Running is a complete exercise in itself. If you regularly hit the trail, you get to keep yourself in shape and take care of your mental well-being. Today, when we are deeply plagued with the sedentary lifestyle, many people only think about running when their expanding waist and visibly increasing weight start worrying them. For all those not regular with running, more than musculoskeletal strength, it is poor breathing that makes it difficult for them to run for the intended distances.
One must keep in mind that no matter how physically strong you are, you are most likely to go out of breath after a couple of paces if you don't know how to breathe when you run. If you strive to run better, and improve your distance with each day, keep reading this post.
Here, we will discuss how some breathing exercises and respiratory training devices can help you achieve better inhalation and exhalation pattern during running. This information will also come handy if you need to know how to breathe when jogging.
Why We Go Out of Breath While Running?
Before we move on to discuss tips that can improve our breathing while sprinting, it is imperative to discuss why shortness of breath happens in the first place. Without getting into the details of molecular biology and physiology, we will try to explain the shortness of breath during running with these simple pointers.
- The running underlines the increased physical activity of an individual.
- Increased physical activity leads to the accumulation of carbon dioxide in the body.
- As the homeostatic response, the nervous system directs the respiratory system to increase the oxygen intake for neutralizing the higher levels of CO2.
- The respiratory system increases the frequency of inhalation and exhalation, resulting in fast breathing.
- When the breathing pattern exceeds a certain threshold, we start panting that couples feel out of breath.
Identify Your Breathing Pattern and Do Deep Breathing
If you are worried and perturbed with shortness of breath spoiling your running regimen, the first thing you need to do is identify your breathing pattern. Breathing is an involuntary action of the body. We do it all the time but still don't know it is essentially being carried out.
If you want to know how to breathe when you run, you need to understand how you breathe in general. A simple exercise can help you understand and then improve your breathing.
- Lie down on your back on any flat surface.
- Put one hand on your chest and the other on the belly.
- Take a few breaths and try to notice how these breaths are moving your chest and belly.
You will notice that your regular breathing activity is happening more inside the chest cavity than the stomach. It indicates shallow breathing. Now, you need to move the part of breathing to the belly for filling your lungs with optimal oxygen volume. To do this:
Inhale deeply through the nose as much as possible to fill the chest, mid-chest, and belly. Then, exhale through the mouth. Do this exercise in reps and increase them from 10, 20, to 30. The exercise will activate your diaphragm, will move you from shallow chest to deep belly breathing, and improve your overall breathing capacity while running.
Employ Deep Breathing When Running
Once you have mastered deep belly breathing, implement it in your runs. It is better if you start deep breathing in parts. This means only breathe through the nose in the beginning and end of the run and then gradually expand it through the run's length.
Improve Mouth Breathing for Intense Running
Deep breathing can only help you in light running and jogging. If you want to sprint on full throttle, you need to control breathing while running. One way of controlling your breath to run better is to use your mouth for respiration. The mouth can take in and out more amount of air in one respiratory cycle than the nostrils. The mouth doesn't warm the air or filters it like nostrils. However, it is better to inhale unfiltered and cold air than depriving your body of oxygen while steaming in at full speed.
Besides improving your mouth breathing on runs, you can work on it at home as well with a respiratory training device like Orygen Dual Sport Valve . This breathing device lets you control your breath through the mouth by changing the valve chamber's air pressure. As a result, you get to train your inspiratory and expiratory muscles at the same time. This doesn't just help you improve your mouth breathing. The respiratory muscle strength will also improve your nostrils breathing as well.
By improving your belly breathing and complementing it with deep mouth respiration, you can run more miles without experiencing shortness of breath. Get in touch with us if you want to know how the DIY breathing trainer devices can improve your respiratory health for better running and jogging.