Breathing For Productivity

Just suck it in and blow it out…

If you don’t know much about breathing, then there’s breathing and there’s breathing…

Just because you suck air in and blow it out again, doesn’t mean that you’re doing it efficiently or with purpose. I mean, obviously you are doing it with some purpose – to keep you alive – but that’s really down to your autonomic functions rather than you consciously having much involvement in it. What I’m referring to is the deliberate use of breathing to influence other aspects of your life such as anxiety, energy, performance, calm, endurance, specific brain functions and so on.

I’m sure you’ve had moments when you’ve been out of breath; woken up from a nights sleep with a dry mouth; been told you’re ‘catching flies’ when you fall asleep on a train or as a passenger in a car with your mouth wide open; been nudged for snoring; experienced your chest tighten during panic or fear; have had or currently have a respiratory condition; suffered or are still suffering from Long Covid;  and a lots of other scenarios involving your respiratory system.

Which technique?

There are so many breathing techniques and gurus out there that it’s easy to get lost in it all. What makes it harder is that they all say their way of doing things is the best, even though the list of benefits seem to be the same as everyone else is claiming. There is a good reason for this: most breathing systems work because by focusing on your breathing, you become more aware of what you are doing in the moment. You discover a degree of mindfulness, calm and body awareness that you don’t have when you are rushing around in ‘normal life’.

In that respect, it doesn’t really matter which breathing technique you use. The whole idea is to bring some focus and internal attention to your day. And while I think it’s very important to do this as there are a whole host of benefits you’ll gain from it, this is just scratching the surface of what breathing can do for you.

In this article we’re going to have a brief look at endurance and performance as it relates to breathing, and in a future article we’ll explore some of the other specific benefits.

Energy

As you have probably discovered throughout your life, breathing is a rather critical component of exercise performance. What you may not have realised, is that you can train how you breath to influence your performance relatively easily. Once you understand the why and the foundation of the how to, it’s just a matter of practice.

At a foundational level, in order to be alive and moving your body needs to convert the food you eat into a form of energy that your muscles can use. In addition to food (and drink) your “energy system” also requires oxygen for at least part of the transformation. In fact, for most of us most of the time, almost all of the energy we need requires oxygen as part of the process of conversion.

You may be aware of the terms aerobic and anaerobic, although these days anaerobic tends to be referred to as lactic and alactic when describing our energy systems. As a basic overview:

Your aerobic energy system utilises carbohydrate and fat combined with oxygen to create the energy we need to move, grow, repair and survive. As our exercise intensity increases, the rate at which we need to transport oxygen around the body also increases. However, there comes a point where your cells can’t keep up with demand and we transition into a more anaerobic state. This is where the energy production shifts from requiring oxygen, glucose and fats to requiring just glucose.

However, there are also byproducts created within each cell as it produces energy that need to be removed. These include carbon dioxide and high-energy electrons. As the intensity increases, the cells’ ability to remove these byproducts reduces and we get a build up. This happens at the same time that our oxygen supply fails to keep up with demand. Without sufficient oxygen, the cells switch to a fermentation process (rather than an oxidative process) to produce the energy. However, the build up of the byproducts forms lactic acid (which then splits and it’s actually the hydrogen ions that become an issue) and the environment within the cell becomes unsustainable.

Usually, this forces you to reduce your intensity so that adequate oxygen supply can resume and the byproducts can be cleared down. Heavy breathing is one of the ways you try to get rid of the excess carbon dioxide. The typical amount of time you can exercise anaerobically ranges from around 10 seconds at a very high intensity to about 3 minutes at a high intensity for a well trained athlete. There are a number of factors that contribute to how well you can tolerate an oxygen-deprived cell environment, but that’s going slightly off topic. What we really want to focus on is how to exercise and move for longer periods of time at a reasonably high intensity without going anaerobic.

Energy system dominance

It’s important to note at this point that all three primary energy systems (aerobic, lactic and alactic) are working all of the time. It’s just that one is more dominant at any given time depending on exercise intensity (or perhaps more accurately, energy demand intensity). So even when you are working anaerobically, your aerobic system is still functional but at a very reduced level. This is important as there are transition zones between dominance of aerobic and dominance of anaerobic. And the great thing is that through targeted breathing practice, we can push up and push out those transition zones. The end result is a higher work rate (more pace, more weight etc) for the same effort. Essentially, you are able to hold a higher work rate for longer before going anaerobic. A simplistic visible output of this is going longer without getting tired – better perceived endurance.

One important aspect of achieving this is your sensitivity to carbon dioxide. You’ll remember from the text above that carbon dioxide is a byproduct of cell respiration (energy production). As it starts to build up, it triggers a feeling of air hunger which in turn makes you want to breathe in. As carbon dioxide builds up in your blood, that feeling of air hunger increases and if you don’t voluntarily take a breath, eventually you do so involuntarily. Dysfunctional (or even inefficient) breathing can lead to an imbalance of oxygen and carbon dioxide. This can then create a cycle of panic breathing, over-breathing and a worsening of the situation.

So, one of the first things we need to target is the regulation of your breathing. This involves some of the breathing techniques you’ve probably heard of such as box breathing (in for 4, out for 4 etc), and that internally focused breathing mentioned right at the start of this article. 

It also involves adjusting your sensitivity and tolerance to carbon dioxide so you can get used to having a higher level of it in your blood without needing to react by panic breathing. It’s this increased tolerance combined with the regulation of your breathing that leads to better endurance and speed-endurance performance.

Where to start?

So where do you start? You can begin with nose breathing as there are so many benefits that we’ll explore in another article. To start off, just spend as much of your day nose breathing as possible. It may only be a few seconds at a time initially, but the more you practise the more time you’ll be able to breathe through your nose for. While you are consciously nose breathing, start to regulate your in and out breaths into a rhythm.

Getting better at regulating your breathing is pretty straightforward for most of us: just take some time each day to pay attention to breathing in and out to a regular rhythm. For some of us though, this may prove challenging – even with mouth breathing. If that’s the case for you, start where you can. Instead of in for 4, out for 4, try in for 2, out for 2. Progress to in for 2, out for 3; in for 2, out for 4; in for 3, out for 4 and so on. Keep going back to nose breathing whenever you can as it will really help with the next step.

Just by nose breathing you’ll be starting to build up your tolerance to carbon dioxide. You can then make it more deliberate by focusing on breathing lightly. Start by getting into a relaxed nose breathing rhythm, and then make your breathing very light. This will produce a feeling of air hunger, but work through it as best as possible. If it gets too strong and you feel your diaphragm starting to spasm, take a rest and come back to it. Eventually you can move on to different types of breath hold, but we’ll leave that for another time.

Just practising the above will have a huge positive impact on not only your ability to tolerate a higher workrate, but will help you become more mindful, body aware, and stimulate some of the other areas of your brain we need to upregulate in order to be more productive.

I believe that breathing is so powerful in everything we do that I place a great deal of importance on it in my system of increased productivity and decision making.