Studying Breathing Techniques for Exercise

The exercise descriptions in this blog don’t include breathing instructions because too many extra instructions amounts to information overload. Nevertheless, proper breathing technique is important, so to spare you the overkill, we’re only going to say this once. You’ll thank us later. But don’t forget to breathe. Promise? Okay. Here are the general rules:

• Inhale deeply through your nose to bring in a fresh oxygen supply during the less difficult part of an exercise (such as when you lower the weight during a bench press). Inhaling provides the spark of energy for your next repetition.
• Exhale deeply through your mouth during the most difficult part of the exercise, also known as the exertion phase or the sticking point. During the bench, for example, pressing the bar up is the exertion phase, so exhale as the bar travels upward.

Exhaling protects your lower back by building up pressure that acts as a girdle to hold your spine in place. Exhaling also ensures that you don’t hold your breath so long that you pass out. Before the hard-core weight lifting contingency sends irate letters, note that these breathing directions are for non-maximal lifts. World-class powerlifting isn’t discussed here. If you plan to compete in powerlifting, you need to use a slightly different breathing technique than the one described above. Because we don’t think that many of you plan to enter such competition (at least not immediately), we won’t bore you with the details.