Breathing exercises: Their utility and why people should include them
Breathing exercises intuitively seem like a form of relaxation that can be used to calm oneself down, but in this context, I am discussing static positions that you simply hold and breathe in. The Postural Restoration Institute (PRI) is best known for implementing these sorts of drills and have seen great success among its practitioners when implemented correctly. In this post I want to go over why a breathing drill is useful and why you should include them.
To begin, we must first understand a fundamental concept of the human body - the entire skeleton is connected. When we take a breath of air in, the ribcage will expand outward in all directions to accommodate the filling of the lungs. When this happens, all other bones have to respond accordingly. The bones don’t just sit idly by and not move - all bones move and react to the change in shape of the ribcage upon inhalation. The same thing happens during an exhale. I have previously established that inhalation is associated with external rotation, and that holds true here - the overall bias of the body becomes one of external rotation. Exhalation is then associated with internal rotation, and the bias of the body becomes this. As we inhale, all bones move. As we exhale, all bones move. The body does not exist in isolation. To best see this, we can begin at the ribcage and talk about the associated bony rotations as we move distally.
We are surrounded by fascia, all of which are connected - the body is one.
(Credit: Complete Anatomy app by 3D4Medical from Elsevier)
When the ribcage expands in all directions upon an inhale, the musculature between your shoulder blades (I refer to this space as the dorsal-rostral space) has to elongate to allow for the scapulae to move apart, or “protract". This gives the ribcage space to expand into. If your scapulae did not protract upon inhaling, you have limited breathing capability. When the scapulae protract, they are assuming a position of internal rotation. The proximal aspect of the humerus reacts by externally rotating. The distal aspect of the humerus will also then internally rotate. These different rotations that occur is related to the concept of relative motion. When bones can move independent of one another at a joint, the joint is said to have relative motion. The reason I break up the humerus in this example into both proximal and distal aspects is because bones can twist in a live human body. In a cadaver, we cannot fully appreciate this fact because there is no more dynamism in the body - it is a dead body. When the body is living and breathing, the characteristics are different, additionally due to the presence of water (or lack thereof in the cadavers). Due to this principle, relative motion can exist.
If the ribs all move like this, everything else has to move as well.
(Credit 3D-Yoga)
With this in mind, we can now appreciate what a breathing drill is doing for you. A breathing drill is a way for your body to reduce tension and allow for more relative motion to be present. If there is a high amount of tension in the body, the joints will lock together and move as one big unit. If the goal is relative motion, you do not want this (this would actually be favorable for producing force but that’s for another post). As humans (especially athletes), we tend to hold a lot of tension in our bodies. This can be due to the stressors we encounter in life or if we are training heavily and reinforcing a lot of compressive strategies as a result. Tension is good, but like everything in the world, too much of it is not. The same goes for mobility. What a breathing drill will do for somebody is put them in a position where there is a reduced effect of gravity, which will reduce tension in the body since we do not have to combat gravity as strongly in this case. With reduced tension, along with nice and easy breathing, we allow our skeleton to move as we inhale and exhale. We promote more relative motion in the body overall. As we are on the ground, or seated, and breathing, there is a subsequent rotation of all bones in the body in reaction to our breathing (as we have just established). This is a great strategy for somebody who is in need of more relative motion, as it provides the conditions for these opposing rotations to occur. If you feel really tense, consider using some PRI breathing drills to help reduce that tension.
where to include this in a program
When it comes to workout programs, I typically include these drills within the warm-up, as one of the first things done. These drills alone are not sufficient for training, but they provide the means to acquire more favorable changes in the body afterwards. By promoting more mobility with breathing, we are supporting the goal of a warm-up, which is to begin getting the body moving and mobile for the upcoming work. From here, I would follow up with more dynamic movements to make the warm-up come full circle.
Alternatively, breathing drills can be applied to the end of workouts to begin the recovery process. In an S&C setting, this could mean including some hook-lying positions in the final block of a lift, for example. I would hesitate to dedicate an entire block of training to just breathing exercises, but including it in a complex can be favorable for the goal of kickstarting recovery. Either way, you can take some time post-exercise to do a couple of breathing drills just to cool-down.
