One of the most troubling misconceptions surrounding breathing during strength training is the common recommendation to inhale and exhale fully during reps under loading. If your goal is to move maximal weights with pristine form and stay safe while doing so, a full breath cycle during lifts is the last thing you should be focusing on, even if you’ve been previously told to exhale during the lift and inhale during the lowering process.

While it’s, of course, necessary to breathe during extended sets with increased rep counts, there is a right way to do it, and a wrong way that places the body, and more specifically the spine into destabilized positions via a lack of core stiffness and control. Bracing effectively during any type of foundational strength training movement creates the base of pain-free movement and maximal performance. And with full breaths going in and out, it’s physiologically impossible to gain or maintain maximal brace, placing people into potentially risky positions to train from.

Instead of continuing to breathe haphazardly during lifting and playing the odds with your orthopedic health, the brace and breath can create synergy in the form of the double breath technique to first maximise pillar position and core tightness, while scaling the breath cycle back under controlled tension and control with a shallow “straw sip” breath, and dare I say even a fine-tuned grunt. I first picked up this technique while on an internship at Pepperdine University in California. And man, was it an instant upgrade to core stiffness. Here’s when to utilise each of these techniques for fine-tuned bracing strategies.

When To Use This Technique:

Every single time you approach the bar or attempt to move a weight, we must treat the setup, lift and dismount of load with the utmost respect, as respecting load is a powerful tool in not only staying healthy but optimising performance. So when it comes to strength training, the double breath bracing technique should be utilised each and every set in order to protect the body while performing at the highest levels possible.

Big loaded barbell movements like the squat and bench press tend to demand the most respect from lifters keying into a bracing strategy as compared to the smaller and lower loaded movements. But by going through the motions and lifting loosely without fully bracing and controlling the hips, shoulders, and core coordinating together as a functional unit, we are essentially chronically picking the scab of aches and pains long term that can eventually lead to more acute injuries due to simple laziness and disrespecting the process of lifting loads.

The best example of this is deadlifting or hip hinging using a maximal brace and neutral spinal position on leg day, and then turning around the next day and hoisting up dumbbells off the floor for bench press with zero brace, a flexed spine position, and loads of compensation. No, you may not get hurt on a single poor setup like this, but over time, the unwanted compensatory stress on the spine will catch up with you.

By positioning and setting up with focused intent, utilising the double breath to help maximize the brace, then maintaining a brace sipping air at the top of reps when needed, we can better protect the body while staying stiffer to produce more force, leading to more optimal top-end performances under load. When in doubt, fine-tune your setups, brace harder and respect every rep.

How To Execute The Double Breath Technique:

The key to bracing maximally just before moving a load is tapping into the potential of the diaphragm leading the brace while actively contracting around it with stability generated from the shoulders, hip, and core musculature. In order to achieve an optimal diaphragmatic position, this process must start with the breath.

From a stable position with a majority of the joints in anatomical neutral (think of standing straight up here as neutral vs. attempting to breath from a fully flexed and bent over position out of neutral) we will incorporate a 3-step process to breathe and brace around:

• Step 1: Inhale fully through the nose

• Step 2: Gulp additional air in through the mouth

• Step 3: Contract the core musculature expanding 360 degrees

*Hold and maintain brace after Step 3 during active reps

By inhaling fully through the nose, we can extend the time period necessary to utilise close to a full tidal volume of bringing in maximal air into the lungs and pushing the diaphragm down and out. This initial nose breath usually takes around 3-seconds to execute. It’s imperative that this breath is taken in slowly in order to accentuate the air coming in through a belly breathing strategy utilising the diaphragm as the primary mover, and avoiding the secondary respiratory muscles like the neck and upper back muscles like the upper traps to take over and compensate with more of a chest breathing strategy.

From the initial nose breath, the air must be locked in and held for a split second before we move into the second step, which gulps air in from the mouth. By holding the air in through the nose, and gulping the last bit of air in through the mouth, we can top off the air into the lungs and expansion of the diaphragm into the core space anywhere from 5-15% more. And as we know, a boost in bracing quality leads to potential boosts in strength and power performances.

After both the full nose inhalation and mouth breath, only then do we actively brace the abdominals around the optimal mechanical position of the diaphragm to lock in the super stiffness in the midsection. From there, the focus is shifted into the maintenance of the brace quality through the number of repetitions that will be executed during the set at hand.

For rep counts of 1-3 in a more pure power scheme, all reps can be completed on a single breath-hold. But as rep counts exceed 3, we need to ensure that there is air exchange happening in order to continue to bring in oxygen siphoning to the active musculature. A full breath will not be taken between reps here if sets range from 3-8 repetitions. Rather we will sip air in at the top of a movement and push air out slightly and slowly during the concentric raising phase, ensuring air and brace is maintained during sticking or straining points. This is largely the reason for the occurrence of grunts during actively loaded reps.

For sets that require more than 8 repetitions, a half breath can be reset at the top of the lifts with a re-bracing strategy in order to continue to bring in more oxygen to the system to help the continuation of a higher rep count. There is never a time to take a full breath cycle in under loading, as this requires us to ultimately lose the entire brace with the inability to gain a quality brace again due to being under constant loading of the position. When taking in air and blowing out during reps, we must adopt a minimal viable dose mentality to maintain brace first, as this will be the number one indicator of quality repetitions and injury prevention.

The tempo of Breath: Nose Inhale 3-seconds / Mouth Gulp 1-second / Hold and Brace

As reviewed above, the goal of maximising bracing quality starts with a calm, controlled, and calculated breath setup and cycle. Air will be taken in initially through the nose for 3-seconds (this time is relative to the time it takes to maximise the expansion of the lungs and diaphragm) a secondary gulp of air through the mouth, and a hold while initiating muscular recruitment in a 360-degree fashion.

Different from some of the other breath types and tempos reviewed in this resource, we will see more variability of the time it takes to fully expand the initial nose breath, the gulp time through the mouth, and the hold times based on the movement itself and more specifically, the rep counts associated with the desired training effects. When in doubt, breathe more slowly and under control, and look to the bracing quality as the indicator of what works best for you.