General Fitness & Nutrition: Nasal breathing-performance improvement

Sounds kinda hooky to me, but lets check the math- where are top endurance athletes currently at: turnover is around 85-95/min and 1 breath every 1.5 (generally accepted as the more popular breathing pattern, giving a breath on alternating feet) so that would be 56-64 breaths/min, not even close to 14-20. Assume the other way around 1.5 breaths at 20 breaths would be a turnover of 30steps/min, thats great if your walking. To match the turnover of an average casual runner at a rate of 60/min you would have to take a breath every 3 steps? So your right foot would have to hit the ground 3 times for you to take a breath! That is very unconventional. Personally I also do not see any logic in reducing your breathing rate as an advantage for running. Maybe, and I'm stretching here, by reducing the breathing rate you would mimic a higher altitude to improve VO2? But in my mind that seems like a really big stretch. As for the heart rate, for an endurance run like a marathoner would be around 75% of max so 173-187max which is about (via easy estimate 220-age) would make the person about 33-47. Which seems reasonable, as for an elite marathoner would be, like Ryan Hall's, but I would imagine that it is not too far off. So... long story short the math does not add up for the breathing part of it, also neither does the fact that I have never observed a top athlete running with there mouth closed. Heck the Olympics are coming up, you can see for yourself (that is if their not wearing a mask, ZING take that China, sorry couldn't help myself. They had on the news 5 of the last 7 days the air in Beijing was deemed unhealthy by the WHO, I can't imagine running in that). The heart rate is plausible, but I don't think that you need a gimmick to drop it down to that rate, your regular running will suffice. I'm also not one to shoot down an interesting new training idea so give it a shot if you want, heck i might, but it really doesn't make much sense to me.

I always try to breathe out of my nose only as long as possible. It does seem to help me last longer; some long runs (8+ miles) I have been able to breate out of my nose only pretty much the entire time. However, this only works for me when I am going at a slow pace (9:30 to 10 min miles). If I up the pace to 9:00 or faster, I always have to resort to breathing out of my mouth. I am not a speed runner, so that may be why it only works for me for long distances. I have noticed when I breathe out of my nose only, my hear rate seems to be much slower at the end of a run compared to when I breathe out of my mouth. If I were you and wanted to try this method, I would probably stick to a slower pace (9:30 min miles compared to 8:00 or 8:30 min miles) and sustain it for a longer time.

Good luck!

I much prefer mouth breathing, I think I would feel like I was suffocating if I breathed through my nose!  I think you should breathe the way that you instinctually/naturally tend to when you're running. For me, that's thru my mouth!   

I chose to discipline myself from the very beginning to use the "in through the nose, out through the mouth" method of breathing.  I have worked my way to a 23 minute 5k.  My fastest breath rate is one breath every two steps when either on a steep incline or sprinting.  (Speaking of inclines, I have to say that working those hills has been the best way for me to quickly gain endurance).  Controlling my breathing has another benefit in that it helps keep my mind occupied and not so focused on parts of my body that might be complaining about the exertion.

I am a recent convert to nasal breathing (I use nasal "breathe right" strips doubled up when I want to go really hard - this is the only thing I have found necessary when nasal brathing) and have been quite shocked at how fast I can run breathing through the nose. I recently completed 4 three minute intervals at 98% VO max and never broke out of nasal breathing (I have run a 1:56 half-mile as a junior,  so I am no slouch). In the occasional steep, long climb on a tough XC course, I need to oro-nasal breathe, but I breathe in through the mouth-nose combo, and EXHALE nasally! this is weird, but it really helps the developmet of your max VO2 by increasing the back-pressure in the lungs, enhancing O2 absorption, and thus improving O2 consumption ability.

 The narrower passages of the nose ensure that air enters the lungs FASTER, not slower. This is the Bernoulli principle in action. One of the first things I notice when I open the mouth, is how "flat" the breath feels. It really isn't deep in any sense. Also, by the time and i have to switch to full mouth breathing, I have become so uncomfortable that mouth breathing ain't gonna save me anyways. So I now see mouth-breathing in a hard interval session or a race as an indicator that I have somehow screwed things up, pace-wise.

