Your sessions in the gym will be more efficient if you learn to breathe when you force your muscles to respond better than ever. Here we show you the best technique.
If you want your muscles work of thousand wonders when you do your routine in the gym, you need to learn how to breathe when lifting weights.
You see, if you keep the air inside when you should not, or if you do not take oxygen when your muscles need it, the body is forced to operate in an inappropriate way. This only provokes that you become exhausted, which droop in energies, and until you expose to injury. But everything is solved very easy when you understand what is the cycle that your body needs in regard to the breath.
In general, we breathe wrong when we raise weight. When lifting a heavy box, push the car or lift the bar in the gym, we naturally tend to hold our breath, trying to direct our attention to the impulse, the work itself. But that is precisely what we should not do.
Hold the air in our lungs exposes to injury, without mentioning that prevents our muscle cells to function at full capacity. However, there are other situations in which sustain in the air can be efficiently.
Such is the case of the so-called Valsalva maneuver, which is recommended to hold the breath trying to increase intra-abdominal pressure, so as to stabilize and give more strength (protection) to the lumbar region. This is what we need to do, for example, when we’re lifting and need to take care of our back, either exercise in the gym, or when lifting a heavy mattress when tend bed.
Breathing technique while lifting weights
In any other situation where the Valsalva maneuver is not efficient but the effort is well pronounced (for example, if doing strength from our legs or just with our arms), the suitable thing would be to inspire when do the force, and make sure to exhale when relax.
This equals, for example, by inhaling while pushing your legs with weights gym machine, and exhale when you contract to return to the initial pose; or inhale as you raise arms carrying the heavy box to the top of a storage, making sure to exhale completely safe when you’re already down your arms and relaxing them.
On other occasions, when the effort is not extreme or too steep (but nor is an easy movement), it is necessary to reverse the rhythm of breathing. That is: exhale while doing strength, and inhale when you return to the starting poses.
For example, in the machine of the gym, work with smaller loads, inhale deeply and exhale as you lift the weight. Then inhale again to lower the weight or at the end of the force. This breathing rhythm is important for the works in which you must do force with the abdominal region, it will also take care of the lower back.
In both cases, be sure to complete the cycle of breathing, inhaling and exhaling slowly but full/empty lung. Also be sure to stay hydrated, controls your blood pressure while you exercise, or performing work of a certain requirement, particularly if you have high blood pressure problems or cardio-vascular diseases. So, not only will you be learning to breathe when you lift weight, but you will be taking care of and ensuring optimal organ function.