Greetings,
Here’s what I firmly is the right way to breathe:Conscious deep breathing pattern. Now this hold good irrespective of whether you’re an athlete or not. That’s because most of the people are usually ‘shallow breathers’. This fundamental deep breathing pattern is more important when you are an athlete.
Regarding diaphragm breathing, as the fellow athlete pointed out: Yes, every breath that you take involves the diaphragm. The ‘Diaphragmatic Breathing technique’ only makes sure that the diaphragm stretches completely (through belly breathing), allowing the lungs to expand to their full capacity. But please note that in order for this technique to work, both the inhale and exhale phases have to be complete. What I mean by this is that yes people do inhale deeply, but seldom focus on the exhale aspect, often leaving it incomplete.
Engaging your stomach can happen multiple ways: sucking the stomach (belly button to spine) & bracing, breathing in full & bracing and also while breathing. Yes the level of the ‘brace’ depends on the activity. If you’re walking a tight rope: stomach sucked in gives the best results, if you’re olympic lifting:stomach filled with air and if you’re running:breathing while keeping your muscles engaged gives the desired results.
In my opinion the way you feel with your current form is just a result of the mental perception due to the physical conditioning that you’ve put in all these years. It just requires de-training/un-learning.
Elongation of spine/standing tall: A strong core is your answer to this question. We’re talking about a 360-degree strong core! The exercises posted on the UA website are more than enough to get you there.
How to put all the above to practice?
Ans: Work on your core. Practice deep conscious breathing while doing simpler workouts like: brisk walking or easy hikes. You will observe how you will start engaging your core, inspite of ‘belly breathing’. The trick it is to start slow, be conscious and slowly build up on volume.
Hope this helps. Looking forward to see what the coaches at UA have to say about this.
