Sometimes I feel like I’m the only person in the whole world that make mistakes.
Last year I ended up needing a brain scan because I was pushing twice my body weight in the gym, whilst not breathing correctly. Before I took instruction on becoming a certified free-diver I was breathing in-correctly. Whilst I stayed within my breath hold limits on one occasion I surfaced after one dive with blood coming from my nose and an ear.
I’ve also run serval marathons and a couple of events longer. But in all honesty they were slow and I had a 50/50 injury rate doing them….. yep also breathing related.
For most of my adult life my breathing patterns have resulted in me being more stressed than I’ve need to be, and I’ve carried more weight than I should considering my diet and exercise.
Yes there are some foundation principals that work. But breathing needs to be fit for purpose. That is why I both test technique and ask athletes to seek guidance from their performance coaches. I will continue to be body slammed in the cage by MMA fighters (once my shoulder is recovered), I’ll run the sand dunes simulating alpine conditions, I’ll attend yoga classes, attend some Kundalini workshops, I’ll free-dive, and I will see what I can do to improve my 100meter, 400meter, 5km, 10km and marathon times in 2018, I’ll take ice baths and swim in frozen lakes, I’ll be using brain scanning EEG’s to measure the impacts on relaxation breathing and I’ll continue to seek guidance and training's from the best people I can find. In short I’m going to test and push methods to the limits. I’m going to see what works and what just sounds good, because there is a lot of advice out there that sounds good, that is actually dangerous and even lethal.
Caution - When I was at an after event drinks post a Wim Hoff ice bath and breathing training event, I got talking to a guy. He also was prone to making mistakes. Because he said he could hold his breath for almost 4 minutes with the Wim Hoff technique, when his pool cleaner broke he did some breathing and decided to dive in and see if he could fix it. Turns out it was properly broken, but because he felt comfortable he decided to stay under and push the cleaner around under water and clean it manually. Luckily his wife came to check on him, because she found him almost 15 minutes later under water….unconscious. He was exceptionally lucky, but there have been more than 3 deaths reported in just the WHM community from using their technique under water against advise. It’s easy to call this guy out as an idiot who did something stupid, but I’ve had injuries caused by dis-functional breathing and experienced undue levels of stress and inflammation of the body.
Yes we push our comfort a bit when doing breath work, but it’s in as a controlled environment as possible. Because I’ve made mistakes and injured myself I’m conservative when giving others advice. Don’t do breath hold work in water unless you are under supervision, but even then be ultra-careful and don’t use the WHM or any other form of hyperventilation. (In all seriousness people die doing this) Don’t do breath holds when driving or operating tools or machinery. This one might sound a little technical but if you are doing hypoxic training then be seated or preferably laying down whenever you are dropping your Ps02 under 80%. It’s ok to mouth breathe when your output is exceeding 85-90%. If you are lifting heavy then look into using breath to brace your core.
There are significant impacts on performance and general wellbeing by improving breath. Just be safe. (I’m mostly talking to those who push things to the extremes and then a bit extra)
Glenn
