Diaphragmatic breathing

At the top level, races are often won on the margin. At some point everyone is training hard. The difference in results is often less a function of who has trained more hours and more dependent on the daily details that help athletes find their edge. One summer Andy’s edge was beef jerky. In an effort to consume more protein and iron rich red meat, Andy ate beef jerky nearly every day. Bonus points for experimenting, but the relative advantages of eating beef jerky every day versus a recovery bar were minimal. Needless to say, the summer of beef jerky was a short-lived experiment. A more promising experiment is something called diaphragmatic breathing.

I was first introduced to diaphragmatic breathing in the context not of ski training, but while taking singing lessons. Singers (and really great singers in particular) have incredible breath control and are taught early on how to use their diaphragm when belting out tunes. In recent years, the same principles behind diaphragmatic breathing that allow opera singers and rock stars to bring audiences to their knees have been applied to the world of endurance sports. Like singers, skiers need a lot of oxygen to perform. Diaphragmatic breathing allows a skier to increase breathing capacity by enlarging the available space for air to enter the lungs. 

So what is diaphragmatic breathing? Your diaphragm is a dome-shaped internal muscle located just below the lungs that can float up and down, kind of like a wave. When asked to take a deep breath, most people expand their lungs to fill them with air. However if you’ve ever taken a yoga class, the instructor may have talked about something called belly breathing. Rather than just expanding your lungs outward, belly breathing engages the diaphragm below your lungs and is it contracts, the muscle pulls down, thereby allowing your lungs to expand down and out at the same time. 

Like any muscle, the diaphragm can get tired and especially during a race or hard training effort, you may have noticed your breath become more shallow as the diaphragm fatigues and no longer contracts as easily to open up the lungs. However, there are also exercises to strengthen the diaphragm in the same way we spend hours in the gym strengthening our legs and arms. Research has shown that diaphragmatic breathing reduces oxidative stress on the body (thereby increasing your body’s ability to recover), and has been shown to increase time to exhaustion for runners when incorporated in a pre-exercise warm-up routine. Additionally, core stabilization exercises based on breathing is more effective in improving pulmonary function and abdominal fitness than traditional abdominal exercises (Journal of Physical Therapy Science).

An easy week is the perfect time to start incorporating breathwork since it does not add additional fatigue to your already tired muscles. Below are a few exercises to practice diaphragmatic breathing (Harvard Medical School), what we at NTS might call the 2020 edge. Before you know it, you will sound like Therese Johaug flying up and over Alpe Cermis! As a bonus, diaphragmatic breathing has been shown to have powerful effects on managing stress and anxiety and helping with the challenges of breathing in a mask, something most of us are managing now on a daily basis.