Poor Breathing Also Distorts Posture
If you’re not yet convinced that you need to learn to breathe right, here’s another good reason: Since the muscles of your shoulders aren’t built to work as breathing muscles all of the time, using them this way overstresses them. Overstressed muscles develop knots, and get short and tight. In addition to being painful, short tight shoulder muscles can also distort your posture. When your upper back and shoulder muscles get tight, they rotate your arms inward and pull your shoulders forward. This causes your upper spine to bend forward. Your head follows along, and also moves forward. These patterns of postural distortion can then contribute to neck and back pain, in addition to just plain looking bad. Poor posture is endemic these days, and bad breathing technique is a big part of the cause. Changing the way you breathe won’t immediately improve your posture in and of itself, but it will help prevent your posture from getting worse. Once you start breathing properly, most postural distortion patterns you do have can be easily corrected with exercise. Check out our Improving Posture and Alignment tutorial for more.
Breathing seems like such a simple, innocuous thing that it’s hard to believe improper breathing techniques can cause so many problems. But, ultimately, everything our bodies do depends on oxygen, so it isn’t really surprising that our bodies should be so sensitive to blood oxygen levels. In addition, we take over 25,000 breaths per day. With so many repetitions, it makes sense that any problems with the mechanics of breathing can have profound effects on the health of the muscles involved. (Imagine what doing 25,000 improper biceps curls each day would do to yoru arm muscles)
Hopefully we’ve convinced you that learning how to breathe properly is worth your while. So how do you get started?
Learning to Breathe Right
As discussed, a proper breath is taken into the stomach using the muscles of the diaphragm. The first step to learning how to breathe into your stomach is to gain control over the diaphragm and the other muscles of your abdominal wall. You can begin practicing controlling your abdominal wall with an exercise called the tummy vaccum.
Perform the tummy vaccum on all four with your wrists held directly under your shoulders and your knees directly under your hips. Keep your spine straight, being careful not to arch your lower back. Begin the tummy vaccum by letting your abdominal wall fall towards the ground. Try to expand your abdomen as much as possible, like kids do when making a "big belly".
While expanding your abdomen towards the floor try not to move your lower back. When you've expanded your abdomen as far as you can (Position 1), reverse this motion, and suck your stomach in as far as you can. When you've drawn your stomach in as far as possible (Position 2), switch directions again, dropping your abdominal wall back towards Position 1, Repeat this sequence for a few minutes a few times per day to gain better control over your abdominal muscles.
It's best to perform the tummy vaccum in front of a mirror so you can watch your form. Do this exercise shirtless or in a sports bra so you can see your stomach and back in the mirror. Try to focus on letting your abdomen fall down towards the ground without moving your back in any way. Most people initially have a tough time dropping their abdomen down without moving their lower back (if you look closely, our model arched her lower back in the photo in Position 1 - try not to!!!). You don’t have to get it perfect the first time, but you should concentrate on moving your lower back as little as possible.
In addiiton, try to make the movement in the tummy vaccum as smooth as possible. At first, your abdominal wall may move up and down in fits and starts. Try to keep the motion slow and even. Once you've got the hang of moving your abdominal wall in and out smoothly, you're ready to integrate this motion with breathing.
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