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Expand your running knowledge, identify running misconceptions and become a faster, healthier, SMARTER runner. Let Brodie Sharpe become your new running guide as he teaches you powerful injury insights from his many years as a physiotherapist while also interviewing the best running gurus in the world. This is ideal for injured runners & runners looking for injury prevention and elevated performance. So, take full advantage by starting at season 1 where Brodie teaches you THE TOP PRINCIPLES TO OVERCOME ANY RUNNING INJURY and letβs begin your run smarter journey.
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On today's episode, how to overcome breathlessness and supercharge your lungs with James Fletcher. common running myths and real evidence-based guidance. But this podcast is changing that. So join me as a run smarter scholar and raise your running IQ so we can break through the injury cycles and achieve running feats you never thought possible. James Fletcher is a physio, exercise physiologist, a university lecturer, an Olympic trainer, a free dive instructor, and revolves around performance, particularly around the breath, particularly around your lungs, what limits performance when it comes to your breath and breathing and strategies and strengthening up your breath and muscles that require inspiration of the air. Fascinating conversation, absolutely loved having James on. At the time of recording, he's in the process of creating an online course to help people build up their lungs, help with performance, reduce breathlessness, all that sort of stuff. And we sort of touch on some ways you're going to walk away after this conversation being like, man, I should work on my breathing. I know I did. And there's some really practical takeaways, some really minimalist, like non equipment required to stuff you can do at home. Not a lot of time required, but you reap so much benefit. So, um, can absolutely love James cracker of a bloke and let's take it away. James, thank you very much for joining me on the podcast. Thank you for having me. For those who are familiar with you, could you start off with a bit of an introduction about yourself and how you stumbled into this particular career path that you're on? Yeah. Um, I'm a physiotherapist. I'm also an exercise physiologist. Um, and I think as a lot of young people, you, you finish school and you don't really know what to do. So the world was really my oyster. Um, and I tried a bunch of things. I went and did business and engineering and traveled around and then sort of fell into physio, um, because I had a great mentor as a physio, like I just knocked on the clinic, they were treating the world's best athletes. And then I was sort of hooked at that stage. not just because it was treating athletes, but the person that really ran the clinic was, I really resonated with that person. They had a great outlook on life and a great ethos in the clinic as well. And then I went and started working for Cirque du Soleil, traveling around the world as a physio. And I found myself at this point where we're in Tokyo, the earthquakes happened, we were evacuated. and my mum got diagnosed with COPD. This was all in a few weeks time. So I had to sort of think about ways that I could manage athletes performance and their health. Coming back into Tokyo, first show back in Japan performing and there's aftershocks where we're sleeping in, you know, Tokyo towers where the building is swaying, people aren't sleeping properly. They're drinking a lot. We've just had two weeks rest. So how am I gonna help these patients deal with this anxiety, with this lack of training and performance and lack of focus? And then how am I gonna help my mom back in Australia who's been diagnosed with this lung condition? So I didn't have any idea about breathing. So I started focusing on my mom. How do I help her with her condition? And then I started coming across articles where I looked at breath training. And there's one article in particular, which was a randomized control, um, at the summary of randomized control trials, uh, for patients with a lung disease, when they did breath training, they improve their performance. They've reduced their shortness of breath and they improve the quality of life. So that started my journey with my mom. And then at the same time I had to treat these athletes and I was like, well, why not trial a few of these breathing techniques, um, in this athlete space? I've got, there's nothing else I can do. to help them with their anxiety or pre-performance challenges. And it turns out that it started working there as well. And there was no prescription. I was just testing things out. And that's the beautiful thing I think is physios is there's part science, but there's also this artistic component of helping people out. And that's how I found myself in breathing. Very cool, mate. For those who aren't familiar with COPD, cause I know a lot of recreational writers listen to this, could you best describe it? Yeah, it's really a condition primarily focused with smokers, ex-smokers, where over years of smoking or pollution or dust or occupational exposure, your lungs actually break down. And rather than lots of little lung sacks all spread over really nice and evenly, you're left with just sort of a balloon lung, right? So it's really floppy. You get reduction in gas exchange that you become short of breath really quickly. And then you would have seen these people with with the nose prongs in wheeling around their oxygen cell and that's a patient with COPD. And it's funny how, you know, this can directly transfer over to the athletic population because a lot of recreational runners experience a lot of breathlessness when they do run and you wouldn't imagine like, you know, I, I scour on YouTube and see, you know, how to breathe easier when running or how to get rid of breathlessness