Breath Training: An Essential Guide for Getting Started

by Joe Somodi, Mental Performance Coach

This article gives your athletic mindset a broad picture of the various elements of breath training through the lens of the Oxygen Advantage® (OA) method which I am a certified instructor. If you are asking, what will it take to train your breathing, then read on. 

Breath Awareness: The First Step Towards Optimal Function

Breath training begins with awareness building, which is the foundation of the journey. It is not just about understanding how and why the body breathes but also about tuning into your habitual breathing pattern. However, becoming aware of your breath is more challenging than it seems. With most of our daily responsibilities pulling our focus outward, we need to remember the importance of turning our focus inward. As an experienced athlete, you may think that you are body-conscious, but chances are your breath has not been on your radar enough to notice if it's functioning optimally. Doctors and other health practitioners, such as sports psychologists, rarely test breath health, even though it significantly influences the inner wealth of your body and mind. By disregarding breath health, you miss an opportunity to capitalize on the one part of your autonomic nervous system that is in your control. This is important because you experience life through the feelings in your nervous system, and building your capacity to become more aware of the 20,000 breaths you take each day will profoundly change how you experience yourself and the world around you.

Nasal Breathing and Its Benefits: How to Identify and Correct Mouth Breathing

The next step in breath training is creating the habit of nasal breathing, which offers numerous benefits over mouth breathing. Although there are too many to list, here's a short list to pique your interest:

·      Filtration, humidification, and warming of air

·      Nasal nitric oxide production

·      Diaphragmatic breathing and oxygenation

(you can read more about the important functions of the nose here)

So, when do you find yourself mouth breathing? You may be surprised to learn that it happens more often than you think, such as when you're typing on the computer, reading emails on your phone, listening to a friend, or watching TV. In fact, mouth breathing can even occur during sleep, and this is most likely due to the fact that you are mouth breathing during the day. Breath training involves being consciously aware of your mouth breathing and ensuring that you keep it shut when you're not talking or eating.

In addition to keeping your mouth shut, proper tongue posture is also essential for long-term breath health. This involves resting the majority of your tongue on the roof of your mouth and allowing your teeth to gently touch. Creating this habit coincides with nasal breathing and serves as a foundation for optimizing your breath health.

Assessing Your Breath Health: The Role of Breath Tests in Identifying Areas for Improvement

The next step in breath training involves assessing the health of your breath. By evaluating your breathing through various breath tests, you can gain insight into where to focus your energy. In the OA™ method, we use the Body Oxygen Level Test (BOLT), Maximum Breathlessness Test (MBT), scientifically validated self-evaluation surveys, and first-hand observations to create a comprehensive understanding of your breath health. It's important to note that no test or evaluation is perfect, and it's unproductive to become overly obsessed with improving your BOLT and MBT scores. The tests simply serve as a helpful guide and motivator for progress. And remember, there is always room for improvement.

Even though I had been teaching and practicing for many years, I felt like my breath health was good. However, as I began training with the OA™ exercises, I discovered that there was still room for improvement. This realization served as a motivator to keep exploring. The more I practiced the exercises, the more my breath became lighter, softer, more subtle, and effortless. This tangible improvement in my breath health had a profound impact on my overall wellness and resilience – particularly mentally. In short, there is always room to optimize your breath, and the benefits are truly remarkable.

The Importance of a Consistent Training Plan: The Benefits of Having a Coach for Breath Training

There are over 30 exercises in the OA method, and while you can certainly try some on your own, having a coach to evaluate your breath health and create a focused training plan will greatly accelerate your progress. The breath is a subtle and sometimes invisible to our consciousness, and it can be difficult to self-identify areas for improvement. As a mental performance coach, my senses have been trained to observe breathing, and my own extensive practice has given me a high level of sensitivity that helps me quickly bring improvements into focus. Remember, you will need a consistent plan for optimizing your breath. We are not doing band aid work, but improving the overall habitual pattern of breathing so breath function improves so you don’t need to think or try to breath better. Also, working with a coach like myself allows you to track progress and make adaptations as needed.

