Chest vs. Abdominal Breathing During Exercise - Interview with Dr. Artour Rakhimov

Chest vs. Abdominal Breathing During Exercise

In this video, Dr. Artour Rakhimov addresses the question, “how important is it to breathe with the upper abdomen and diaphragm during exercise?”.  Breathing with these muscles  improves body oxygenation.  The muscles of the upper abdomen and diaphragm are separate muscles.  Breathing with both of these muscles is beneficial by providing oxygen for the lower part of the lungs.  In comparison, it is problematic to breathe solely with the chest.  When you take a breath with the chest, the lower part of your lungs is unused.  This provides much less fresh oxygen to the blood and body.

It is especially problematic to have less oxygen in the blood during rest.  Also, having less oxygen in the body, during sleep, makes many sick people die.  While during exercise people can not perform well and they can not use exercise to get healthier.   These effects take place because the chest only provides oxygen for the upper part of the lungs.  Diaphragmatic breathing or upper abdomen breathing stretches all of the lungs.  This stretching gives the great benefit of providing fresh air to all the alveoli of the lungs.

When blood arrives in the lungs, oxygen comes into the lungs.  The important physiological fact is that  gravity makes the blood flow much stronger.  In the lower part of the lungs, it is 6 times stronger than the upper part of the lungs.  When the main vein goes through the lungs, most of its activity is concentrated in the lower part of the lungs.  When people breathe with the upper chest, they do not get fresh oxygen.  That dramatically reduces their blood oxygenation and this especially affects the quality of their exercise.

Learning how to have diaphragmatic breathing can be done with a chest belt.  The belt or strap goes around the upper part of the rib cage.  Also, you can use two belts to help.  The belts can serve two different purposes.  Some of them can be used to prevent the physical stretching of the lungs and to force yourself to have diaphragmatic breathing.  It is also possible to have belts that are not that strong.    In the beginning of breathing retraining, it can require extra concentration to use the diaphragm if you have previously not used it throughout the day.  Breathing with the upper chest and not using the diaphragm becomes an unconscious habit.

More about “Breathing Techniques For Running: Maximize Oxygen Intake and VO2max” on this page: http://www.normalbreathing.com/s/breathing-techniques-for-running.php and its Spanish translation “Técnicas de Respiración para Correr: Maximize Niveles de O2 en el Cuerpo” http://www.respiracionnormal.org/tecnicas-respiracion-de-correr/ .

Another goal is to use diaphragmatic breathing all day and night by changing the way you usually breathe.  Dr. Artour Rakhimov teaches this as a part of his breathing retraining course.  This process has students to start to slow down their unconscious breathing patterns and achieve 30 seconds for the morning body-oxygen test.  In turn, this makes students to naturally use diaphragmatic breathing and it becomes unnecessary to pay extra attention to their diaphragm during physical exercise.

The YouTube URL of this video is: https://youtu.be/YXMrfmFigBg /.

Chris Prokop created this video description. This YouTube video features Dr. Artour Rakhimov (an author of NormalBreathing.com) interviewed by Chris Prokop. Dr. Artour is a health writer and Buteyko breathing teacher and trainer of Buteyko and NormalBreathing practitioners.