My name is Richard Gayle.I’m a Personal Trainer and consultant on Fitness.
What a great question you ask about breathing!!We can talk about two different ways of breathing depending on what type of exercise you are performing.In typical fashion, my clients and people always forget, so here is good advice on breathing and asking what type of exercise you are doing.
Let’s talk about breathing when you are doing “cardio” exercise.In the fitness field we have a term called the “Talk Test.”This means that when you do “cardio” exercise, you can tell if you are working out at the right intensity if you are able to carry on a relatively normal conversation while you are exercising.You are able to “Talk” and you “pass” the “Talk Test!?!?”This means you are breathing through your mouth when you are exercising.
However, based on your question, it is pretty clear you are referring to breathing during weight training or resistance exercise.Am I right?
Here it is . . . breath out, exhale, when the exercise is the hardest and breath in, inhale, when the exercise is the easiest.For instance, if you are doing a push-up, what motion of the push-up is the hardest . . . ?
It is hardest when you are pushing your body up, right?So, you exhale when you push-up and inhale when you go down.Does that make sense?
Let’s talk about other exercises:
Machine Chest Press – exhale when you push the weight away from you, and inhale when you are letting the weight come back.
Leg Press – exhale when you are pushing the weight away from you, and inhale when you are letting the weight down.
Seated Cable Row – exhale when you are bring the weight/resistance/pulley towards your body (when it is the hardest) and inhale when you let the weight down.
Crunches – exhale when you go up, and inhale when you go down.
Now, sometimes if you are lifting pretty heavy weight such as when you pumping out reps of chest press or bench press, most of us will hold our breath while we push the heavy weight up, exhale hard when we get the weight up, then inhale when the weight goes down.
This is only if you are lifting heavy weight.Otherwise breath as I described above.