How To Breathe When Exercising To Maximize Your Workout Results

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We know how frustrating it can be to spend day after day in the gym and still not see the gains you want. Despite what some say, it’s not enough to “just show up” and commit the time to yourself. However, there is a pretty simple tweak you can make to your fitness routine that will ramp up your results in big ways — and it all comes down to how you’re breathing.

You may be pushing through cardio to work the muscles in your legs or thrusting kettlebells into the air to build your upper body strength, but the one muscle that is always working no matter the kind of exercise you’re doing is your diaphragm. Commonly referred to as your “breathing muscle,” your diaphragm balloons outward when you inhale and contracts tightly (alongside the other muscles in your abdominal region) when you exhale. When you learn how to use your diaphragm in sync with the exercises you’re trying to perform, your workout becomes significantly more efficient and effective.

Take core work, for example. There’s a reason why every fitness instructor on the planet tells you to exhale at the point of highest exertion — or as you perform the crunch motion involved in standard crunches. It allows the powerful contraction of your diaphragm to further engage the rest of your abdominal muscles, tightening each component of your core. This concept is called co-contraction. Now, if you were to inhale at this point of the exercise, you create opposite-acting forces, expanding the diaphragm while trying to compress the abdominals, rendering the exercise fairly useless (not to mention strenuous).

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In addition to strengthening the core, the compression of the diaphragm can create a powerful thrust of energy as you exhale, making it an ideal engagement for those lifting weights or performing difficult reps of any kind. If you breathe out quickly as you lift, push or jump, your body can work harder, move further and ultimately change faster.

At the end of the day, learning how to control your diaphragm and breathe properly is just as important — if not more so — as performing an exercise properly. And while the way you use it differs from endurance exercise like long-distance jogging to strength-building workouts to more meditative forms of fitness like yoga, the diaphragm will always matter when it comes to exercise. So check in with your breath, adjust it to the kind of work you’re asking your body to complete and watch the benefits appear in no time.

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