or like any sort of those. And. those views are like through the roof, millions and millions of people are trying to work out how can they make running easier, reduce their breathlessness and those sorts of things. Um, makes me ask the question, like, why do people even when running at low intensity, why do some people just experience breathlessness more than others? Yeah. Great question. And, um, and that was really the first thing that I, um, sort of fell in love with breathing was like this, this idea of shortness of breath. And if you want to use it, technically it's the neurophysiology of breathlessness, right? So what is happening? It's so complex, right? And there's so many different factors to it. And I'll just give you a couple of weird examples just to set us off on the track. So I'm a free dive instructor as well. So when I first started looking at the shortness of breath, one of the articles that I found was if If you hold your breath for as long as possible and then you tap your chest, just as you're about to give up, it actually extends your breath hold. And I was like, wow, why is that? So extend your experience, your shortness of breath, and then you get to your limit. And then you're like, how can I push past that limit? That's the question. And just purely by tapping the muscles of the breathing system, the body thinks that it's taking a breath and therefore reduces the sensation of breathlessness. Right. So it's like, Fascinating. Yeah. So there's breathlessness senses or shortness of breath senses in the muscles that act on the breathing system. Right. So scalenes, our, um, scalenes, our, what are these ones here? Oblique's intercostals maybe. No, uh, it'll come back to me. Um, diaphragm, um, you know, all of these accessory muscles of breathing, um, serratus anterior, um, all these accessory muscles of breathing. that there's muscle senses in there that react to when you take a breath. Right. So this feeling of shortness of breath, whether you're running or holding your breath underwater, those muscles become active. The body reduces its breathlessness, right? Purely by passing air over the upper airway. So by taking a breath or when you're holding your breath as a free diver, by moving air around in your, in your throat and in your nose while you're underwater, we reduce our sensation of I was like, it's so complex, but answering your question, um, why are so many runners and it's up to 40% of recreational runners experience shortness of breath, which limits their ability to run. Right. So it's not their legs giving out. It says, ah, I'm puffed. Right. And I'll probably say the first one is being unfair, you know, or not putting the K's into the legs. So if you haven't done that, um, then that's something that you have to do. You have to put those K's under the legs. That builds the systems that need to shuttle the oxygen, the carbon dioxide in and out of the cells. If we have a buildup of carbon dioxide, so if you're not fit enough and you don't have the enzymes and the transport mechanisms in your legs, then you're gonna get that buildup of carbon dioxide. And that is the most potent stimulator for shortness of breath. So this buildup of carbon dioxide. So as freedive instructors, that's something that we work on all the time is managing that carbon dioxide load, getting used to that experience and also delaying that onset of that carbon dioxide buildup. The second one would probably be over breathing. And that sounds weird, right? So how if I over breathe, how am I getting short of breath? And this is quite common in recreational and elite level runners. is that we breathe too much. What ends up happening in that space is we become really inefficient at breathing and we're not actually moving a lot of air in and out of the lungs. We actually would reduce the ventilation of the lungs but increase the ventilation of the upper system. All right I'm not sure if your listeners can understand that but the best way to describe it would be let's take a breath in together now, a big one and then exhale a quarter of the air And over ventilation, this is where patients are essentially breathing from. So they're only ventilating a small portion of their lungs. They're actually shifting a lot of air, but not ventilating the lungs. So we're reducing that gas exchange, which leads to the buildup of carbon dioxide and this level of shortness of breath. But it's super complex. And here's another one is if you listen to music and you can't hear your breathing, you run better. Why is that? Yeah, is that because you can't hear your labored breathing? And I, this is again, one of the fascinating factors about this idea of shortness of breath. If you can't hear your labored breathing, then you run faster. So just purely the brain hearing labored breathing, your body's probably thinking, wow, this is pretty hard work. And that thought in itself probably perpetuates increasing shortness of breath, which perpetuates. perpetuates that reduced performance, you know, so that that's quite interesting itself. And, you know, I sort of the research and it gets really complex here on the mechanisms of shortness of breath. You know, if we vibrate some stimuluses over the breathing muscles, that reduces your levels of shortness of breath. If we pass inert gases over the upper airways, and we do this as freediving instructors, we move air in our throat and in our upper nasal cavity when we're down under the water and we feel some relief from that shortness of breath feeling. So in answering that question, it's multifactorial and hopefully the, in later in the podcast, we're going to uncover some tests, which might give some of your listeners some answers. Right. But it's, it's so huge. That's a huge question. Yeah. And some really fascinating, uh, mechanisms behind it. It seems like, um, you just got a whole bunch of different senses. that all just sort of like might trigger