Breathing is a fundamental human function. Sprinting is a fundamental athletic function. As breathing becomes a more mainstream topic of discussion in the strength and conditioning world, it is important for coaches to have a playbook that allows them to take advantage of the research and practice of breathing that is coming out in the strength and conditioning world every day. With experts like Dana Santas and Dr. Emily Splichal explaining the benefits of using the diaphragm to breathe in athletics, we can keep the “why” brief in order to dive further into the “when” and “how.”

We can see multiple other benefits of athletes breathing with their diaphragm. Primarily, engaging the diaphragm increases the core stability and stiffness of the athlete’s trunk. As the diaphragm contracts, it expands against the thoracic cavity and stabilizes the rib cage and lumbar spine with intra-abdominal pressure. When exhaling properly, the intercostal muscles and the pelvic floor engage. This maintains the stability brought on by the diaphragm through the entire breathing cycle. In addition to the intra-abdominal pressure brought on by the diaphragm/pelvic floor interaction, proper breathing is crucial in maintaining the alignment of the rib cage “stacked” over the pelvis. This alignment allows the transfer of force through the hips and shoulders to be more effective, creating great implications in nearly every sport on the face of the earth.

This use of the diaphragm/pelvic floor to create stability prevents the upper chest and trap muscles from being the primary breathing muscles, which means that the joints affected by those muscles are free to operate with greater range of motion. This has huge implications in any sport that requires freedom of movement at the shoulder, scapulae, neck and/or thoracic spine. Aside from the mechanical benefits of diaphragmatic breathing, the use of controlling breath under metabolic load has been shown to improve heart rate recovery. Similarly, Kelly Starrett has pointed out that diaphragmatic breathing improves the desaturation of O2 and helps dump CO2, while we have also seen evidence that increased O2 availability can improve phosphocreatine stores in skeletal muscle rapidly between bouts.

Knowing why breathing properly is all well and good, but getting breathing technique integrated into training can be a challenge. Just as I do when introducing any new concept, I begin with the simplest method of teaching and progress into more complex theories.

What we know about learning has helped us understand that the athlete needs to be bought in to the concept, then it needs to be taught separately from complex positions, then slowly integrated into the “whole” of training. One of my biggest mistakes was trying to teach all the proper mechanics of everything an athlete needs to do in their sport, and then bringing breathing into the fold without giving them the time to learn how to simply breathe better without the entire cognitive load they experience in their sport.

These days, I like to begin by simply laying the athlete on the floor in prone position at the beginning of the workout when their cognitive capabilities are typically highest. I have seen the most success with the crocodile breathing method as an introduction. The athlete is prone, forehead supported by their hands stacked on one another. Then, they inhale through their nose (which has the added benefit of causing vasodilation) and feel their lower ribs press into the floor and their sides press out. The sensory feedback of the floor against their torso helps them start to understand what the breath feels like.
Similar to the crocodile, I like the sphinx position for any athlete who needs to express some spinal extension and turn off their low back prior to their mobility work, or who has some higher mileage on them and may be recovering from or simply preventing an impending lumbar disc issue. Sphinx position is also prone, elbows/forearms on the floor, chest high.

In both positions, the focus is on long exhales that contract the intercostals and oblique abdominals. The initial learning phase is typically the most difficult. Trying to undo several years of bad patterns can take time. In order to keep the athlete from getting frustrated and tuning the concepts out, I limit breathing coaching to the first movement of the day until the mechanics can be repeated successfully and consistently. Often, you will get more buy in this way as the athlete will start to feel “different” if they start their training session without taking a minute or two working on breathing.

My singular exception to that rule is when I see an athlete in the middle of a workout with high metabolic demand, struggling to recover between reps or sets. I approach them and encourage diaphragmatic breathing by cupping their sides beneath their ribs and telling them to breathe into my hands and get themselves to exhale for an eight-count. If they can execute that, you just got 100 percent buy in (110 percent if they have a heart rate monitor on and they can see their heart rate drop like a rock). I also hold the belief that in the state of high metabolic load, the body is primed to breathe diaphragmatically and is more receptive to reverting back to its natural breathing pattern.

Once I know an athlete is able to engage their diaphragm consistently, which  may take several weeks, I start cueing breathing during static positioning. As a sprint/jumps coach, I typically start with supine positions with hips and knees in flexion (dead bug position) and the most basic static positions (side planks, planks, single leg balance, push up holds, bear crawl holds, and so on). The idea is to minimize movement so that cognitive load can be applied to breathing while the athlete is engaging muscle in a way that is familiar and simple. Due to the simple nature of the movements, this is usually applied early in the warm up and early in the season, during the General Physical Preparation (GPP) phase or during prehab sessions. Once this is a consistent success for the athlete loading the athlete is my next step. (For Photos, see PDF)

 My favorite position is a single leg march position with load (typically a superband attached to the safety arms of a squat rack and pressed overhead). Cueing breathing in that position is as easy as saying “breathe in and press your belly into your elevated thigh.” Similarly, you can cue breathing in hang holds, pause squats or any other movement that does not require the athlete to coordinate multiple movements in addition to their newfound breathing mechanics.

My next progression is always single movement breathing. Expanding on the march model, I coach a diaphragmatic inhale followed by a hard single leg switch with a sharp exhale. Control your next inhale, switch with a sharp exhale, and repeat. Developing a breathing rhythm in a moving dead bug (which happens to resemble sprinting) is another way to keep it as simple as possible while advancing the complexity of the movements. Drills like shuffle-pause-sprint are a great way to make it more complex but still broken into parts that can be controlled: shuffle laterally 10 yards, pause in a three-point position and inhale, exhale and sprint out of the three-point position simultaneously. This looks a lot like base running.

Like any skill an athlete needs to learn, breathing takes time, patience and practice. Begin by simply developing the feeling of diaphragmatic breathing. Once buy in and technique are acquired, the progressively more difficult tasks can be introduced. Luckily, the learning curve on breathing is steep. Once it can be done properly, you can get around 20,000 reps per day.