There’s an incredible concept in the Russian martial artist systema, which I have always loved, because whenever you actually start practicing this breathing concept, it will remind you of just how resilient you can be under physical stress. Now the idea here is we’re gonna perform something called continuous breathing.
I mean, most people go, well, I, I’m breathing all the time. Isn’t that continuous breathing? Yeah, I get it. But if you actually look at the neurology of breathing, built into our brainstem is what’s called a respiratory pause. There is a natural period when we’re breathing, where our brain actually stops firing our brainstem, they’re on stop firing. So there’s a pause and a respiration to kind of let things balance out.
Now, that is a fantastic inherent tool of the human nervous system that works great whenever we’re not under a lot of physical stress. But whenever we are under physical stress, most people respond to that stress by holding their breath, which means that they begin to extend that respiratory pause, which begins to mess up their blood gas chemistry, which impacts their resilience and their endurance. So a way to combat that is to practice a continuous breathing method. And it’s exactly what it sounds like. You’re gonna breathe in and out in one continuous flow without a pause. So I want you to set your stopwatch or whatever. Set it for one minute, and your only job for the first minute is just to breathe in through your nose, out through your mouth with no pause.
And it’s gonna feel odd because we are in most, in most cases, people are so accustomed to that brief little, okay, pause and begin my exhale, or whatever. That trying to breathe continuously can sometimes feel a little bit threatening, and that’s what you have to identify in this first minute. Does this feel weird?
Is it uncomfortable? If it is, you can change the pattern. You can breathe a little slower, you can breathe a little faster. You can increase the inhale size. You can decrease it. You have to figure out what is somewhat comfortable for you. One of the big errors I often see is that people go, they start off with these really giant inhales and really giant exhales, which take too long. And as a result, then whenever we try to do this more continuously while we’re in motion, they begin to suffer some, air hunger. So I would encourage you to kind of keep this in the 50 to 60% full inhale, 50 to 60% full exhale range, and just focus on the continuous nature of it.
Now, once you’ve done that, you wanna begin adding movement to it. The way that I will typically have people do this is grab a metronome. Don’t have to have one. If you have one, set it for about 60 beats per minute and you’re gonna begin doing simple mobility drills using a continuous breath cycle. So I begin, let’s say I’m doing cervical rotations.
I’m breathing in and there’s no pause between my inhale and my exhale. You start off with something simple like that. Maybe it’s shoulder circles.
You don’t have to make it exaggerated. You don’t have to make it make a lot of noise. This is a kind of an internal process of you paying attention to your breath while you’re moving. Now, those are simple examples. You train it using that, and then we actually want you to feel how to use this under load to improve your endurance and resilience.
So from here, the next thing I would recommend is set your timer for maybe two to three minutes and you’re gonna begin doing a body weight training cycle. And that could be something as simple as, I’m gonna do body weight squats. And then I’m gonna switch into lunges, and then I’m gonna do pushups. I don’t care what you choose, but your goal is to do three minutes of continuous, nonstop body weight exercises while maintaining the continuous breathing flow.
Now, if you’re a yoga practitioner, maybe you do that in sun salutations. If you are Pilates practitioner, maybe you do this in, you know, something, a ground series. If you’re a martial artist, maybe you are doing this while you are shadow boxing. And it’s different because we’re not trying to always exhale whenever we’re making impact.
Now all of a sudden I’m just trying to breathe continuously as I’m moving. I don’t care what you do, but I want it to begin to challenge you, challenge your endurance levels a little bit. What a lot of our students find is that when, whenever they can master this, all of a sudden they will see or feel what feels like a two to three times increase in how long they can continue an activity before they begin fatiguing.
It’s really, really fascinating and like I said, it’s tied into our physiology and the stress of movement. Our natural physiology says pause, we add some stress, some tension. That pause gets extended and all of a sudden we begin to go into air hunger. And when we go in air hunger, our brain’s like, ah, that’s threatening.
Let’s stop. Continuous inhale exhale is in an amazing way to solve that problem. It is a technique that is absolutely worth spending time on ’cause when you master it, I think you’re gonna see a huge change. So give it a shot, let us know how it goes for you.
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