yourself or freak out the brain to be like, okay, we're, we're out of breath, let's increase the breath rate and those sorts of things. But I think understanding those mechanisms can help, you know, if we talk about interventions and how we can develop strategies to reduce breathlessness, I think understanding all those particular mechanisms is really important. So, um, yeah, it's, I mean, I just thinking then, um, you know, myself as an athlete, useless athlete, but, um, I'm I'm very much a leader. So if I get out in front, I can hold that, you know, and I, and I feel the energy and the build of that being out in front, but as soon as I get behind, this is myself as an athlete, it just becomes much more harder for me. And that's my brain, you know, that's how it works. So it's, it's super, um, personal to an individual, but at the baseline level, the factors would probably be fitness level, possibly over-breathing. Right. Or not being efficient with breathing and everything that I've focused on with my breathing career has been about making breathing easier, you know? Um, so any of the interventions and things that we talk about today, we'll be looking to make breathing easier, which hopefully leads to a reduction in that shortness of breath feeling is that some of your listeners might be feeling. Yeah. Let's roll into that. So if we're, if we're unsure, if we're maybe over breathing or what our strategy is, do you have any particular advice around? how recreational runners should be thinking about their breathing, whether that's a rhythm or in time or how deep their breath should be, any particular guidelines around that? Yeah. Um, no, no real guidelines, but just some, some concepts for people to think about. Um, so the first one, um, I would do would be just nasal breathing. So can you go for a job and there's jogging obviously variable as well, but what I would say, and this might be an interesting test for the listeners. So, take your mouth out, get on a treadmill, and run as far as you can in 10 minutes, right? Purely by nasal breathing. So you can control the speed, all right? And give yourself 10 minutes to get the most distance you can in 10 minutes. Now, I've set a mark on that. So I think if you can go over two kilometers, right? And purely nasal breathing in 10 minutes. then you won't be over breathing during your run. Right? That's my mark. But that's quite challenging for a lot of people. So when people get used to over breathing during their running, what they'll see when they take them out, because we limit their ability to ventilate their lungs, they'll be like, and they'll wanna rip this off and they'll wanna stop, and they'll wanna catch up their breath, right? So someone that's used to over breathing, during their running, what ends up happening is they reduce their threshold to carbon dioxide buildup. Because they're used to just getting rid of it straight away. Now having some carbon dioxide in our system or in our bloodstream actually facilitates the delivery of oxygen to the tissues. So it's really important. Now, if some of you listen as a red oxygen advantage, which is a particular type of breathing interventions, it's exactly what they focus on. maintaining some level of carbon dioxide in the system, all right, feeling comfortable with that, all right, so not reacting to that, which allows the increased blood delivery or increased oxygen delivery to the tissues, which does manage that hyperventilation or over breathing syndrome, essentially we call it. So yeah, if you can jump on a treadmill, tape your mouth up, do 10 minutes, if you can get over two Ks in 10 minutes, that's pretty good, right? The other one that I would do is if you need to be able to hold your breath for longer than two minutes, if you want to increase your running performance. So a purely static breath test, big breath in, hold your breath for as long as you can, can you hold your breath for longer than two minutes? If you can do those two things, then I would not put my house on it, but it's a good indication that you aren't over breathing during your running, and that won't be a problem. What about like... rhythm while you're breathing while you're running like if you're out there, sure, you could maybe get your quality of your breathing is up to scratch. But is there something to do with the timing and the rhythm of the breathing? Is it just in through the nose out through the mouth? Is it any other steps like that? Huge. So first of all, when you start running, the first thing that happens is you start taking deeper breaths. All right, that's the way that the ventilatory system copes with that exercise demand, right? You start running. And what we've seen with recreational versus elite level runners is elite level runners tend to take bigger breaths, all right? So up to 70% of their vital capacity. So let's say I can breathe in five liters, a good runner will tend to use breaths around that three and a half liter mark, right? When they're running. Amateur runners or recreational runners, will tend to up to about 40 or 50% of their vital capacity. All right, so that's the first thing. So be cognizant if you're running to maybe take a little bit deeper and slower breaths, okay? The second thing is rhythm. You're 100% right with that. It's, and that's why I think we talked about shortness of breath, removing that auditory sense of labored breathing, which may contribute to your performance. But I think the other thing that music does is it gives you a rhythm. All right. And we know how important that is in running and particularly with the breathing rhythm you want to try. And I'm not even, I'm probably a recreational runner, but I'm definitely not at elite level runner and recently working with some Berlin marathon runners, we were talking about this rhythm concept. Now, if you can time your breath in to your foot strike, All right, now the diaphragm sinks down, right? When