The Impact of Stress on Breathing Habits: Overcoming Stress-Induced Breathing Habits

The OA method provides a comprehensive set of 30 exercises to improve breathing patterns, which often need attention. I've been teaching for 15 years and have observed thousands of individuals who lack an understanding of breathing. In my personal view, the stress of modern life only adds to the development of unhealthy breathing habits. As my teacher Patrick McKeown writes in his book, "The Oxygen Advantage," chronic stress, sedentary lifestyles, unhealthy diets, overheated homes, and lack of fitness all contribute to poor breathing habits, which can lead to various health issues such as lethargy, weight gain, sleeping problems, respiratory conditions, and heart disease (p. 72).

Stress plays a significant role in our breathing habits. When you are stressed, you tend to over breathe and resort to mouth breathing, resulting in faster-than-normal, audible, and visible breathing movements. This breathing pattern can lead to a perpetual state of fight-or-flight, with high levels of adrenaline. Even the best stress counselors, psychologists, or psychotherapists can only help their patients to a limited extent if they don't first address their dysfunctional breathing (p. 72).

Consider your fast-paced demands as a student athlete. Don't you feel it's hard to slow down? Do you feel that you are just trying to keep up, racing to meet deadlines? This leads you to breathe faster, more shallow, heavier, and noisy breathing. Stress also produces frequent sighing, another sign that your breath health needs attention. Unhealthy breathing patterns create a stressful environment within the body and mind, and contribute to sleep issues, depression, anxiety, and other disorders related to these conditions. Therefore, it's crucial to take the time to improve our breathing and find a way to integrate it into our daily routine.

Good Stress: Getting Comfortable with Discomfort

Ironically, breath training requires applying a certain amount of stress to the body to improve overall breathing function. As an athlete, you are already accustomed to challenging your body and mind to promote greater adaptation. However, breath training may cause some initial discomfort as you slow down your breathing and reduce the volume of air, creating a feeling of comfortable "air hunger." The reason for this discomfort is your familiarity with over-breathing or unconsciously training the breath receptors to be highly sensitive to carbon dioxide, the main chemical animator of oxygen. It's similar to going on a diet after gaining a lot of weight, but think of this as an air volume diet. Even talented, healthy athletes often experience air hunger when they first learn to reduce air volume and slow their breathing. But remember, this stress is beneficial and leads to adaptation that will become habitually effortless.

Finding Time for Breath Training: Making Time for Breath Training in a Busy Life

When it comes to breath training, finding time for it can often be a concern. The good news is that the exercises are designed to be seamlessly integrated into your daily routine. They can be done during gaps in your day, such as before bed or upon waking up, while commuting, walking, or studying at the library. By incorporating them into your training regimen or pre/post-game rituals, you can easily create space for them. As you progress in breath training, you will become more attuned to your breath, noticing it even during activities like listening to a professor or typing on a computer. Eventually, the breath becomes an integral part of your awareness, quieting your mind and guiding you towards better mental and physical health. This is why building awareness is the first essential step in breath training.

Parting Thoughts

As you build consistency with your awareness and exercises, you will begin to see results in just weeks, not months. This will motivate you to explore the breath's depth and power further. The potential of training your breath is boundless. In fact, in the 1930s, Edward Schneider, a pioneer of breath-holding research, described how a subject maintained a successful breath-hold for fifteen minutes and thirteen seconds. Years later, in 1959, physiologist Hermann Rahn used a combination of unusual methods, including slowing of the metabolism, hyperventilation, filling the lungs with pure oxygen, and a variety of other strategies to hold his breath for almost fourteen minutes. The current world record for breath-holding is 24 minutes and 37 seconds, held by Budimir Šobat, a professional breath-hold diver. Although these feats of breath-holding are truly amazing, I share them only to demonstrate that the breath can be trained and those changes can have profound effects on the body and mind. The OA™ method doesn't focus on the techniques that free divers use, but there are some similarities in approach; our goals are different. We focus on first improving functional  everyday breathing first and then using stronger breath holds after exhalation to improve your athletic performance.