Home Posts tagged "Breathing"

Strength and Conditioning Stuff You Should Read: 8/1/20

It's time for another edition of recommended reading/listening from the strength and conditioning world:

Eric Cressey on coaching the individual, building a community of hard work and athlete best practices - I recently joined Lewis Hatchett on the Raising Your Game Podcast for a discussion on a variety of coaching topics.

How to Use the Stage System for Strength, Speed, and Size - Yesterday, I had a conversation with a client after he saw the rep scheme "3x3,1x6" plugged into his program - and it reminded me of this article I wrote about the stage system a while back. I figured today would be a good time to reincarnate it, in case you missed it the first time around.

Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art - I just finished up this (audio)book from James Nestor, and found it to be a really good listen, particularly in the context of the history of breathing training/reeducation.

Top Tweet of the Week

Top Instagram Post of the Week

Sign-up Today for our FREE Newsletter and receive a four-part video series on how to deadlift!

Name
Email
Read more

Assessments You Might Be Overlooking: Installment 5

Today's guest post comes from Greg Robins.

I have this weird habit. Although, the more I pick the brains of like-minded individuals the more I realize it’s just something everyone fascinated with human development does.

I like to watch people. I like to watch their curious reactions to their external environment. I like to watch people converse with other people. I like to watch how they move, how they breathe, how they settle into their default static positions. It sounds creepy, I guess, but it’s far removed from the image you have of me lurking in the window with binoculars.

I’ll watch sports and realize I’m no longer even keeping an eye on the ball; I’m lost in awe of the fluidity of an elite athlete’s movement capabilities. If I’m close up at a live sporting event, I’m analyzing the body type and physical development of players while they’re warming up.

I’m constantly looking at people, and conversing with people; trying to piece together who they are.

When Eric started this series I thought it was fascinating. It only made me more tuned in to the details of people, outside of any diagnostic tests I may eventually bring them through. Assessments became like an experiment of sorts. I would take all these clues from the first 20 minutes I met someone and see if the eventual tests gave some validity to the observations, and presumptions I was making.

I decided I had to contribute a one of my favorite assessments that you might be overlooking:

Hypertrophy and or tone of the accessory breathing musculature, coupled with primarily breathing through the mouth.

As I stated above, one thing I watch is how people breathe. However, even before I tune into watching individual breaths, I look at the muscularity and apparent tone of their accessory respiratory muscles. In particular, I’m looking at their neck. Often time people who are “stuck” in a faulty respiration strategy have necks that seemingly look to belong on a pro strongman, not a middle-aged weekend warrior, or an undertrained high school pitcher. Their scalenes, sternocleidomastoids, and levator costarum muscles are incredibly developed in comparison to the rest of their musculature. Bill Hartman posted a great video on this a few years back, if you'd like to see it in action:

This little tip off leads me to take a closer look at their respiration. I often notice the same person breathing primarily through the mouth, rather than the nose. I lay them on their back, have them remove their shirt (when appropriate) and cue myself in to the pattern of their inhalations and exhalations.

Not surprisingly these giants of neck development, are often the same folks who are stuck in inhalation, or a state of hyperinflation. They have poor function of their diaphragms, and generally take the form of our usual “over-extended” individual. In many cases, they present with a lack of shoulder flexion because their lats are constantly “on.”

shouderflexion

They take shallow, frequent breaths, which never allow for full exhalation. To take a page out of the Postural Restoration Institute’s respiration manual, hyperinflation does the following:

- Increase sympathetic “fight or flight” responses and anxiousness
- Impairs nerve conduction
- Vasoconstricts peripheral and gastrointestinal vessels
- Restricts circulation in cerebral cortex
- Shunts blood flow peripherally
- Impairs coronary arterial flow
- Promotes fatigue, weakness, irregular heart rate, etc.
- Impairs breathing and weakens diaphragm contractility
- Increases overuse of “thoracic breathing”
- Enhances peripheral neuropathic syptoms
- Enhances sympathetic adrenaline activity and hypersensitivity to lights and sounds
- Increases phobic dysfunction, panic attacks, restless leg syndromes, heightened vigilance, etc.
- Facilitates catastrophic thinking and hypochondria

As you can see, this simple observation leads us to a series of additional questions, and more times than not, the discovery that someone’s ailments are the cause of their respiratory dysfunction. Their autonomics are dictating much of their dysfunction, even voluntary movement dysfunctions.

This is an important assessment because acknowledging this discord means we can intervene. Including breathing drills to correct respiratory function can help to restore many of the qualities we aim to improve (i.e. movement patterns, recovery rate, performance qualities, etc.).

If you are keen to excessive tone in the accessory musculature, you can begin to dig deeper and more closely observe their respiration, as well as ask them about different conditions listed above. If the pieces fit together, use some of the following drills to help them correct the dysfunction.


 

Sign-up Today for our FREE Newsletter and receive a four-part video series on how to deadlift!

Name
Email
Read more

Breathe Better, Move Better!

Earlier this week, I posted a video on different ways to look at upper body pressing.  In light of the great feedback I received, I have another one for you.  Today, I’m going to talk about breathing, a topic that has taken the fitness industry by storm in recent years. 

We can use breathing to help with relaxation (yoga, meditation), but also with bracing the core to lift heavy weights.  If you have something that can help with two extremes like this, you know it can be “clutch” when it comes to making or breaking your fitness progress.   And, that’s why today’s video will be so beneficial to you:

--> Breathe Better, Move Better <--

This video today focuses on some of the breathing strategies I uses in terms of exercise selection and coaching cues with our athletes at Cressey Performance.  These drills are awesome for enhancing core stability and correcting bad posture. Fortunately, you can have the same great results if you just pay close attention to the cues I outline and put them into action.  And, be sure to keep an eye out for the release of The High Performance Handbook next week!

HPH-main

Read more
Page
LEARN HOW TO DEADLIFT
  • Avoid the most common deadlifting mistakes
  • 9 - minute instructional video
  • 3 part follow up series