As everyone knows, it’s good to breathe while you exercise. You know, that whole providing your body with oxygen thing or doing that action that tends to keep you alive? So, we agree that breathing is important, but is it so important that it is something that you should consciously pay attention to while you exercise? The answer is yes!

Research has shown that your breathing patterns during exercise should change depending on what activity you are doing. Breathing the correct way can make cardiovascular training more efficient, it helps with power and stability during strength and endurance training, and it encourages relaxation during flexibility training. Breathing is important, everyone knows that, but breathing properly also could have positive effects on your training.

Here are a few breathing tips for some of the different types of exercise:

• During cardio training, you should avoid shallow breathing. Remember that your breathing pattern may not be in sync with your exercise activity, and that is okay.
• During strength and endurance training, you should exhale during the most difficult part of an exercise. You should inhale during the recovery period.
• During relaxation training, you should breath deeply and practice diaphragmatic breathing. This will help you decrease oxygen demand and use less effort/energy to breathe. You do diaphragmatic breathing by breathing from your abdomen.

Breathing correctly while you exercise is extremely important. In fact, it may mean less work for you! It will take some time getting used to because you will not be breathing like you normally do during the day. However, once you train yourself to supply oxygen to your body in these different manners, you will probably see some changes. Next time you exercise, pay attention to how and when you breath. Try to alter it!