What is the Right Way to Breathe In Specific Exercises?

This is a frequently asked question by people who are into weight training and/or physical training.

Let's analyse how to go about doing it.

Allow me to get a bit technical. Let's take a look at the Breath Mastery Scale™ from Prasara: Flow Beyond Thought ™:

1) Fear Level Breath: Passively inhale and hold on perceived effort.

2) Anger or Force Level Breath: Actively inhale and hold on perceived effort.

3) Discipline Level Breath: Actively exhale on perceived effort; passively inhale on cessation of effort.

4) Flow Level Breath: Passively exhale on compression; passively inhale on expansion.

5) Mastery Level Breath: Control pause after exhalation on activity.

6) The Level of Deepening Mastery: Passively extend pause after exhalation on activity.

So actually there are six levels of mastery of the breath. These are different breathing patterns that occur naturally depending on the perceived level of difficulty of an exercise/activity/movement. 

For the uninitiated, you can call this six variations. Though 1) and 2) are definitely not healthy.

So back to our question. How to breathe during specific exercises? Without going into the detailed explanations of the mechanics of breathing, you should always start with Discipline Level. As you get more proficient at the exercise, you go further into the levels going toward Mastery.

Let's take the example of the push up at Discipline Level. For ease of use, we'll divide the movement into four phases:

1) Downward movement: actively exhale as you encounter resistance and exert effort.

2) Bottom position: passively inhale as resistance ceases and effort ceases.

3) Upward movement: actively exhale and you encounter resistance and exert effort.

4) Top position: passively inhale as resistance cease and effort ceases.

This is quite different to the commonly prescribe breathing pattern of exhale on the way up, inhale on the way down. This method can be used provided you do not encounter resistance on the inhale. Inhaling on resistance (and hence effort) serves to increase your intra-thoracic and intra-abdominal pressure and is therefor not healthy. 

Exhaling on effort on the other hand, serves to activate the core muscles to stabilize the core and increase force production. The more force required, the more you need to exhale to activate the core muscles.

If you can't remember anything, just remember this: exhale on effort, inhale on cessation of effort. Once you get this right, getting better at your breathing comes subconciously as your proficiency in the exercise gets better.