WFR #11: Breathing | Wed 25th Feb, 7:30pm | Prospect Park Weekly Form Run

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When: Every Wednesday at 7:30 p.m. (run leaves at 7:37 abouts).

Where: Find The Big Red Pointer(TM) (center of the map, click here).

Distance: A single figure 8 lap of Prospect Park, ~4.6139 miles.

Optional Distance Sub-group: 3 miles or less if that's helpful (please let Run Leaders know).

Today's Direction: Right as you face the park at startup.

Pace: Welcome to all. Fun.

AQI: We're monitoring Air Quality Index here and have been asked to not run if the local index exceeds 125.

New Stuff:

I dragged this week's bubble ("Breathing") to the top of the topics hierarchy and gave it a good shake. The result was this diagram. This week, "Run Tall" aids "Breathing". "Breathing" supports "Relax" (and, well, life itself!). "Breathing" is mutually supported by, and aids, both "Short Strides" and "Arm Swing".

Just in case you'd like to explore, here's a pretty QR Code for Week #19:

Towards the end of Week #19 Notes (below "The Mantra"TM) there are links to all the WFR weekly topics.

This week's focus: Breathing (efficiency - week 11)

TL;DR: Probably the most important form. When done properly, breathing is dictated by your cadence ((turnover rate) which, oddly, is driven by "Arm Swing").

This has to do with form because if you hyperventilate, or get a stitch, you're probably not going to have good form (or be able to run relaxed (or run at all for that matter)).

Mouth breathing

There's a dominant school of thought that breathing solely through your mouth - that is in and out, inhaling and exhaling - brings in and releases air at a higher volume than using your nose too. Like never use your nose. Great news for people with stuffy noses. For asthmatics, this is interesting though: some studies show that asthma symptoms can be reduced by breathing in through your nose, not mouth, here for example. 

Additionally, an odd benefit of the most recent pandemic (who would have thought there could be a benefit from a pandemic?), is... wearing a mask in cold weather, which provides a warming chamber for cold air and helps sufferers of cold weather (and exercise) induced asthma, to breath through their mouth while pre-warming, and filtering, inhaled air; similarly to nose breathing.

Stomach breathing

Like this:

and almost like this:

Use your stomach (well abdomen). Make your breathing relaxed and deep. Normally, we're shallow, crude human beings, breathers that is, but runningwise, that's probably inefficient. Deep "belly" breathing might be better. When your breath is shallow, you don't take advantage of your total lung capacity. The real trick is to breathe-out quickly and fully. Punch the out-breath. Empty your lungs as fully and quickly as you can, leaving the in-breath to take care of itself. If you don't empty your lungs on the out-breath, your instinct will be to force breathing in, to try and obtain more oxygen. Over filling your lungs on the in-breath stresses your diaphragm (your rib cage can only move so much) and results in a stitch (a similar effect to running wearing a jacket that's too tight).

Oxygen is what your muscles crave, so the more oxygen the better your ability to burn glycogen (brawndo!). Getting rid of CO2 is what your body craves, which makes the fast out-breath so important.

(test: while you're running, put your hand on your stomach (abdomen), to feel if it's rising and falling... like rising and falling as if you were laying down... while running. Oh - just forget it!)

Counting steps to pace your inhale vs. exhale ratio - 3:2

All sorts of science today: To fully oxygenate the muscles and clear the body of CO2, you should inhale for 3 steps and then exhale for 2. Makes for weird dancing. I think System of a Down has a beat that caters to this. 

You'll naturally drop to a 2:2 ratio when you're pushing it (or pre-oxygenating, preparing to tackle an uphill section). 

Other tips:

• relax your jaw
  
• unless you're running up hills or at speed, breathe quietly! (I've never managed this one)
  
• upright posture allows for better lung expansion
  
• since breathing is synchronized with steps, increasing step turnover rate (cadence) on an uphill (while shortening stride length), increases oxygenation and flushing CO2
  
• don't over-think it (ignore everything we just wrote)

Related WFR Topics

Short Strides #3 (bubbles), Arm Swing #4 (bubbles), Relax #5 (bubbles), Run Tall #14 (bubbles).

Reading Bubble Diagrams:

Bubbles in the pictures are individually linked to the most recent notes. They are now no longer pictures (hooray), they're auto-generated scalable vector drawings.

Topics are related to each other. Some more or less directly than others. Bubble Diagrams (e.g. this week's topic bubble diagram) illustrate how they are related. Bubbles nearest the top are more directly related to this week's topic. The path to the top illustrates a chain of related topics. Topic bubbles are expanded once in their highest position (most closely related to this week's topic) and are colored blue (or colored black if this is a topic's only appearance). Duplicated bubbles are colored green, which is no less important than a blue colored bubble at the same vertical distance from the root.

Lines that join topic bubbles have been colored. Blue connecting lines illustrate a child topic (lower) supported by its parent topic (upper... think waterfall). Purple connecting lines illustrate the child topic supporting its parent topic. Black connecting lines indicate bi-directional (mutual) topic support. Lightly colored connecting lines indicate topics that are pulled out of the way, as the level they occupy is too crowded. One day 3D (AV) will allow us to walk through bubble diagrams (like tinkling mobiles hanging from your ceilings) and currently lightly-connected bubbles will just be viewable at a different angle (by spinning the view) and not colored differently. One Day... ahhh... One Day.

📢 ANNOUNCEMENTS 📢

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📢 Weekly Daddy Joke 📢

What was the snowman doing out in the vegetable patch?...

...Picking his nose!