There are lots of things we can teach you about running as part of the Running Skills series, but did you think breathing would be one of them? Probably not, but these tips that will help you with your breathing while running will have benefits to your overall training and could even, according to studies, help stave off injury.
The main reason our bodies need to respire is actually to remove carbon dioxide and not to take in oxygen and, although breathing is the most natural process to us as humans – we do it every day without giving it much, or any, thought – when you start running, it can be one of the trickiest things to master.
This is because the very nature of running means you get out of breath with the extra exertion.
When you’re at rest, the average person’s lungs move about 0.5 litres of air with each breath. That amount jumps to around three litres during vigorous exercise like running, so you can see why breathing when running can be a bit trickier. Remember that exercise increases the efficiency of our respiratory system, but it won’t significantly increase your lung capacity. This article will give you lots of handy tips and techniques to control your breathing while running.
In, out, in, out…
First of all, it’s important to note that if you are having real trouble with breathing when you run, it could be down to your level of fitness, especially as a beginner. It’s normal to feel out of breath to start with because your cardiovascular system needs to play catch-up, but it does get easier.
If you’re asthmatic or it feels really difficult though, it’s worth speaking with a medical professional, who can make sure there are no underlying causes.
Breathing comes totally naturally to us as humans in everyday life, but a lot of new runners have trouble regulating their breath while running because they hit their ‘ventilatory threshold’. This is the point at which you can’t breathe deeply or quickly enough to fulfil your body’s demand for oxygen. Once you near this point, your body’s stress response kicks in, causing you to panic. If you think about when you struggle to breathe, you tend to be breathing from high up in your chest, with short, sharp breaths and moving the upper rib cage more than you should.
Good running posture will help you breathe well
When you’re running, you should use ‘diaphragmatic breathing’. In other words, breaths from deep down towards your belly, rather than shallow chest breathing. Why? Well, it’s better for efficient and maximal oxygen uptake, which is all to do with your VO2 Max. You might have seen this measurement on your fitness watch or tracker and wondered what the number means. VO2 Max measures how much oxygen in millilitres you breathe in while exercising as hard as you can. The more oxygen you take in, the more energy your body can use.
The diaphragm is a dome-shaped muscle beneath the lungs. Diaphragmatic breathing is much more efficient for runners because it works by engaging the diaphragm to create more space in your chest cavity, therefore allowing your lungs to expand fully to take in more oxygen.
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