we contract it, when we breathe in, the diaphragm sinks down, increases the volume of the thoracic cage, that creates a negative pressure, air flows into the lungs. If you can time your inhalation with your foot strike, then the diaphragm is gonna get a free ride, right? Just due to gravity. If your foot strike, boom, your diaphragm is sinking down at the same time, less work is put into dropping the diaphragm. therefore leading to less work during breathing, making breathing easier. So that's something that we work with athletes and with runners as well is the timing of that foot strike to your breath in. And if we've got time, we can spend a minute now doing it if you like. So if your listeners are in the car or wherever they are, so just, I'll just start a rhythm, one, two, one, two, and just tap your feet at that same rhythm. One, two, one, two. Keep your own rhythm going, and then try and breathe in on one foot strike, all right, on the, let's say it's the right side, so. So, and I'll be like, breathe in, out. Back on the right. So it's just practicing that rhythm and initiating your inhalation at foot strike may lead to reduction of work of breathing, which may lead to improved performance, right? It certainly does reduce the work of breathing if you can time it correctly. And I think that's really important if you are in a rhythm, but we know a running race can be compiled of various different rhythms, depending on elevation, you know, other competitors in the area, whether you're looking to push forward. And the other component to this is nasal versus mouth breathing, you know, heaps of controversy, lots of different ideas in here, but I introduced that concept of nasal breathing, taping your mouth up and going for a light job, you know, that gives us a good indication of your level of tolerance for carbon dioxide and your breathing efficiency. What is important is, and let's do it now. If you breathe in a big breath through your nose, You breathe a big breath through your mouth. Which one's easier? You know, it's clearly easier to breathe in through the mouth, right? It reduces your work of breathing. So there has to be some level of inhalation through the mouth at the intensities that a lot of people are running at, right? If you're going for your recovery jog, five Ks, 10 Ks, whatever it is, you can probably nasal breathe the whole time. If you're in a race, right, you're gonna need to bring in air through that mouth as well. You know, my, me personally, I might, I use a combined approach, right? I'm really, I have a really, um, strong carbon dioxide cause I'm a free diving instructor, so I don't have any problems with that. Um, so that I work with athletes who, a boxing person who's been punched in the nose in round one, like, or a swimmer who can't breathe through their nose because they got to inhale water then. So yeah, I don't think it's a big issue as it's made out to be. Um, But I think if you can't do that test, then it is an issue you need to address. Yeah. Those tests are really helpful. And, um, just to describe what you're doing previously. So you're breathing like in for say four steps and then out for four steps in rhythm, but as soon as you started, like you started the inhale in line with your foot strike and so, and then you started the exhale in line with your foot strike, but you know, to try to keep that rhythm. So, um, for those who weren't really. Well, who couldn't see you moving your hands in time. That's sort of what he was doing. I was dancing. Yeah. Um, that was excellent. Um, are there any other like maybe movement patterns or faults or, um, postures or something you might see with runners that might lead to inefficient breathing? Um, Not really like I mean, I'm not a big component of posture. I'm definitely not a running coach. All I would say around that is it's quite obvious to myself when I look at someone running, or swimming or performing activity. If they're lifting their upper chest heavy, and you see a lot of the scalenes in these anterior neck muscles doing a lot of the breathing work, you know, so this particularly like if they've just done a sprint in their recovery, and they're just this heavy chest lifting up and down and really labored breathing, like that's a really good sign that there's opportunities, they're really easy opportunities to improve performance, you know, other postures and things like that. I mean, we know the diaphragm has a huge role in stability, right? Um, I talk about this all the time where they did this study where they got patients to, um, stand in front of a screen. And as soon as the screen changed color, that person had to lift their arm up, right? Like, like putting their hand up as a asking a question in class. And through that measurement process, measuring the muscles of the arm, the diaphragm, the muscles of the trunk, the first muscle to switch on in response to that light was the diaphragm. So it switched on essentially the lid on our core stability, right? So it's providing the trunk stability so that the arm can move up. So it has a huge, it's a dual role in breathing and also stability. And we see this in a lot of the strength patients that I work with these power lifters, you know, they all lift in, take a breath in, lock their whole system down so they can maintain a really stable solid trunk so they can transfer that force from their legs if they're doing, you know, deadlift or a squat, or arching their back and pressing that they want to, they want to maintain some stability that they so that they can lever off that so. Yeah. The diaphragm and breathing is super important, not just in performance, shortness of breath, but also in stability. Yeah. Really good to know. Um, I saw in one of your blog posts, you're talking, I'm probably going to mispronounce this, but the respiratory muscle, metabolic reflex. Um, can you maybe just explain what that reflex is and, um, you