Diet & Fitness 

Advertisement

The best way to breathe

Yes and yes. The way and timing of your breathing can make an exercise more efficient and more stable. Imagine how hard it would be to do a crunch while inhaling instead of exhaling!

As a general rule, you should exhale when your muscles contract, and inhale when they lengthen and you return to starting position. Much of our confusion over when to breathe out comes from not knowing which phase (contraction or lengthening) we're in when we exercise.

1. For pressing or extending motions (moving the weight away from your body):
   Exhale when you push and inhale when you return to the starting position. These movements include leg extensions, press machines, overhead shoulder presses, back and lateral shoulder flies and triceps presses or extensions.

   Here's the first confusing part: On leg presses or squats, inhale as you squat, but exhale as you stand. That's when your quadriceps and hip extensors (glutes) contract. All of the muscle groups involved in exercises like squats, lunges and push-ups are called extensors.

2. Moving the weight towards your body:
   Exhale when you pull and inhale when the muscle is lengthening. These movements include hamstring curls, rowing motions (seated or bent over), lat pull-downs, chest flies and biceps curls. The muscle groups that perform these tasks are called flexors.

It makes people nervous when trainers are on their case about breathing properly and this can compromise your form when doing an exercise, so if you’re having trouble getting the sequence right, just keep breathing throughout each repetition. Breathing in reverse is much better than not breathing at all, and if you don’t do this, you'll be able to tell because you will be out of breath by the end of the set. Good luck.

Why not chat to other iVillagers about exercise on the Love Your Body message board. Take a look at some of the LIVE discussions happening now on the board:

Delicious     Digg     reddit     Facebook     StumbleUpon

  Get the latest iVillage news on your desktop    Sign up for more iVillage RSS feeds

© iVillage Limited 2000-2009. All rights reserved. | © iVillage inc. 1995-2009. All rights reserved.
iVillage Ltd is a UK company registered in England & Wales (3837269) at 80-110 New Oxford Street, London WC1 1HB