Can holding your breath during exercise improve athletic performance?

Breathing exercises are something that many followers of a healthy lifestyle know and practice. This is especially true for athletes, freedivers and those who are into oriental practices like yoga and tai chi, but they are also popular with ordinary people. This is easy to explain – they don’t require any special equipment and can be performed anywhere and by anyone.

The concept of breath-holding

Oxygen is a luxury for an athlete, states the principle of breath-holding. Professionals purposely train under oxygen deprivation to improve their endurance. Some go to high-altitude training camps, while others use special masks that control airflow.

According to a study conducted by Prof. Xavier Vuron and Prof. Gregoire P. Millet, hypoventilation training is a method of physical training in which periods of exercise with a reduced breathing rate (inhalation every 4 seconds, compared to the normal rate of 1 breath per second) alternate with periods of normal breathing. The goal is to increase the number of red blood cells in the blood to get more oxygen to the lungs and more of it to the tissues, mainly the muscles.

So, in one study, cyclists who followed this theory improved their performance. Another experiment involving rugby players, which lasted four weeks, confirmed this theory. Athletes who performed breath-holding sprints increased the number of approaches by 64%.

According to the authors of the paper, the idea dates back to the 1970s, when legendary American swimming coach James Counsilman trained with adaptations to lower oxygen levels. This approach, as his colleagues also discovered, can lower blood oxygen levels to 87% of their maximum value – an effect equivalent to training at 2,000 meters altitude.

But how safe is it and can breath-holding really improve athletic performance? Let’s find out with your doctor.

The benefits and harms of breath-holding

Medical practitioner at LabQuest + Q-Clinica medical company

“One of the most famous and simple exercises is breath-holding. I will tell you how effective and safe this exercise really is and who should not practice it.”

It is believed that breathing exercises have a positive effect on human health and psychosomatics. And this is true, even though there are some contraindications. Of course, they are not a panacea for all diseases, but they can really improve the well-being and mood of a person. The same statement is true for conscious breath-holding.

At the heart of all breathing practices lies one simple principle. Of all the systems available to us respiratory – the only one, the work of which we can regulate themselves. And given that the human body is able to adapt to changing external conditions, the conscious influence on breathing can positively affect the work of other organs.

With regular and systematic delays in breathing, the following happens. Lack of air causes in the body artificial oxygen starvation of tissues – hypoxia. In this case, this process does not cross the boundary, beyond which pathology begins, but triggers adaptation mechanisms to the reduced oxygen content in the blood.

In such conditions, the body is forced to “not look a gift horse in the teeth” and learn to maximize the utilization of the amount of O2 that it has at its disposal. And since oxygen in general is necessary for the body’s energy supply, the same process increases our overall efficiency.

Efficiency (efficiency factor) of a human organism is the ratio of useful work done by it to the amount of energy expended.

• Structural formations of muscle cells increase.
• The stock of glycogen in muscles increases.
• The activity of enzymes responsible for glucose breakdown and obtaining energy for cell metabolism increases.

Such optimization of processes can be compared with seasonal water supply cut-off, which is familiar to Russians. On average, a person uses 30-50 liters of water per day when using the shower, but when hot water becomes scarce, you have to wash with a kettle, pot or basin. Of course, this method is inconvenient, but it requires dozens of times less water when performing the same task.

The effect of such breathing exercises is especially noticeable to athletes. As one of the experiments showed, eight weeks of hypoxic training allows you to perform the same intensity exercise with less effort.

Only small breathing delays of 5-7 seconds are allowed.

The explanation is simple – the muscles begin to process oxygen faster and more efficiently, so the heart does not need to increase the volume of blood pumped to them and increase the rate of contraction.

Breathing exercises also determine the sound production when singing – so-called diaphragmatic breathing. Many people like to listen to music and songs, but no one even guesses that it is a huge labor, and first of all, proper breathing helps to withstand long concerts.

Increasing the efficiency of saturation of tissues and organs with oxygen affects, including the brain. That’s why optimizing oxygen metabolism helps improve cognitive function and stress resistance.

In addition, training with breath-holding makes the brain more resistant to oxygen deprivation, which allows it to maintain its full and efficient functioning for longer in extreme conditions, such as high mountains.

But you don’t have to be a mountain climber to notice the positive effects – with a trained brain, it’s much easier to tolerate stuffiness indoors or on public transportation, which you’re much more likely to encounter.

Kontraindikationer

Despite all the benefits, breathing exercises have contraindications. So, exercises with breath-holding should not be performed:

• during the period of exacerbation of chronic disease;
• in the presence of influenza or ARVI (acute respiratory viral infection);
• in the presence of diseases of the gastrointestinal tract;
• if there is inflammation of the respiratory tract;
• in the presence of malignant tumors;
• in the presence of serious cardiovascular pathologies;
• during pregnancy.

Nevertheless, the list of contraindications is quite general, and in each individual case to allow a person to perform such exercises should be a doctor.