Tuesday 13 April 2010

How to dramatically improve your running performance by focusing on breathing!

breath

better.

Run longer,

Simple

Learn to breathe with your diaphragm, practice it all the time until it becomes a natural reflex.
Came across this great article on Steve magn
ess's twitter site CLICK HERE
Anyway on a session of 20 x 400m i decided to check my breathing, I found i was only breathing into my upper chest, after changing to breathing deep into my belly i noticed the following;
I felt stronger and more relaxed.
Able to keep my pace going with less effort.
Recovered faster after each effort.
AWESOME RESULT!

Optimal breathing for runners CLICK HERE
I've never really thought about mybreathing when running before but after doing some research I've found that belly breathing increases the amount of oxygen to the body and muscles and hence increasing performance.


20 x 400m
Felt really strong on the session, I was only meant to go up to 10k pace [5.44] but soon found myself hitting 5.25 pace and faster, in fact I finished the session feeling like I could have run another 20 efforts!

7 comments:

Greg said...

I read that article a couple of times and couldn't find a description of what the "new respiration technique" is.

RICK'S RUNNING said...

Yes Greg, there is no desciption,but it made me look into the subject and found that breathing from the diaphragm is the best way to improve oxygen uptake, i tried this in training and it worked!

Greg said...

http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1309&dat=19920916&id=87gTAAAAIBAJ&sjid=VJADAAAAIBAJ&pg=6737,2360603

"four separate, successive inhalations before every exhalation"

Not sure what that means, but it sounds like more than just breathing from the diaphragm.

Greg said...

Trying again with the link

RICK'S RUNNING said...

Thanks Greg, I'll try and find out more about this Fractional breathing.
Cheers

Samurai Running said...

I'll see what I can find out about it too. Try it, and let you know how it goes. Thanks for the tip ;)

Ewen said...

Interesting Rick. Thanks for the link. Good tip from Marius too about the pace of the 6 x 20 secs.