarded and believed it would benefit me.

Alex Hutchinson looked into the science of nose breathing, as it relates to athletics performance, in his Sweat Science column . Here's the relevant takeaways:

outsideonline.com

The Cold, Hard Evidence on Better Breathing for Athletes

mmirhashem

There’s plenty of hype about ways of boosting your respiratory system. Some—but not all—of it is real, according to a new review.

Link:www.outsideonline.com/health/training-...

... some interesting evidence that breathing through your nose generates higher levels of nitric oxide, which in turns dilates blood vessels and potentially helps keep airways relaxed and open. Whether this leads to clinically significant health improvements remains an open question, but it’s plausible.

Does this mean you should breathe only through your nose during exercise? The first objection is that most people can only manage to breathe through their nose up to about 80 percent of VO2max, beyond which they experience the “unacceptable sensation of air hunger.” That said, there’s evidence that you can habituate over time to become able to stick with nasal breathing at higher intensities, perhaps even maximal effort.

Let’s assume for the moment that you can breathe through your nose during exercise. Should you? There have only been a few small studies, and they produced conflicting results about whether nasal breathing offers any advantages. Overall, Illidi and Tiller conclude that breathing through your nose is probably feasible, but there’s “little to no data” supporting the idea that it’s useful for athletes.

Anecdotally, I've been a "mouth breather" for much of my adult life. Particularly while sleeping. I always put it down to being chronically congested due to allergies. And I would always breathe with my mouth while running, for the same reasons. But it would seem I got the cause and effect mixed up.

After getting sick a lot in the last couple of years (children in daycare increases your exposure to bugs exponentially, and I just couldn't cope!) I came across some stuff on nose breathing. Including Nestor's book Breathe, which was quoted above.

This motivated me to try and switch to nose breathing only. At first it was a struggle, especially at night. I was often congested and felt like I wasn't getting enough air. And breathing through my nose during my easy runs had me constantly shooting snot rockets to try and clear up the nasal cavity.

It took a few weeks before I stopped feeling blocked, and a few months before sticking to nose breathing in (almost) all situations started feeling natural. Especially during my runs, it felt laborious for a long time. But eventually it just clicked.

I don't know if this has helped me avoid being sick or not. But overall I feel better in general for my nose and sinuses not being congested all the time. And I've had my longest stretch of training uninterrupted by sickness in several years, since making the change. That could be entirely coincidental, of course.

As for the opening post, I still allow breathe through my mouth during workouts and races. It's actually a fairly good metric of intensity control. If I can't comfortably stick to nose breathing, I'm probably running too hard for a non-workout effort. Whereas while I'm running faster, I still get that “unacceptable sensation of air hunger” Hutchinson references, and I've not tried to adjust to that. So far, anyways.

Twenty years ago, John Doulliard wrote Body Mind Sport, which recommends nasal and diaphragmatic breathing, claiming that it allows athletes to get into "the zone."

The zone thing never worked for me, nor could I breath in and out completely through the nose while running, but I did modify my breathing to breathe mostly out through the nose by contracting my abs. I still do it today. In fact, I practice it when running fast intervals. I can't say for sure that it made me faster.

I read The Oxygen Advantage and tried the technique for a couple of weeks, but I couldn't see a benefit so I quit.

Look at W 100m sprinters and some W 100M H, a lot of them practice not breathing through their mouth, shut forcefully, why do you think they do so?

because they don't need more oxygen. Like when you are on you computer at home you probably only breathe with the nose. You can do short sprints without breating at all!