Just Breathe.
A few weeks ago as I was chatting to a TSF member and friend about a few topics centred around training, mental fortitude, mental health and how they relate with one another for me and for many of the people around me. She suggested I explore these ideas further and make a blog post. So here I am.
First and foremost I am not a psychologist. I am just a guy who has dedicated his adult life to date to powerlifting. I hope to dedicate many more years to the sport as well. The anecdotes that I go into throughout this blog series contain stories of my life.
Right now, I am at home after a weekend of coaching at a powerlifting meet. I’ve got the “post coaching blues” which I fall in to after most days that I spend comp-day coaching— asking myself what I can do better, what I can learn from, where did I go wrong, am I good enough to continue coaching, am I providing the best value to my clients, etc. These thoughts are not reflective of how I show up all the time. However, my attitude of constantly wanting to better myself has admittedly led me to frequent, often constant feelings that I am not good enough. So this one is for those who also struggle with this.
Just Breathe.
"And breathe deep into your belly and hold for 1, 2, 3, 4 and exhale for 1, 2, 3, 4."
This for me is the soothing voice I hear whenever I can be bothered waking up at 5.30am to go to yoga. And the first thing that comes to my mind when screening new clients is how they breathe. First of all I take pride in breathing, and I want you to as well. If you aren’t breathing then we’ve got some big problems.
Breathing is something that we do that is both conscious and unconscious. We have the autonomy to control our breath at will and when we forget, the body will automatically do this for us as we require oxygen to survive. No shit. However, breathing can play an integral part in how one regulates stress, it plays a part in athletic performance, and it can even calm you down.
Now before going into the deep dive of how important breathing is I want to explain what I mean by breathing and how this applies to strength training.
Breathing in Powerlifting.
I want you to place your hands on your belly and try to take a breath into your belly, if you do this correctly you will notice that your hands on your belly will be moving outwards. This is called diaphragmatic breathing.
Before learning about diaphragmatic breathing I was probably breathing into the top of my lungs about 95% of the time. This is where the breath comes to the chest and the chest expands. There is anything inherently wrong with shallow chest breathing, however learning to breathe into your diaphragm is a useful skill to have.
When you hear advice about squatting and deadlifting, a lot of the time you will hear that you need to keep a straight back, or something along these lines to avoid back pain, etc. Why? When our body is under loads eg, while performing a deadlift, the bar will try to pull us out of position ie, by rounding our back. We can better hold position and resist being “pulled out” of position by the bar with a tight and proper breath and brace.
Will you be 100% guaranteed no back pain if you learn to breathe? Of course not. What I can say is that not learning how to breathe and brace effectively is doing you a disservice.
After we learn how to breathe diaphragmatically we want to then create intra-abdominal pressure. To explain this as best I can I want you to breathe into your belly and try and push all the air out as hard as you can against your belly and pretend someone is about to punch you in your gut (that’ll get the core working). When you do that, do you feel how tight and rigid your core feels? This is what we want to achieve when we are bracing ourselves when we are lifting.
Now to tie it all back together.
I want you to imagine a coke can that hasn’t been opened and is still tight? If I stand and put my body weight on it, what would happen? Not a lot really, it's been pressurised to withstand my weight.
Now imagine you have an empty coke can with the lid that’s been opened. If I stand on it, what's going to happen? “Squish”!
Breathing and bracing makes your trunk the unopened coke can.
Not breathing and bracing, and you’re the opened coke can.
Now we’re getting a better picture of why this is important for lifting weights, especially heavy ones. I am being a little dramatic here. The human body is heavily adaptable and will not just crumble like a coke can if we load it up a barbell and chuck it on your back. However bracing correctly will help to avoid shear forces on your spine (the movement of each vertabrae while under load). And that is what can impact back pain.
Breathing, just day to day, in life.
One of the beautiful things about breathing is that it can help us regulate stress and calm us down. Have you ever been told “go outside and take a breath of fresh air?” Or have you been someone who smokes and vapes? Breathing…
When we learn to regulate our breathing we can help to destress our body. If we pair breathing with some strength training or even swimming, running or a physical activity like boxing where we need to be deliberate with our breathing, physical activity can be an especially powerful stress reliever.
When we are stressed from external factors and we don’t realise it, our breathing pattern can change to become fast and shallow, which can up-regulate our nervous system causing heightened feelings of anxiousness. If we can consciously control our breathing to instead breathe deeply into you diaphragm, this can assist profoundly with reducing stress and anxiety.
When we focus more intently on our breathing, we permit ourselves to be more fully present in the current situation. I struggle to stress about that assignment that’s due in two days while I’m in the middle of breathing and bracing for a deadlift. And I mean, I like being conscious that I’m breathing. It means I’m alive and I’m grateful to be alive, even when situations arise that I don't want to be going through.
Ever been told not to stress when you’re stressed? Hard to do aye? Instead, try to just Breathe.