know, how can it, it could be useful. Yeah. Um, so the respiratory metabar, respiratory muscle, metabar reflex. in a nutshell is when the breathing muscles become tired, they send a signal, a local signal so that when they get tired, their carbon dioxide or their metabolites build up in the breathing muscles, right, and the breathing muscles do get tired. And we can talk about that. When the breathing muscles get tired, that signal sends out to the brain, the brain's like, Hey, I need to send more blood to the breathing muscles because breathing is pretty important, right? So we're going to take some blood away from the exercise and limbs, and we're going to divert it to the breathing system. Right. And that was another one of those foundational elements that built on my, uh, um, platform was like, okay, if we can make breathing easier, that's number one. So increase our efficiency if, or technique, if we can build the strength of the breathing muscles, then we're going to delay this respiratory, um, Metabo reflex and the research is super clear on this as well and some of them were quite cool ways to investigate it So they got patients they put a femoral catheter in so they were measuring blood flow delivery to the legs during a cycle ergometry test and They got patients to breathe in against resistance. So when they were taking a breath in increasing their work of breathing And then in the same subject group weeks later, they forced air down their throat. So in a partially assisted ventilator. And that was stimulating a reduction in work or breathing by 50%. And what they saw was a clear correlation. When you make breathing harder, blood flow delivery to the legs reduced. When you make breathing easier by forcing air down their throat, similarly like, you know, strength training the breathing muscles over a cycle or making breathing easier by improving your technique or your efficiency. we saw an increase in blood delivery to the legs. And that's the respiratory muscle, metabereflex in action. Excellent. And sort of highlights the importance of strengthening these respiratory muscles to which hopefully we have a few tests and exercises you can suggest today. Uh, if someone's just starting out wanting to, um, you've sort of, you know, change their mind or like, you know, open their eyes to the world of strengthening these respiratory muscles. Uh, what can be a good introductory exercise to help build up that strength? Yeah. Uh, I mean, there's a bunch of, uh, devices out there and that's where I first started really was looking at devices, working with devices and with patients, putting patients on, um, you know, testing devices to test the strength of their lungs. Um, you know, so I got really scientific on it, you know? Um, and I've just about to release a breathing course. So it's good timing to ask this question because I was like, how can I give this information and this advice to a patient group or a population of sporting people without having to buy these crazy devices? So I would start by saying number one, most people have never strength trained their breathing muscles. The only time I see strength training applications with breathing muscles is in two population groups. So one would be swimmers. because they have a short amount of time to take a breath. All right, and they're in water, they have a hydrostatic force. So they're essentially lightly resistance training their breathing system all the time. Yeah, the other ones would be power lifters where they are taking a breath in and they're locking down their whole system. So they're generating some sort of intra abdominal pressure that their diaphragm has to work against, right? So they're the two population groups where I've seen some in my testing, some of that. crossover to breathing to increasing your breathing muscle strength. Right. But I would say 99.9% of patients will benefit from strength training, their breathing muscles. So is there even a reason for us to test when most people have never done it? Right. We take anyone that's never gone to the gym before and strength training their legs as a runner, but pretty much guaranteed we're going to see an improvement in your performance, whether that's sprint or endurance. The second thing is, is I've seen a lot of other sort of weird devices out there that don't give us the prescription that we needed. Now the research is pretty clear on this. It's like I need to train you at 30% of your one rep max, all right, for 30 breaths every single day, all right, for a six week period to see an improvement in your strength. Now some devices are flow resistant devices. So like breathing through a garden hose, like It's all flow dependent. If you breathe in through a garden hose slow, there's no resistance. If you breathe in through a fart, it becomes a little bit harder. So my answer to that question is, I don't think people need devices. I don't think they need to get super complex about it. And particularly if you are just starting out, the easiest way to do it is to do 30 breaths, all right, every day. And I would breathe in through my fist and lift two fingers up. So your little finger and your... Ring finger. Yeah. So make a fist like not, not like you're squeezing it hard, but like your, um, you know, you're holding onto a pencil and you don't want anyone to get it out of your hand. Then lift your ring, your ring finger and your pinky finger, and then breathing through the hole that your thumb makes. That is, and I've done a lot of this stuff is quite similar to any of the devices that we will receive that pairs to your iPhones. It's $450, it's 800 euros or 120 euros, great British pounds. That these things are all over the world. They're super complex. And I think we can make it super easy. Yeah. And like I said, I've just developed this course and that's one of the, the elements of breathing training. And it's like I said, it's 30 times a day, breathing