Breathing Technique for Runners
RUNNER'S WORLD / Running On Air This breathing technique from Budd Coates can help you run better and avoid injury.
This article was adapted from Running on Air: The Revolutionary Way to Run Better by Breathing Smarter, by Budd Coates, M.S., and Claire Kowalchik (Rodale, 2013). The book teaches how to use the principles and methods of rhythmic breathing across all levels of effort. It includes training plans for distances from 5-K to the marathon, as well as strength-training programs and stretching workouts.
In my early days as a runner, I, like most, didn't give any thought to my breathing. I took up the sport in high school—back in the '70s—and as a senior on the cross-country team, I won the individual league championship, a good but not great accomplishment. I continued to run at Springfield College in Massachusetts, where I majored in physical education. We raced often with little time to recover, and as a consequence, I was injured often. When injury constantly forces you to take time off, you lose a lot of quality training time. As renowned coach and exercise physiologist Jack Daniels puts it, "It's easier to stay fit than get fit."
I spent lots of time in the college's physiology building (there were no cross-training facilities) on a Monarch test bike, pedaling away to maintain my conditioning. Afterward, I went digging into the research to find a solution to my predicament. Eventually I came across an article called "Breath Play," by Ian Jackson, a coach and distance runner, which related breathing cycles with running cadence. Later I found a study by Dennis Bramble, Ph.D., and David Carrier, Ph.D., of the University of Utah, explaining that the greatest impact stress of running occurs when one's footstrike coincides with the beginning of an exhalation. This means that if you begin to exhale every time your left foot hits the ground, the left side of your body will continually suffer the greatest running stress.
Hmm. My most frequent injury was to
This article was adapted from Running on Air: The Revolutionary Way to Run Better by Breathing Smarter, by Budd Coates, M.S., and Claire Kowalchik (Rodale, 2013). The book teaches how to use the principles and methods of rhythmic breathing across all levels of effort. It includes training plans for distances from 5-K to the marathon, as well as strength-training programs and stretching workouts.
In my early days as a runner, I, like most, didn't give any thought to my breathing. I took up the sport in high school—back in the '70s—and as a senior on the cross-country team, I won the individual league championship, a good but not great accomplishment. I continued to run at Springfield College in Massachusetts, where I majored in physical education. We raced often with little time to recover, and as a consequence, I was injured often. When injury constantly forces you to take time off, you lose a lot of quality training time. As renowned coach and exercise physiologist Jack Daniels puts it, "It's easier to stay fit than get fit."
I spent lots of time in the college's physiology building (there were no cross-training facilities) on a Monarch test bike, pedaling away to maintain my conditioning. Afterward, I went digging into the research to find a solution to my predicament. Eventually I came across an article called "Breath Play," by Ian Jackson, a coach and distance runner, which related breathing cycles with running cadence. Later I found a study by Dennis Bramble, Ph.D., and David Carrier, Ph.D., of the University of Utah, explaining that the greatest impact stress of running occurs when one's footstrike coincides with the beginning of an exhalation. This means that if you begin to exhale every time your left foot hits the ground, the left side of your body will continually suffer the greatest running stress.
Hmm. My most frequent injury was to