30/08/2022
Breathe better, move better, ride better!
🌟 Top Tip Tuesday 🌟
🌬 Practice your diaphragmatic breathing
🤷♀️ Sounds simple, yes? But 90% of riders that I assess for the first time aren’t breathing properly.
🌬 Ideally what should happen is that as we take a breath in, our diaphragm contracts to allow the lungs to fill with air and our belly pushes outward. As we breath out, our diaphragm relaxes and the air leaves our lungs and our stomach flattens.
❌ But stress, posture, pain, constantly pulling our stomachs in, etc, all get in the way and our breathing patterns can change. A lot of “core” exercise programmes teach an accessory breathing pattern and can block the action of the diaphragm. We become reliant on accessory breathing muscles in the chest, neck and shoulders and these end up as our primary breathing muscle patterns. This can lead to neck and shoulder tension, headaches, or thoracic pain and restriction, as these muscles are not designed to work constantly.
🤷♀️ Why learn to breathe properly?
🌬60-70% of our lung blood supply is in the lower half of the lungs so if we are not getting air in deep enough we have less oxygen travelling through our blood supply to our brain, organs and muscles, therefore we can fatigue more quickly. Not great if we’re trying to get fit!!
🌬Diaphragmatic (belly) breathing can make a massive impact to our movement and fitness. Imagine how much easier a 5 minute dressage test or course of jumps would be if we were able to breathe more effectively.
🌬Slow, controlled diaphragmatic breathing stimulates our vagus nerve and activates the parasympathetic nervous system reducing the fight or flight response, lowering cortisol levels and improving heart rate variability. A useful technique if you’re nervous before a dressage test or course of jumps!!
🧘♀️ If you want to learn to breathe more effectively and use your diaphragm optimally, try my diaphragm reset video:
https://vimeo.com/655910897
🌬Then set reminders every hour and do 5-10 slow diaphragmatic breaths.
And see how it makes you feel ☺️
💙 Breathe better, move better, ride better
Maeve