 That said, John Douillard is not doctrinaire - he even reccommends mouth breathing if you are a currently active athlete on a programme, BUT, nasal breathing is considered always a "work in progress". I am constantly amazed at the little incremental improvements - and they add up fast. Sadly, I sometimes have bad days where I regress - that's OK, I just go with it, knowing that after a day or two, my nasal breathing is fine again.

 Here's the thing - the first few months of using the technique are flat-footed hell, as your body (and mind mostly!) readjust to nasal breathing, a different airflow, and more. But I am convinced the benefits outweigh the drawbacks. Certainly you will experience an initial (and possibly big!) drop in pace, but you really will recover most of that speed in the first few months. After about a year, I suspect most people will be right back up to speed, but you'll have a whole new experience breathing!

Where does that leave you? You may break into mouth breathing for the last part of a tough race (John Douillard's own words) but you're steadily increasing the time you spend nasal breathing, and the speed at which you can do it. So you're getting the benefits constantly. I used to be a constant mouth-breather (allergies and an old broken nose). Not anymore. I am now a habitual nose-breather at rest.

As a last note I find it funny how most people try nose breathing for a day (if at all) and conclude it doesn't work!

from a satisfied customer (no connection otherwise) this really works!

http://www.cyclo-club.com/public/636.cfm

 

I've switched to nasal breathing and at a cross country team run I did 4 miles at a 6:07 pace.  Just about all of it was nasal breathing.  So to all the people who believe that you will suffocate if you breathe through your nose, it's simply not true.  You really can't compare mouth breathing to nasal breathing unless you have actually trained using both.  It's like if you haven't worked out all your life and you decide to go lift weights.  It won't feel good, but that doesn't mean it's not good for you!

I'm certainly not running at the pace of some of these young X-country studs but I notice I breath using both the nasal and mouth. Last year I was using a breath right strip and it helped a lot.  I have the problem of snot running out too much and actually carry along a tissue or two on LRs.  I had to stop the breath right strip because I realized it was causing bad side stitches.  I guess I was getting too much oxygen in that way.  I dunno.  I may try and go back to it. 

At about an 8:30 pace, I average 25 breaths/minute, give or take.  I'm not a huge stat taker, no heart rate monitor/other fancy stuff for me.  That number may be off simply because I'm consciously aware of how many breaths I'm taking (there's some psychology term for this...)

 

It does feel effortless...usually.  If I'm going really hard, then I sometimes need to take a breath through the mouth but I think with even more training I'll get past even that.  It feels wonderful at a normal pace.  I'm very calm and relaxed on runs.  I imagine that I look rather strange, with a very calm look on my face as I run along.  That may be quite the psychological advantage during XC

 

I just started doing it at the beginning of this summer.  Pretty flawless transition as far as I can tell.  The first few runs my pace went up by about a minute or two but that's it.

I tend to have the same issue as EmBeeDee and boyjame have mentioned, too much snot. In my case it seems to be excersize related. Nose is fine all day, go out for a run and my nose starts running too. This can make breathing just through my nose very difficult. Broadsword mentioned the Bernoulli effect, but I think that is a bogus argument. Anyone with asthma can tell you that breathing through a constricted airway is hard work and not fun. Ditto for anyone who has ever experienced anaphalaxis. I don't mean that I have anything like that level of difficulty, but breathing just through my nose gets me into a similar situation. When I'm not congested, maybe it will work. But once the nasal congestion starts, nasal breathing stops.

I also have to think that there is an evolutionary reason/advantage to having the ability to breath through both nose and mouth. If nasal breathing alone was advantageous then perhaps someone could point me towards the mamailian species that employ it. I'm thinking placebo effect rather than Bernoulli effect.

Hmmm ... thought I added a comment here earlier today ... but perhaps it got lost when my internet connection went down ...

