Supplementing Your Summer: Just breathe

 

Most runners, says Solkin, are "chest breathers"-not "belly breathers." To help her clients see the difference, she has them run a mile at a pace that gets them huffing a bit. Then she has them stop and place one hand on their abdomen and one hand on their chest and watch. The lower hand should move with each breath, while the upper hand should remain relatively still (usually the opposite occurs). "Every time you breathe in, your belly should fill up like a balloon," says Solkin (see "Breathe Right"). "And every time you breathe out, that balloon should deflate. When you chest breathe, your shoulders get tense and move up and down. That's wasted energy-energy you should conserve for running." 

Okay, so breathing is definitely important.  Not only is it part of what is keeping you alive, it can also consume a lot of the energy that it helps create.  Here's an exercise.  Lie down and feel yourself breathe for awhile.  Put one hand on your chest and one hand on your belly.  You feel that?  Now stand up again, and voila!  Your breathing is back in your chest.

Well, ideally, you should be breathing from your belly.  How do you do this?  If you're a singer, you can basically skip this part.  Some athletes might already know this too.  It was important to first learn good posture because, chances are, if you're standing up tall, your ribs are wide open.  Try standing up tall with your shoulders back so that your arms match the seams on your clothes.  Now put your hands on your ribs and pull your shoulders up as high as they'll go.  Do you feel how your ribs expand.  Now drop your arms and see if you can "close" your ribcage, as in try to make it as small as you can (you may find your abdominal muscles engaging).  Well, for breathing purposes, it'd be pretty hard to keep your ribs as wide as they are when your shoulders are up, but you don't want your ribcage to be closed for effective breathing.

Try to expand your ribs without using a huge gasp of air to do so.  (Remember, your back should be straight, your shoulders back, and your chest up.)  Now start breathing without moving your ribs in and out or your chest up and down.  Lie down again if you need to get the feel for breathing in your belly.

Again, this is something that is going to take time getting used to.  But say you take a long car ride - practice!  What better time?  You're not doing much else!

Abdominal Breathing why and how 

If you have any further tips or need me to clarify something, just comment!

Next we'll take about walking and running

~Meggy


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