Breathe a Better Life!

Breathe, Breathe, Breathe!!......its not only what nurses and doctors tell their patient during childbirth...trainers use those words everyday....several times over and over! Breathing is essential for not only living, but also important in order to have a great workout.

Lets take a deeper look how to improve your workouts and your life with proper breathing. As you may already know some of the downfalls of improper breathing include:

· Dizziness
· Numbness
· Anxiety
· Shoulder, neck pain
· Stiff muscles
· Chest pain
· Mental Fog

According to breathing expert Dr Andrew Weil “We are taught to suck in our guts and puff out our chests, which causes the muscles to tense and respiration rate to increase. As a result, we are a nation of shallow "chest breathers," who primarily use the middle and upper portions of the lungs. Babies breathe from the belly, but with age, most people shift from this healthy abdominal breathing to shallow chest breathing.”

Stop and smell the roses! You will see significant improvement in your workouts as well as decrease your stress levels. Here are some highlights of proper breathing:

· Supplying oxygen for your energy production pump
· Improves concentration and focus
· Feeds the working muscle with constant and sufficient oxygen to contract efficiently without fatiguing too quickly
· Reduces stress
· Reduces blood pressure
· Increases metabolism, which can help in digestion and weight loss

Among those mentioned above are far more benefits to breathing properly….so how do you breath property? Lets look at breathing techniques both during a workout and while at rest:

During workout:
Inhale during the easiest part of the exercise. For example, during a bicep curl, you should inhale right when you pause and while lowering the weight. Exhale when you are raising the dumbbells, which would be the hardest part of the exercise.
Maintain a rhythm that is neither too fast or too slow which can lead to hyperventilation or dizziness, respectively.

While at rest:
Here is an excellent plan to tranquilize your nervous system:
(The following plan was suggested by Dr. Andrew Weil--an expert in natural health and proper breathing techniques.)

You can do this laying down or sitting up with your back straight. Make sure to place the tip of your tongue against the ridge of tissue just behind your upper front teeth, and keep it there throughout the exercise.

1.) Exhale completely through your mouth, making a whoosh sound.
2.) Close your mouth and inhale quietly through your nose to a mental count of four.
3.) Hold your breath for a count of seven.
4.) Exhale completely through your mouth, making a whoosh sound to a count of eight.
5.) This is one breath. Now inhale again and repeat the cycle three more times for a total of four breaths.

Make sure that you always inhale quietly through your nose and exhale through your mouth (loudly). Exhalation takes twice as long as inhaling. This is the ideal exercise to incorporate right after you wake up and right before bedtime.

Try these techniques both in the gym and in your everyday life to improve your workouts as well as de-stress and enhance your life.