Hi, I’m Dr Eric Cobb of Z-HealthPerformance and today we’re going to talk about using breathing to make all of your exercise and movement better. if you are new to Z-Health, we are a brain-based education company that specializes in working with doctors therapists, and coaches from around the world. So if you find this interesting make sure to subscribe to the channel or check out our stuff online.
Breathing is one of the most important tools that we utilize as brain-based coaches. Now if you follow the news, lots of people are talking about breathing now and all the cool stuff that it does. The thing that we want to remind you is that human beings are animals you know that improve through practice or organisms if you prefer that term that improve through practice. So what we often see is that people practice breathing laying down nice relaxed state they’re doing belly breathing. Well that’s great, but conversely we also want to make sure that our breathing is supportive of us in movement. The way that you’re going to practice this at home is very simple you’re going to start to recognize that movement is contextual and what I mean by that is if I am martial artist right and I’m moving with someone and I’m trying to avoid a jab, I might have to do that while I’m breathing in, while I’m breathing out, after I’m winded after 3 minutes and I’m panting. So what will happen is if you do not practice movement and mobility or motor control exercises in different phases of respiration,you will eventually pay the price. When you watch most people in a gym they will stretch and do their mobility work or whatever movement practice but they will do it in their most comfortable respiratory state.
So what we like to encourage you to do is to start practicing all of your movements utilizing a continuum of breath.
So here’s what I’m going to suggest that you start off with because it’s easy to feel. -Start by breathing in and out in a normal way right so you get in a nice comfortable stance you’ll start breathing normally and you’re going to go through basic cervical spine or head and neck mobility drills whatever motor control or mobility drills you like to do and you’re going to do that like I said in a normal relaxed breathing state.-Next you’re going to take a full inhale hold that and repeat those same movements now your job here is awareness. Notice if it changes how the movement feels does it change how stiff or how flexible you are.-Finally after the full inhale you’re going to do a maximal inhale and repeat those same movements.
Most people will find that as they increase the amount of air they’re taking in they’re generating more tension and so their mobility starts to degrade a little bit.
It’s really important that you develop skill in each of those phases of a breath hold or phases of of inhalation.
You’re then going to repeat those same movements whatever you’ve been doing utilizing three phases of exhale.
So you’ve already done number one just normal. You’ll then do a full exhale whatever would feel comfortable to you not maximal and go back through your same movements. Follow that up with a full maximal exhale. Blow out all of your air, hold and repeat.
Now once you have played with that with something as simple as a neck movement or a shoulder movement you then want to start trying that in things like a squat a lunge. Try adding this into a strength exercise so if I’m bench pressing or if I’m doing a bicep curl you want to practice on a maximum inhale, a full inhale, normal inhale, normal exhale, full exhale maximal exhale.
I guarantee you that if you pay attention each movement will feel slightly different, particularly in the beginning.
Your goal over time is to have the motor control movement or the exercise that you’re performing feel the same pretty much regardless of where you are in your breath cycle.
Once you have that mastered all of a sudden you will find that breathing becomes much less of an impediment to good movement whenever you are challenged in a way that was unexpected.
So this is what we talk about we talk about contextual breath work with motor control exercises or mobility work it is an incredibly simple cost you absolutely zero dollar tool that you can use to really start to improve your performance.
So give this a shot. I hope you enjoy it. We are telling people this month we’re selling our Breathing Gym so you can check that out on the website because that is a 4-Hour program that goes very deeply into how we as brain-based coaches utilize breathing for pain and for performance.