 Just wanted to say that I am loving running again. I'm focusing on keeping heart rate under 140 (in the aerobic zone), walking when it goes above that. Trying the nasal breathing again. Completed 6.4 miles today in 1hr10 - slow considering I could run that at 8 min mile pace without overdoing it. But I sweated and the legs were tingling when I got home.

The big difference between today and my normal runs is that I enjoyed it. I felt good, it felt effortless and I won't have to talk myself into running tomorrow because I know it won't hurt. The past few months I have had to motivate myself each day because the runs left me tired and needing food.

With regards to snot ... Douillard says "For those who have nasal congestion, believe it or not, nasal breathing is the best cure. It is more difficult in the beginning, but, in time, exercise levels will improve and the once-congested nose will be open ... One of the worst things you can do if the passageway is blocked, even structurally, is not to use it. If you don't use it, it will surely never work properly."  Obviously if you wanted to get things moving you can learn to nasal breath while doing your day-to-day activities. All my breathing is through the nose these days.

Going back to the original question ... I was looking at my old running log from early last year when I was trying the nasal breathing ... unfortunately my notes are a little brief but here's selected bits of what I wrote.

If I recall I was using Douillard's principles of 5 mins slow warmup with HR at about 105, followed by 20 mins keeping it below 140, then cutting lose if I wanted in phase 3. The treadmill was in km, so remember 6.4km is 4 miles. 8.0km/h is 5mph, 9.7km/h is 6mph.

 Feb 20th ... Warmup at 8.0km/h ... HR reached about 135 after 25 mins. Then at 9.0 for 15 mins and increasing to 9.5 at end of 45 mins total. Avg HR 133. Total distance 6.2km

 Feb 21st ... Warmup at 8.2km/h ...HR reached about 135 after 25 mins. Then at 9.0 - 9.2 over next 21 mins. (Ran for 46 mins). Avg HR 130. Total distance 6.4 km

Feb 26th ... Standard warmup for 25mins. Then changed machine and ran for a further 50 mins at 8.8km/h. HR averaged 147. Total distance 10.7km

Feb 27th ... Standard warmup for 25mins. Ran for a further 5 mins at 8.5km/h. PI 34. HR got very high and unenjoyable. Total distance 4.0km

Feb 29th ... Standard warmup for 25mins then ran for a further 20 mins increasing speed to 10.0km/h for last 5 mins. HR averaged 136. Total distance 6.4km

Mar 3rd ... Standard warmup for 25mins then ran for a further 20 mins increasing speed to 10.0km/h. Too much reduced back to 9.5. HR averaged 142. Distance 6.3

 Mar 6th ...  Standard warmup at 8.2km/h. 25 mins at 9.2 for avg HR of 147. 9.5 was too quick to maintain breath rate of 9. Distance 6.4 [Note: this comment reminds me that I was using a breath rate of about 9 per minute]

Mar 11th ... Standard warmup at 8.0 km/h. Continued at 9.2 for 15 mins then 9.5 for final 22 mins. Distance = 8.7km, avg HR =142. Breathing steady at 11 per min.

Mar 12th ... Standard warmup at 8.0 km/h. HR below 120 for first 14mins!
Final 20 mins at 9.4km/h. distance= 5.6, avg HR=142. [Note: I love this comment, although we don't know the speed, my fitness was obviously improving enough that I could be running albeit slowly enough to maintain such a comparatively low HR]

Mar 19th ... Standard warmup. HR below 130 for first 23 mins. AVG HR 102! Total distance 2.5km [Comment: I'm wondering if the distance is accurate. Even walking I'd cover a mile and a half in 23 mins. I recall the low average heart rate was because my HR was in the 80s while walking and then took a long time to rise even when I started to run.]

So there you have it ... nothing particularly conclusive other than my fitness improved over a period of 3 weeks when I was running 3-5 times per week! But that was using nasal breathing techniques and I did have to go slow.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I have a strong heart. Resting rate is around 45bpm. It's sub 40 when I wake up in the morning lying in bed. Seen it down at 33. I maxed my heart out at 182 a few months ago doing intervals on the rowing machine. When I just start walking my HR usually goes at somewhere between 85-105 ( though I'll have to specifically double check that).

