Are You Breathing Improperly?

Breathing

Here’s a little test I want you to do sitting right at your computer:

Put one hand on your chest and one hand on your belly and just breathe naturally. Which hand moves more for you? The one on the chest or the one on the belly?

Don’t read any further, it’s very important that you do this test without knowing what we’re looking for, so do it now.

I’ll wait.

If you’re breathing into your belly, pat yourself on the back. That’s the way you should be breathing.

But if you find yourself breathing into your chest, you may be setting yourself up for a host of problems.

How Improper Breathing can Cause Tightness

Do you have a chronic sensation of tightness in your body? Is it in your neck? Shoulders? Lower back? Backs of your legs (hamstrings)? Do you have a constant urge to stretch the muscles that feel tight? If you do stretch those muscles, chances are you feel some temporary relief, and then a few hours or even minutes later, those areas continue feeling tight. Why? Because you haven’t addressed the underlying cause of your tightness: faulty breathing mechanics.

So how do faulty breathing mechanics cause all this tightness? I’ll show you rather than tell you. Put one hand on your neck. Now take a deep breath into your chest (on purpose). What do you feel your neck muscles doing when you inhale into the chest? Chances are you feel those muscles contract (shorten). Now repeat the test, but breathe into the belly (a normal breath, not an exaggerated one). Now what do you feel in your neck? Chances are you feel nothing. The muscle tension in there doesn’t really change.

The neck is just an example, but the same reactions happen in the muscles of the chest, the shoulders, the lower back and even the hamstrings.

If you chronically breathe into the chest, those muscles chronically shorten, and you get this chronic feeling of stiffness.

You can stretch your tight muscles until the cows come home, but until you correct your breathing, any corrective efforts will be useless, and you won’t be able to get rid of that sensation of tightness.

Other Effects of Poor Breathing

I’ve been told to keep my newsletters short, so I won’t go into detail on the below points, but here are some other effects of faulty breathing mechanics:

• Lower back pain
• Fat loss resistance
• Poor endurance
• Low energy throughout the day
• Digestive problems

Perhaps in future newsletters, I’ll elaborate on those points.

So How Can I Correct my Faulty Breathing Mechanics?

The solution is fairly simple. Here is what you do:

Lie down for 5 minutes (this can be done first thing when waking up, or as your lying in bed before you fall asleep), and put one hand on the belly and the other hand on your chest. Simply focus on making the hand on the belly move and keep the hand on the chest as steady as possible.

This drill should be done every day, ideally twice a day for at least 3 weeks. By that point, you should naturally be breathing into your stomach.

It also helps if you set yourself little reminders throughout the day, like a little message on your iphone/blackberry that asks you at regular intervals “how is my breathing?”

Try this for 3 weeks, and let me know what you find.

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Until next week,

Igor

www.torontofitnessonline.com

647-271-8672