Breathing Tips

[nats100]

So I am on Week 2 run 2, and making good progress after having to have a short break due to a knee injury. However whenever I start thinking about my breathing using the counting technique mentioned in the app (counting 4 steps breathing in, 4 steps breathing out) it makes it much harder. Am I just overthinking it, or is there a better technique that I could be using?

[damienair Graduate]

Don't think about it and just breath normally. Forget about technique. It's difficult at the start as you are gasping for air, but after a few weeks your breathing will be fine, it sorts itself out. Amazingly it all comes together in the end.

[misswobble Graduate]

Yep, I'd say you are. Just breathe normally without even thinking, as you normally do

Go nice and slowly. If you run too fast your breathing will get ragged. The beauty of this programme is that slow really is best 🙂👍

[davelinks Graduate]

Well done! Just breathe in out in out.. it should get easier as you get more used to running. Try and remember to breathe deeply sometimes, through mouth or nose, ideally through nose, but most of us mouth breathe, watch out for the flies with mouth open! Make sure you're not running too fast for your fitness, that makes breathing harder, so, slow n steady😊

[Hidden]

I think the breathing technique you describe is probably not meant to be taken as gospel.

The reason why breathing techniques are often discussed is not to set a breathing rule. As far as I know, there are no breath police They are often recommended purely to make you aware of your breathing so that you can control it better.

Too often, we breath too shallow, only utilising a small proportion of our lungs, which means no matter how much we train, unless we sort that out, we'll never achieve our full potential. Breathing exercises serve no purpose other than to get you into the habit of using your full lung capacity. Some work to a count. That could never work for me, because then you're actively fighting against you're own body. Personally for me (and it's going to be different for everyone) I make no attempt to control the speed of my breathing because I don't want to faint. Instead I try to keep the belly relaxed (and tense belly means more pressure opposing your breathing) and simply try to breath smoothly using the full range between inhale and exhale.

I train in martial arts. For a good while I was unintentionally holding my breath during certain moves. Needless to say that didn't really work out for me. So I made the conscious effort to breath properly. It helps loads. But in martial arts you'll often here people making all sorts of silly noises. We are taught that there's many reasons for this, but I have my own theory. I think by deliberately making the exhale audible, we draw our own attention to our breathing. I'm not suggesting that next time you go for a run you should roar like a lion or shriek like a startled baboon on ever step, but if you hear or feel the steady and fairly rapid outlet of air on the exhale, you will become much more aware of your own breath, and maybe get into the habit of using your full lung capacity.

[nikkiwabit Graduate]

We have had previous posts on this and the consensus seems to be don't think about it. Someone said you have been breathing all your life, just keep doing it and as long as you don't go blue you are doing it right. Breathing is easier when you relax and when you think about it you tense up (this is more obvious in new swimmers btw - though you do need to think about when to breath a bit in water lol).

There probably is a "good way" but at the start, there is plenty of other stuff to think about, like keep putting one foot in front of another!

[nats100]

Thank you all for your tips, I will make sure next run that I am running slow and not overthinking it!