Breathing, Bracing & Strength Training
Breathe Motherf****r Breathing is an essential component of, well, everything. Don’t breathe and things tend to go wrong pretty quickly. When it comes to moving heavy weights, how you breathe determines how stable the movement will be, and how much force you will be able to produce. In the fitness industry, at least when I was going through my level 3 qualification, you are taught to,‘breathe in on the way down/in, and breathe out on the way up/out.’ At the outset, this can be a good starting point for many beginner regressions of exercises and for using resistance machines. As well as when it comes to learning compound movements with lighter weights. However, it is not the ideal way for teaching breathing mechanics when it comes to maintaining stability under the heaviest weights. In the next section, I will highlight how to increase stability through the role of core bracing and intra-abdominal pressure. But first, I want to expand - pun intended - on how our breathing helps cre...