Proper breathing is critical for making gains in the gym. Many people don’t know how to do it effectively. Just as you work on form while you lift weights, you need to work on breathing. It’s critical to that you be able to control your breathing under various circumstances.
Lots of people have problems with panic breathing and anxiety in workouts, so today was the perfect opportunity to introduce the concept of breathing ladders in an Online Coaching Group Workout. We use these ladders at Pat’s Gym to train for Oxygen (O2) Efficiency. The exercises featured were high work volume executed at moderate-to-low intensity. If you’re going to do a Breathing Ladder pick a weight, a movement, and a load and do one rep followed by one breath, then do two reps followed by two breaths, three reps followed by three breaths, etc. Breathe as much as you want while working. Breathe only the specified number of “reps” while resting. The movement must be “big” e.g. Kettlebell (or dumbbell) Snatch, KB/DB Swing, Thruster, Power Clean. The point with this type of exercise is oxygen consumption and efficiency. Big movements cause a great oxygen demand. Pull-ups do not work because the muscle mass is too small to create significant O2 demand before muscle acidity and fatigue cause work to cease.
In the Online Coaching Group Workout, I assigned everyone an appropriate weight once they decided on the movement/exercise. I picked a weight that would cause a state of “panic breathing” that teaches breath control and efficient recovery in fixed/limited time. When the combination of reps/load/movement is well matched, the Breathing Ladder will force the athlete to quit. The panic breathing style of Breathing Ladder should last around 30 minutes.
For most athletes this appears to be the time frame at which the accumulation of a variety of factors causes oxygen demand to overrun the supply chain. Longer periods in the panic-breathing zone are obtained by conscious manipulation of panic through breath control, resulting in a calm state of mind and ultimately more efficient recovery under stress. We also use these ladders to trick the athlete into doing a lot of volume that teaches efficient recovery without causing the athlete to panic-breathe. If mentally resilient enough to keep going, this can be quite an endurance effort using what one would not normally consider an endurance movement.
The standardized rest position is standing. Resting prone significantly extends the duration of the workout because recovery is much faster when the skeletal musculature is unloaded and the heart need not work as hard to circulate blood. Rest taken lying down may prevent the athlete from achieving the objective.
Everyone had a great experience with the breathing ladder and used what they learned with the ski intensity at the end.
