Reverse Your Breathing (Explained)

Do you need calibration? Or calibration before conditioning? Gray Cook gets into Q&A mode as a follow-up to his reverse breathing kettlebell video. It’s all about the two sides of functional exercise: Are you correcting movement toward a functional goal? (This is where the Functional Movement Screen becomes your baseline.) Or are you seeking better conditioning and performance without creating dysfunction?

The reverse breathing drill falls into the correction category. It’s not about max load or max exertion. It’s all about better calibration, endurance and cleaner form. Inhaling on the upswing organizes the core at a subconscious level, a task that doesn’t respond to verbal coaching.

Training clients new to the kettlebell? Reverse breathing is a great onramp for better organization and calibration. It’s also great for rehab and as a workout for less active individuals. For regular KB athletes, it serves as a warm up before switching to your regular breathing pattern for conditioning work.

Try it both ways and feel the difference.

[potheim]

I like what you said. When I first began learning to use a kettlebell 15 years ago, I used this method of breathing which I called anatomical breathing (as opposed to biomechanical), i.e. as the thorax expands when the arms move away from the body one inhales but as the arms move toward the body and the thorax compresses then it's natural to exhale. I learned this breathing style from Valery Fedorenko (via video) when I was exploring the sport or competitive style of kettlebell lifting. Interestingly enough, breathing this way has never limited the number of kgs I've lifted and my back has always felt nothing but wonderful doing it this way.

[advantagesportsacupuncture]

"You can't coach somebody into a better core when it's broken on a subconscious level." Brilliant!! Thank you!

[JesusRevezzo]

There is a book just on breathing that you may or may not be aware of from the founders of Systema titled Let Every Breath - Secrets of the Russian Breath Masters.

We use a breath with everything we do and reversing the breath patterns is a common variation. We will also expand or contract breath across a movement as well.

The big goal with that is to create an indepence where the breath can be constant and movement can be constant yet not necessarily synced up. This way you can still accomplished the work to be done - exercise, fighting etc - regardless of the breath cycle.

This is different than moving max loads as Gray mentioned in the video. In that case, the breath has a different job and purpose.