through that to see the improvement. So you're breathing in, do you take like A deep breath in, are you focusing on like expanding the base of your lungs as you breathe in or the quality of that breath? Yeah. And this is where it gets, I guess, not complex, but where I've seen people make mistakes in the past, like I did in 2011, when I was adopting these, um, breathing techniques born out of pathology to these, to the athletes, so it's the athletes I was working. I definitely made mistakes along my journey. The challenge that I've seen is the right prescription at the right time. All right, so if I say to someone, go and breathe through your fist without having technique behind it, then what people are gonna do is perpetuate a bad habit that they possibly already have, right? So if someone's listening to me and they're doing that breathing, lifting the two fingers, and I see chest lifting up, I see all of these anterior neck muscles, someone gets sore in the neck, and they keep going down that pathway, then they're gonna say the breathing inventions didn't work, right, they made me sore in my neck, and... now I actually run worse than I did before. So as always, there's a proper technique to something, right? So in that scenario, without doing the exercises, which is in my course beforehand, what I would say to someone would be, breathe, push out the belly and expand the rib cage, don't lift the chest. So take a breath in, inhale fully, push the belly out, expand the rib cage, don't lift the chest. And if we wanna do just two or three of them now together so people are at home. Make a fist, lift your two fingers up, place the other hand on your tummy. All right. Exhale. Now inhale, push the tummy out, wide chest, don't lift the chest. Now exhale completely. Three, two, one. Breath in to the tummy, push the tummy out, lateral expansion of the chest. Don't lift it up. Now exhale completely. Three, two, one more. One. Tummy, tummy, chest, chest. Awesome. Now exhale completely. That's hard work. It is. Well, it's a strength training. This is, do you ever get people that get like quiet lightheaded? Yeah. With any hyperventilation exercise you do, but I would suggest that we need to slow that whole thing down. Right. The other thing I would mention in that, um, is it is heavy because it's a gym program for your breathing muscles. Right. Now what a lot of patients may have seen is those altitude masks, you know, the Bain, you know, running through the parks. Now that's a great way to bring awareness to your breathing, right? But we can do that by taping the mouth and doing nasal breathing. I would say that that's a much better way to bring attention to your breathing, doing nasal breathing only, which gives you a lot of information about your sensitivity to carbon dioxide and the risk of over-breathing, all right? But putting a mask on... and doing light exercise, I liken it to okay, if we're going to take our breathing muscles to the gym, we've got to lift heavy weights. I'm not going to the gym and lifting up five kilograms with my bicep 100 times, right? I, you know, I go there, I pick up 20 kilos, I lift it 10 to 12 times, right? That's the stimulus my body needs to react to that strength stimulus in order to get hypertrophy of the muscle fibers in order to make changes within the muscles themselves. to grow and become stronger and more efficient. So if you're strength training the breathing muscles, it has to be heavy and it has to be with the right technique as well. So one set of 30 breaths once a day, if people find that particular resistance too tough to do for 30 breaths straight, do you focus on like creating a greater opening so that it is more challenging but achievable or do they have a break and say, do three sets of 10 instead of one set of 30. Yeah, just, just get the 30 done. Okay. Yeah. But should be at a resistance. That's like challenging. It's tough to do yet achievable. Yeah. And I guess this is where the experience comes in. Uh, and without, you know, if you're just listening to it and trying to do this sort of stuff, uh, it's, it's nice to experiment with, but if you are a serious runner and looking to improve your running, there's certainly like, there's, there's a stage process to that. Right. So I've seen it a lot where with when I'm working with software and breathing systems and full systems that you can slowly increase the resistance to someone's breathing and then they'll divert to the old pattern. So they'll be comfortable at low loads, breathing through their tummy, driving with the diaphragm, expanding through the chest. Then it gets to a certain level and then they can do it, but they use the upper chest and their smaller accessory muscles to do that breathing. Right now. I don't mind that. Right. Because if you're running, if you're sprinting, if you're doing a thousand meter kayak event, like I want to strength train the whole breathing system, but I don't want that to be your default breathing, particularly for runners where creating rhythm, you know, creating consistency and comfort are super important. Um, we want the breathing system to be efficient because any slight change in efficiencies, whether it's your running, your breathing, your rhythm is going to end up with, you know, dramatic changes in your performance at the end. So put particularly for runners, you know, we really want to make sure that they have the correct technique and then they're not pushing themselves like athletes do, right? Give it to me, I'm going to make it really hard and just get really strong. You're like, well, you need to make sure that technique is right first. Yep. Well said. Got some strengthening exercises there. That's fantastic. Is there any other like breathing tips or misconceptions or something that we may not have covered that you think runners can benefit from. Certainly. Um, I mean, in terms of, um, like training tips and all that, I think