Increase your body’s efficiency and improve your sporting results

How can breathing training complement your sporting development?

Patrick McKeown’s ‘Oxygen Advantage’ connects breathing habits with the way we handle physical demands. The article moves from basic ideas through physiological responses to experiences in elite sport.

A gentle introduction and a specialised performance protocol have different purposes. Here you can explore both levels and find a concrete starting point for your own practice.

If you want to increase your body’s efficiency and improve sporting results, breathing deserves a place in training too. In “Oxygen Advantage”, Patrick McKeown describes how breathing habits and deliberately used breath holds interact.

Breath holding has accompanied humans for millennia, for example when diving for food. Today, sport physiology investigates the resulting responses more closely. An ancient physical ability has also become a modern field of research and training.

Depending on the method, breathing training pursues different sporting aims:

• better understanding and deliberately training oxygen delivery and breathing economy;
• maintaining greater control as fatigue increases;
• understanding the urge to breathe and adapting breathing to exertion;
• supporting recovery and a calm transition to sleep;
• strengthening concentration in training, games and learning;
• supporting a return after a break through a coordinated rebuilding process.

Specific research exists on specialised methods. Fornasier-Santos and colleagues studied 21 trained rugby players. After four weeks of repeated-sprint training with voluntary hypoventilation at low lung volume, repeated-sprint ability improved more than in the comparison group. This uses a temporary hypoxic stimulus during training; altitude exposure and breath holding have different patterns and doses.

The spleen also plays an interesting role. During series of breath holds, it can contract and release stored red blood cells into circulation. Schagatay and colleagues observed a temporary increase in haematocrit and haemoglobin as a result. This short-term effect broadens our understanding of oxygen transport and must be distinguished from lasting production of new red blood cells.

The sporting idea is adaptation to a targeted stimulus. Like any training stimulus, it requires suitable dosing and recovery. For the final minutes of a match, the aim remains clear: to keep acting with control under fatigue.

McKeown distinguishes gentle exercises for becoming familiar with the urge to breathe from intensive methods for trained athletes. A starting practice can take just a few calm minutes. Short breath holds take place on dry land, in a safe situation where you remain attentive.

How do I train correctly?

1. Sit comfortably and breathe normally through your nose for one minute.
2. Exhale normally, gently pinch your nose and take a short pause.
3. Release your nose at the first clear urge to breathe and continue calmly. The next inhalation stays relaxed.
4. Let your normal rhythm return fully. The aim is to get to know the urge to breathe, not to achieve the longest possible pause.

How is this developed in running training?

Specialised training also uses short breath holds during movement. The rugby study, for example, combined them with repeated sprints. Exertion, pauses and recovery are planned and monitored together. For your own development, transfer begins with calm nasal breathing during gentle walking; more intensive breath holds belong in an individually guided training plan.

This breath-holding exercise is excluded from swimming, cycling and road traffic. In water, loss of consciousness can cause drowning; on a bicycle it can cause a fall. Practise breath holds in a safe place on dry land.

Outstanding athletes who use breathing exercises

Joaquim Cruz is a prominent example from middle-distance running history. The Brazilian won Olympic 800-metre gold in Los Angeles in 1984 and silver in Seoul in 1988. McKeown mentions him in connection with breath holds in training. His sporting path shows elite athletes’ curiosity about unusual training stimuli.

Another example is Mary Decker, an American athlete and 1983 gold medallist. She set many world records over 1,500 and 3,000 metres, including six in one year.

Emil Zátopek, a four-time Olympic champion and multiple world-record holder, is also linked with breath holding in training literature. His readiness to experiment is among the fascinating aspects of his sporting story.

Sporting experience and research show that breathing is more than a by-product of performance. Explore its possibilities, develop the foundations and choose further training stimuli to suit your goal.

With existing respiratory or cardiovascular conditions, suitability for breath holds is assessed professionally beforehand. Every exercise ends if dizziness or discomfort occurs.