Second week of our educational program is over and along with that we have also finished the compulsory part of the BASIC block. 36 interesting and useful info-posts of more general character are waiting for you in the next days and meanwhile I suggest to make a summary of the past 7 days:
Day 8. Calorie balance</url>
Day 9. Proteins, Fats and Carbohydrates (Part I)</url>
Day 10. Proteins, Fats and Carbohydrates (Part II)</url>
Day 11. Proteins, Fats and Carbohydrates (Part III)</url>
Day 12 Glycemic index</url>
Day 13 “Tags”: ready-to-use food plan</url>
Day 14 Diet as a lifestyle</url>
Now let’s get back to the point. The first thing I’d like to tell you about is proper breathing during the exercises. Surely, we had already touched this issue in our info-posts on <url="">pull-ups</url>, <url="">push-ups</url> and <url="">squats</url>, but in our experience, it should have been presented in a separate info-post, so you can properly digest the information, so to say.
Proper breathing
I suppose, everyone knows that you have to breathe properly during a workout. Unfortunately, a lot of people, and especially beginners, instantly forget about it during their training and start to breathe randomly or even hold their breath during the exercise stress (and it’s not good). At the same time, just proper breathing, which is synchronized with the exercise process, can let you significantly increase efficiency and improve the results of your training.
Here are the common rules of breathing during the exercises:
[1] take a breath before the start of an exercise (and each repetition during it);
[2] exhale during positive phase of an exercise;
[3] inhale during negative phase of an exercise;
Example: Pull-ups. Come to a bar and put your hands on it. Take a breath. Start to contract your muscles (by pulling your body up) and at the same time start to exhale. Ideally, at the top point all air should be exhaled. Then start to straighten your hands and inhale the air, while lowering your body down. At the bottom point inhale the volume of air needed.
It’s hard for me to say something about the depth of breathing, but it should be comfortable and, obviously, it depends on tempo of execution (there will be an info-post on this issue too). I mean, the faster the tempo, the less volume of air you can breathe in/breathe out (just to have time to do an exercise) and vice-versa.
By the way, a few words about recommendation on breathing through the nose. There are 2 main reasons for that:
- This method allows you to heat inhaled air, so lowering the risk of overcooling – and at the same time the warm air is kept inside (what is important for the cold time of year).
- Also nasal mucosa and tiny hairs filters the air to sieve out the dust and microbes;
At the same time, if you’re exhaling with your mouth, it can help you to let the air out faster.
Also, it should be noted that proper breathing depends on type of an exercise that you do.
Strength exercises, which we do in our 100-day workout program.
It’s recommended to make an exhale at the time of the maximum muscular effort and inhale, while the muscle effort is the least.
Always remember that the breath holding is prohibited. The thing is during an inhale the intra-abdominal and arterial pressure increases as well as physical load on the cardio-vascular system. Obviously, an additional load from a performing exercise would be unnecessary. Moreover, it’s easier to concentrate an effort during an exhalation. Therefore, if you start to notice that you’re holding your breath, this means that the current exercise is too difficult for you and you have to decrease exercise intensity.
Stretching exercises. This group contains all different kinds of bending exercises, rotations, swings, hands and legs circling movements, basically all exercises that are usually included into warming-up. It also includes the exercises for flexibility development.
Relaxation (stretching) of muscles should be done during an exhalation, while returning to start position should be done during inhalation respectively.
Cyclic exercises. Walking, running, bicycling, swimming etc. All these exercises can be classified as aerobic.
In such exercises it’s very important to catch a rhythm of breathe, which would correspond to the movements and try to follow it. Irregular, with pauses, or on the contrary, hurried breathing can break the rhythm of running, cause the problems with coordination and doesn’t provide the proper lung ventilation.
<url="http://workout.su/100DW">100 Days WorkOut - Contents</url>