When I was playing more sports and running daily, I had my Vo2 max measured somewhere in the 70+ml.kg.min range but that was a long time ago. It's probably still above average somewhere down in the 50s these days.

Pacewise, my cadence has always been poor; only about 77 strides (155 steps per minute).

I have a big lung capacity (being 6'2"). About 6.3 litres where I believe average is about 4.5 

Although those factors help on the breathrate, Douillard's book is mostly about "Invincible Athletes" being able to go all out at 15-18 breaths per minute compared to mouth breathers up over 45.

With regards to the exercise diary, that was the second month's worth. Unfortunately I didn't keep any notes other than the mileage about the first month. But I do recall that when I started all my running was at 8km/h whereas by the end of the of the two months I was pushing 9.5 ... as I say an aerobic improvement, and all achieved with nasal breathing.

Thanks for your thoughts Em ... definitely there was room for improvement and any training would be good training ... I was really trying to follow the Douillard book ... he reckons about 3 months to get comfortable and 6 months to see nasal outperforming mouth.

I'm fairly fit and strong but there are some weaknesses there, but those are mostly due to training being sporadic rather than consistent over the past 10 years.

It's going off topic and a bit self-indulgent to talk about myself but here's how things have changed ... 

Back in 1999, I ran London Marathon in 4h20; having done only 70 miles of running in the Jan-Apr period. However I was playing sport and going to circuits twice a week (which I beasted myself on the sprints).

 When I got another entry for London in 2005, I ran regularly for about 6 months and did circuits. Training and a 10K at the start of March went awfully and I carried my entry over to 2006. I continued the run training (mostly short 4-5 miles multiple times each) then looked to up the mileage in the last few months. At the end of January I was comfortably up to 15 miles in 2hr10 and then my training collapsed. The following week I could only manage 12.5 miles on my long run, then 11.75, then 10.5, then 9. Each week I would get to 90-120 mins and have to stop & walk, unable to go any further. It was very windy at that time, and being bigframed it sapped me a bit. But that really shouldn't have been a showstopper. The problems certainly weren't down to overtraining as I was actually went down to only doing the long runs for a couple of weeks to see if that would give me the energy and recovery. Following that, I did manage to get back to doing 19 miles the following weekend by using a run-walk combination. And I did complete the marathon but in a time of 4hr40, 20 mins slower than 1999 having put in a lot more lot more effort with my training. I managed to run the first 17 miles in 2hr30 but had to walk the remaining 9.

Anyway having just bought a new heart rate monitor (the first in 10 years - though occasionally I borrowed them at the gym); I've come to realise that perhaps it's my aerobic base. When I went on the treadmill last week, mouthbreathing, at 9.7km/h my heart rate was straight up at 150. That's easy running for me, but of course it's burning glycogen rather than fats, so I guess would explain why I could only manage to run for 90 mins or so. And that's why I'm going back to basics with the nosebreathing and slow runs to start building the aerobic base!

Ok ... so I thought I'd report ...

I've been training for the last month trying to get the nasal breathing thing going ... ... done about 73 miles in 13 hours ... 9hr30 of which has been in the aerobic zone (i.e. HR less than 140) ...

 I'm getting slow but steady improvement, but nothing you wouldn't expect from that level of training with mouth breathing.

I shall report back next month!

Hugh - from the stats sounds like you are seeing a great improvement! A resting HR of 35 is superb. Mine's about 42-45, but hasn't come down much in the last 6 months. At 10/mile I'd be breathing at maybe 20 per minute, so you are doing better than me at that - on the other hand I'd be ticking over at 115bpm at that pace, so you still have room for improvement there!

Update 2 ... I've been a bit slack on my running over the past month ... only 10 runs this far for about 40 miles ... I am getting fitter ... I think I run faster but my times aren't coming down significanty ... the good thing about aerobic training is I never feel to jaded to go out running day after day.