Question: Can you give me any instructions about proper breathing during barbell exercise
and how important is it to progress?
Answer: This ought to be an easy question to answer. It seems that all we have to do is tell the fellow how to breathe and be done with it.
However, it isn't quite that simple. You see, there is a quite a good deal of disagreement even among experts as to what correct breathing is. A few years ago we were rather dogmatic about correct breathing, believing that it was very important to breathe correctly and that there was a certain right way to breathe. Of recent years and more experiments we have found that a pupil will make about as much progress with one type of breathing as another.
There are a few exceptions to this which we will discuss later.
If you enter some gyms you will find the men without exception puffing away like steam engines and making just as much noise. This is because they are taught to breathe this way by the instructor. In another gym you will find them breathing very naturally and quietly.
Now, some instructors feel that this very noisy breathing is very beneficial and they have the fellow breathe through almost closed teeth. Some will expel the breath through the teeth in a great blast. Other instructors tell the pupil to breath through the nose only. Still others will not give breathing any consideration at all.
After several years of observing and teaching we have come to the conclusion that the latter type are as nearly right as any. We have never observed any particular beneficial results from the steam engine type of breathing, other than to startle prospective pupils away from the gym, or to spray the place with saliva.
On the other hand, there is little or nothing to recommend that the bodybuilder breathe through his nose only. He only succeeds in shutting off a full supply of oxygen.
The natural way to breathe when under heavy physical stress is to open the mouth for unobstructed passage of air into the lungs so you can aerate the blood to full capacity of the lungs.
The other two methods of breathing actually serve to strangle the bodybuilder (and who hasn't wanted to do that to at least one lifter at least once in their life), for they, in effect, shut off the life-giving oxygen that the lungs are starving for. We breathe for just one thing and anything that hinders that freedom of breathing cannot be healthful for the body.
Now if we can agree (and we very much doubt if all readers will) that we should open the mouth and breathe in with complete freedom, let us decide if there is any special TEMPO we should use for breathing. We also hear much about "deep" breathing.
I have long felt that in most of the lighter barbell exercises each pupil could soon develop a breathing pattern with each exercise that would suit him best. My usual advice is to take a deep breath just before the effort and hold it for most of the movement and expel it as the muscles are relaxing. Thus, in the curl, you would take a deep, rather full breath (not maximum, for this would affect your performance and might cause you to get dizzy) and hold this while you brought the bar to the shoulders, then as you lower it you expel the breath.
Medical experiments have proven that this temporary holding of the breath is in no way harmful, even for people with certain types of heart trouble. Usually the breath is not held for more than the duration of perhaps two or three seconds. Holding the breath in this manner tends to give a more solid foundation from which the muscles can exert their full power without danger of strain, since it has a stiffening effect on the whole thoracic region.
Weight lifters who refuse to hold their breath during a lift find they can't lift as much and are subject to injury and muscle injuries very easily. This is the natural way to breathe during exertion and a normal person will fall into the habit of breathing this way without advice if he is left alone and has not been mentally conditioned to breathe wrong by someone with different ideas.
There are many instructors who teach pupils to never hold the breath and to breathe in during muscle contractions and out during extensions. Those who exercise in this manner will never begin to realize their true potentialities in poundages used or maximum repetitions and therefore cannot come close to their maximum development and strength.
There are certain instances when I did insist on a certain type of breathing practice. One of these is in the squat for weight gaining and chest development. I don't recommend it for strength development however, for I've found that you can't develop maximum strength and power in the legs with the so-called "puff and pant" system of breathing in the squat.
In working for power you of course hold your breath during the squat or you would not use much weight but you don't stop between squats and do forced breathing. If you feel the need of more air you stop and breathe naturally.
For weight gaining and chest development, however, it is a different matter. You should stop between each squat and do from 3 to 6 deep breaths before doing another repetition. In this type of breathing you should lift the chest high, toward the chin, and expand the chest to the maximum on each breath, and breathe fairly fast in panting style. Breathe through the mouth, fully opened and in complete freedom so you can draw in the maximum amount of air in the shortest possible time. As you reach maximum intake make a final effort to get in a little more. This extra effort does the most good for your breathing muscles which expand the chest and help you maintain a large chest.
Now, this type of breathing has a very unusual effect on the body compared to the normal breathing used in the power squat. You will find that your legs begin to tire with a third less weight than they do in power squats with normal breathing. You will also find that your back muscles get very tired as do the muscles of respiration and the muscles of the neck.
it is amazing what this one exercise will do towards adding bodyweight and size to a slender physique. It comes close to being a miracle exercise when correctly performed. There has been a tendency to credit this type of breathing squat with the development of a large upper abdomen and lower chest. However, if you breathe properly into the upper chest you will have no difficulty in this direction. In fact, I can point to several men right now who possess a fine V-shape physique with small waist and large upper chest, who have worked quite hard at breathing squats.
There are a few fellows who will allow themselves to sag down and breathe in the lower chest and abdomen only and this, I suppose, could have a tendency to enlarge this area, though I've known famous physique stars and title winners who did breathing squats just this way and failed to get the paunch we are warned about. Regardless of this, we recommend that you always breathe into the upper chest as much as you can.
Deep breathing means breathing air in the abdomen or low down. Though the old-time teachers thought this was the correct way to breathe, modern trainers teach their men to breathe in the upper chest. Deep breathing is the lazy man's way of breathing. Actually, we should attempt to use our entire lung capacity when exercising, but if we are not careful and attentive, we will find ourselves using only the lower portion.
Another apparent effect of forced full breathing during the squat is that you may become a little dizzy, but above all you may find that you are much more tired the next day from your workout than you would be from a power squat workout with normal breathing. Some men find that this breathing squat causes them to have a headache the next day. The theory that we have on this, though not founded on scientific fact, is that we dump a lot more carbon dioxide into the blood when doing breathing squats than when we do normal-breathing squats. With normal-breathing squats this process is spread out over a much longer period of time and the effects are not as noticeable. Also, for some reason or other, of which we also have theories, it has been found that the heavy-breathing squats are much more effective on most people in rapid gains in bodyweight and size than squats with normal breathing. By "normal breathing" we refer to breathing just enough to meet the immediate demand of the body for oxygen.
Such forced breathing has also been used successfully with the bench press, dead lift, and clean & jerk as a weight-gaining medium.
We sincerely hope that we have been able to help you think through this problem of breathing so that you can adopt a sensible and healthful method.