that we've probably given your runners enough, the breathing through the fist, um, the nasal breathing 10 Ks, that 10 minutes on the treadmill. And it'll be great to see some, if people can comment on it, just some normalized numbers for recreational runners and high level runners. Um, I've done that with a bunch of my athletes. Um, and the breath hold as well. So building your ability to hold your breath for longer than two minutes. Right? So if anyone wants to ask me some questions or I'm, I'm sure you can feed them to me, um, and I'm happy to do that. The, the myth that I would say, very, I think, which is quite interesting. Um, now when I did my physiology degree, um, this could have been just my lecturer, but there was this idea of a breathing reserve, which means if I exercise at my hardest and I measure how much air is coming in and out, and then I breathe my fastest, there's way more ability for me to breathe fast when I'm getting tested there than what actually happens when I'm exercising at my hardest, right? So this idea that the breathing system wasn't at limiting performance, what was limiting performance was oxygen delivery to the tissues, our heart's ability to squeeze blood out and then the blood's ability to, oh, the tissue's ability to extract that oxygen efficiently. right. And then the blood to transport that CO2 so we can breathe it out. So it was, Oh yeah, it's very much a blood delivery problem, which is limiting our performance, which is why we need to do X, Y, and Z strength train, you know, increasing blah, blah. But what they didn't realize, um, after digging was that we breathe completely differently when I'm breathing for a maximum voluntary ventilation test, which is that shifting as much air as I can in 12 seconds. breathe much differently here than what I breathe at when I'm running or when I'm exercising, kayaking, swimming. So the way I breathe is completely different. So it's like comparing apples and oranges, you know, it's just not comparable. But this idea that we had a breathing reserve, so we weren't limited by our breathing perpetuated in my physiology career, right? Then the concept sort of came to me was like, Okay, well, if it's not limiting performance, Well, actually isn't limiting performance, right? And then I started looking at the research and it blew me away, right? If you if I pre fatigue your diaphragm, I get Brody to breathe against resistance. And then for two minutes, right? Breathe against something heavy, then you go for a run, you're going to run with less performance, right? Your run is going to be it's going to feel harder, and your performance is actually going to reduce. Right? If we strength train the breathing muscles. for six to eight weeks and then we send you out running, you're gonna improve your performance, all right? So what we're doing is essentially is we're improving the capacity of the respiratory system, so that it doesn't kick in that respiratory Metabo reflex stealing blood away, number one. Number two, so we don't feel short of breath. If we don't feel short of breath, how easy running becomes then? Are we gonna get into our zone much quicker? Are we gonna be in our zone for longer periods of time? Like listening to music, which... blocks out that labored breathing effort, which affects the brain, affects your performance. So this idea that it wasn't the respiratory system, wasn't limiting our performance is probably true, but if we focus on it and train it, then our performance level increases. Right. So there's such a capacity there for us to improve performance through our breathing techniques, our breathing strength, some of the testing and training that we do in our course, you know, it's a huge avenue. And I think the best thing about a Brody is that it's not like introducing a whole new gym program or technique change or a different way. It's the small interventions that we tag on either to your warmups or we add in as a recovery session like the nasal breathing on your recovery sessions or on your gym programs as well. So we don't take up too much time when we introduce breathing programs. There's a lot of takeaways here. I think you've convinced a lot of runners that strength things, the way to go, strengthening the inspiratory muscles and that how important breathing is for performance and how much it limits our performance. You mentioned that you're building a course. What's, what's involved? Like what's there and who's it for? Yeah. It's for runners, athletes. And it's really a great starting program for individuals wanting to look at their breathing and their performance. Right. Um, it's the three sort of essential, um, commandments to that. One of them is improving performance. Um, the second one is better health. So, you know, I mentioned over-breathing before, like I see this in patients all the time as a physio. Um, I used to run a sleep clinic as well. You know, patients with who do over-breathe, uh, it affects them beyond their right it affects the chemistry of their blood and that makes changes throughout the whole body so I think breathing has a real impact on improving health and maintaining control as well you know we look at the 10 years ago the old paper bag method right so when someone was having an anxiety attack they put a paper bag on their mouth and all they're doing there is rebreathing their carbon dioxide okay so they're essentially trying to settle their nervous system down by breathing in carbon dioxide You know, we, we experienced it a little bit before when we were taking those big breaths and you do get a little light headed and a lot tingly and that's, that's the breath, all right, making an immediate impact on your body's physiology and the breathing system is the only system in the body that is both autonomic. So right now, our heart's ticking away and we have absolutely no control over it. And it's just continuing on doing its thing unless you