What Is Breath Work—And Can It Help Your Sports Performance?

It's common for some athletes to feel anxious before training or competitions. Unfortunately, the physical response to performance anxiety (increased muscle tension, narrowed visual field, greater distractibility) increases an athlete's odds of injury, note the authors of a 2017 paper in Open Access Journal of Sports Medicine.

Pre-competition breath work can help to ease anxiety. Breathing in and out through your nose (known as nasal breathing) can help to calm down. Nasal breathing tends to be slower, which can lead to taking fuller, deeper breaths, according to Lomax. And, she adds, those fuller, deeper breaths stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system—the part of the nervous system responsible for carrying out basic functions in the body—promoting a calming effect.

Box breathing, a form of deep yogic breathing, can help you relax even more by giving your brain something to focus on: counting. According to the Cleveland Clinic, this technique involves breathing in slowly for four counts, holding for four counts, breathing out for four counts and pausing for four counts. Then, you repeat three times. Silently counting the beats can act as a form of meditation to calm the nervous system and keep you grounded in the present moment.

Swimming is one of those sports where breath work is especially critical for success. "You can't simply breathe at will, the way you can when walking or running, but [you] must coordinate each inhalation with an arm stroke", says Lomax.

The more breaths you have to take, the more movement you may end up introducing to your stroke. For some, this added movement can slow your pace down—but this may not be the case for more seasoned swimmers.

"This is why you will see 50-metre sprinters take one breath [or none] for the entirety of the event. Because the race is often decided by less than a tenth of a second, any extra time the swimmers can save is important", says Buckingham.

Breath control, in particular the Valsalva manoeuvre, can help when lifting heavy weights.

This method involves holding your breath and then exhaling against a closed glottis (the part of the throat that consists of the vocal cords and the opening between them). "It's almost like you're breathing out, but no air escapes from your mouth", says Buckingham.

Here's how you do it: Start by closing your mouth, then pinch your nose so that no air can escape from your nostrils. Then, press the air out in the same way you'd blow up a balloon. This form of breath control increases the pressure in your abdominal wall, which makes your trunk more rigid and your spine more stable, according to a 2013 review in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research. This enables you to lift heavier weights, says Buckingham.

Take care, however, "as the Valsalva manoeuvre can drastically increase systolic blood pressure and in some cases lead to fainting", he warns. Only use it under the guidance of a certified personal trainer or licensed physiotherapist. And steer clear if you have high blood pressure.

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Working your inspiratory muscles (the muscles that contract to bring air into the lungs) may improve your strength and stamina and reduce breathing fatigue. This, in turn, may improve running, swimming, rowing and cycling endurance. It does this by lowering heart rate and blood lactate (an indicator of muscle fatigue) and by making exercise and breathing feel easier, Lomax explains.

In a controlled clinical trial published in a 2011 edition of Journal of Sport Sciences, Lomax and colleagues found that runners who practised inspiratory muscle training (exercises that strengthen your diaphragm and ribcage muscles) daily for four weeks were able to cover more distance than the control group. Runners saw even greater results when they combined inspiratory muscle training with inspiratory muscle warm-ups done before exercise.

Inspiratory muscle training can be done with a commercial hand-held device. There are various methods to train your inspiratory muscles, and training approaches can vary markedly from one device to another. Before you start this training, it's always a good idea to check in with your doctor to make sure there aren't any potential adverse health risks associated with these methods.

Lomax often uses a type of inspiratory muscle training known as pressure-threshold training. "With pressure-threshold training, you breathe through a mouthpiece connected to a small, handheld device in a controlled, unrushed manner for a set number of breaths or a set amount of time, once or twice per day", she says. "Inside the device is a valve that only opens, thereby permitting airflow, when you put in enough effort".

If you practise inspiratory muscle training daily, your breathing muscles should get stronger after a couple of weeks, though Lomax adds that it typically takes about four to six weeks to see sizeable changes.

The results may vary depending on how strong your muscles were to begin with, but the athletes Lomax studied made notable improvements in their physical fitness. More specifically, after routinely practising inspiratory muscle training the athletes ran 16 percent further before reaching exhaustion, improved swimming speed by 2–7 percent, shaved 115 seconds off their 40-kilometre (about 25 miles) cycling time trial, and completed a 5000-metre (3.1 mile) rowing time trial 36 seconds faster than before they trained those muscles.

But what if you don't have a hand-held device at home or don't have the means to purchase one? There are other ways you can strengthen your breathing muscles that require minimal or no equipment.

"Some people engage in yoga-type breathing, which can aid overall wellness. Singing is also used as part of some pulmonary rehabilitation programmes for individuals who have respiratory muscle weakness and pulmonary diseases [like] COPD", says Lomax. "It could also be argued that inflating balloons is a form of breathing muscle training".

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Breath control is paramount to success in target sports such as archery and the biathlon (a winter sport that combines cross-country skiing and rifle shooting). According to USA Shooting, the act of breathing creates movement in the abdomen, chest and shoulders. This movement causes the gun (or bow) to shift significantly, making it tough to take an accurate shot. "When success is determined in millimetres, the slightest misstep could be the difference between winning and losing", says Buckingham.

Therefore, it's essential for athletes in these sports to learn how to coordinate their breathing with their attempts. "These athletes will actually shoot in between heartbeats, which they control through their breathing", says Buckingham.