focus on meditation and blah, but usually we don't have a lot of control over it. As the breathing system is doing right now as well, we're not thinking about our breathing, it's just happening autonomically. But the beauty of the breathing system is that we do have direct control over it. So I look at it as like an invitation into some of the oldest parts of our emotions and our parts of our brain, which allows us to maintain some control over our nervous system. So the three elements is improving performance, better health and maintaining control of our nervous system. And I think a lot of the innovations around breathing, you know, it's become super popular now. There's so, you look on YouTube, there's so many things that people can do. But I think through my experience over the last 15 years, doing this with athletes in multiple different sports, like I absolutely love it, because every, each new sport presents us with a new dynamic, a new interesting thing, challenges us. I go, oh, what about this? What about that? And then each patient that I get to work with. uh, has an interesting expression of themselves as well. So it's quite, quite a, um, a solid amount of, I guess, of experience and trialing and testing things. And I've condensed that into it into a core program, right? So someone can start the very basics. And like I said, the innovation is really in the delivery. This is what you do first. Do this for a week and a half. This is what you do next. So you don't build in bad habits. You don't build in these, um, things in impact your performance or lead to worse health or lead to less control of your nervous system. There's actually a pretty structured system that you need to follow. And then after about six to eight weeks, you've built your baseline from zero. Now you're a hero. And then we just there's a couple of things that we ask people to do to maintain themselves as a hero. Very cool, mate. I know the course isn't out yet, but I'm going to make sure that this episode is released when the course is ready. So people can go to the show notes and click on the link for to go straight through that course, but any other links or socials that you want me to include there, um, where else do you do some work about breathing and where can people learn more about you? Yeah. Um, I've got an Instagram handle. It's all about breathing. Um, so people can check it out there. Um, that's where all of the course information is as well. Um, you know, I do private sessions with clients online, um, particularly if they've got a specific problem, the course addresses a lot of that foundational elements, but then sometimes, you know, the breathing system is, is quite unique. And like I talked about before, um, it's, it's linked to some of the oldest parts of our brain. And I'll just, I'll finish on this. Um, for me, it's quite interesting. Like I had childhood asthma and I nearly drowned in a river when I was a child. Um, and that continually expresses itself in my own performance, right? So when I do a free diving, um, I'm a free diving coach, when I do free diving courses or free diving training or competitions, it takes me a lot longer to warm my body up. Um, because I think of this old scar in my emotions, or I didn't had, can't remember any of it. I can't remember my asthma as a child, but imagine that feeling of feeling like you're running out of air when you're a kid, imagine what gets imprinted on your brain. Got no recollection of me nearly drowning when I was a kid, but I'm significantly much to taste my, my brain, a lot, a lot longer to feel comfortable holding my breath again, even though I do it most days, it's like four or five or six times. And my brain's going, you idiot. What are you doing? What are you doing this for? Right. And my friends are doing huge dives on the first and second go. But I have to deal with this, this thing that's in my background. And I've seen that in elite level sporting players. AFL players who've had childhood asthma, they come to see me, you know, they're restricted from their breathing. They have shorter breath when they're running. It's because of some of this old childhood asthma that they're still dealing with these, these issues. Right. Um, and that usually perpetuates in over-breathing, you know, which we talked about earlier, and we can usually pick that up in some of our tests that people do in the course or that we've, um, mentioned on the podcast today. Excellent. Right. Um, I'll include all those links in the show notes. And I just want to thank you for coming on. I haven't had anyone talk about this sort of stuff on the podcast yet in the 330 odd episodes I've ever done. So a lot of people take some new, brand new information away from this and, um, what you're doing is an amazing job. So thanks for coming on and sharing all your tips. Yeah, thanks. I know it's probably a little bit unstructured and what happens in my brain is usually some verbal diarrhea. So If anyone has any specific questions, you know, head to the Instagram. I'll definitely be able to answer your questions there. Um, there's a community of us in our course that continually try and update our knowledge and research here, because it's a great place to work. The science and there's art and we try and mix this soup together. Um, different sports, different people. Um, it's always a challenge and hopefully your listeners got something out of today and thanks for having me. If you are looking for more resources to run Smarter, or you'd like to jump on a free 20 minute injury chat with me, then click on the resources link in the show notes. There you'll find a link to schedule a call, plus free resources like my very popular Injury Prevention 5 Day Course. You'll also find the Run Smarter book and ways you can access my ever-growing treasure trove of running research papers. Thanks once again for joining me and well done on prioritising your running wisdom.