breathe right and win

8/6/2019 Breathe Right and Win

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Breathe Right And Win

Improper breathing can lead to inappropriate activation and sabotage fine muscular coordination

needed in tennis. It can also result in oxygen deficits and/or further increases in emotional

distress.

It seems that humans evolved to deal more with imminent threat to life (e.g., running from tigers)

than hitting proper volleys under pressure. Dangerous situations increased respiration,

activating large muscle groups to escape or battle the beast. The only explanation I can fathom

is that there were fewer tennis tournaments in the pre-historic era! On the other hand, would you

rather escape from a tiger or place your volley on the line?

O.K., get real John. In any sport it is important to monitor breathing quality. In competitive

tennis, breathing patterns often fluctuate wildly from point to point, destroying rhythm and

coordination and inducing fatigue. Although lower brain regions control respiration, a few

glitches in the system remain when it comes to tennis. Breath control in tennis needs to be

learned, practiced and refined.

Here are some specific tips to help control your breathing in tennis:

1. Synchronize breathing precisely with hitting the ball. Breath in from the nose as the ballis coming, exhale from the mouth upon contact. Practice this regularly and it will becomemore natural in the match.

2. Maintain a continuous breathing pattern regardless of the situation. There is often atendency to tighten up and hold your breath under pressure. Resist this urge throughpractice and regular attention to your respiration quality.

3. Inhalations should be slow, smooth, rhythmic and from deep in the lower region of your

stomach. This allows greater amounts of oxygen to be taken in and prevents the kind of short, rapid breathing that can occur in panic situations.

4. Exhalations should be slow, forceful and deliberate. Use exhalations as a signal tohit crisp accurate shots. Destroy the ball wi th your breath!



5. Before a difficult match or when nervous, take extra precaution that your breathing iscontinuous, deliberate, slow and smooth. Focus on your breathing and you will distractyourself from other worries.

6. Changeovers are a good time to moderate your breathing pattern by taking slow deepbreaths (4-6 seconds) followed by even slower exhalations (6-8 seconds).

7. Prior to serving or receiving is another good time to focus on breathing. The key is to getcontrol of your oxygen intake before the point and maintain control throughout the point.

Here is a guide to breathing techniques that can help you when exercising or competingin your next sports activity!

So you want to be Number One - edging out the competition by achieving your absolute

athletic best? Well don't hold your breath. Unless you're applying state-of-the-artbreath techniques, like those employed by world-class athletes. Just the way a fine-tuned carburetor regulates air into an engine to improve performance, you can preciselycontrol the flow of air into your body - in order to compete at your peak. Here's apractical guide to these techniques, revealed by champion athletes and their trainers.

Running: Breathing techniques are very specialized, because even athletes within thesame sport, but competing in different events, have different breathing requirements.Unlike distance runners, sprinters aren't aiming for aerobic fitness. "Someone who runsthe 100 meter dash may want to take one breath and go," says Bill Dellinger, headcoach of the University of Oregon men's track team and Olympic runner in 1956,1960,and 1964, when he won the bronze. "For anything longer than 100 meters, you want to

breath in for a four-count and out for a four-count. If you're running faster, it might be athree count. If you're running faster than that, a two. The rhythm is even, so that you'renot panting. In order to suck down enough air, you need to breathe through both your nose and mouth. And when you exhale, you puff out your cheeks. You do this so youcan retain some residual air which you need in order to have a better exchange of oxygen."

Tennis: "Tennis is a lot like basketball," says USTA coach Nick Saviano. " You're notonly working hard physically, but you require fine motor skills. So breathingbecomes particularly important in controlling your heart rate and recovering. Your goal is to be in your optimum physical state to execute your next point." Saviano

has worked with most of the top American pros, including Jim Courier, Todd Martin, andMichael Chang.

"A match at the French open might mean five hours of intense competition," saysSaviano. But even if you're just playing a weekend match with the guys, Saviano saysthe key to winning is recovery, what you're doing between points to prepare you to winthe next one. "A smart player i s g oing to mak e use of thi s t i me. You should takesome very deep breaths, easy and even, not forcing any air in or out. At the same time,focus in on a small object. This concentration, combined with your breathing, will bring



you heart rate down - so you'll relax and play with your best coordination. Experiencedplayers often focus in on their strings. You ever notice that the pros are looking at their rackets all the time?"

Saviano recommends a breath technique to use when you hit the ball: "Blow out a deepbreath on contact," he says, "like you're blowing-up a balloon. Some players actually

grunt. This helps your muscles relax and also increases your power ." Saviano pointsout this technique is borrowed from karate where it is similarly used to releaseexplosive energy.

Do breath-holding techniques have a place in tennis? Saviano says that when you holdyour breath, your muscles tighten up and your coordination turns to mush: "Holding your breath in tennis is a sure-fire technique for poor performance."

Weight-lifting: "I've watched people hold their breath while doing squats or overheadpresses," says Lee Haney, former Mr. Universe and Mr. Olympia. " And I've seen thesepeople become dizzy, get nose bleeds, and even pass-out. There's no oxygen going to

the body when you hold your breath, so I never recommend it."

"Working with weights, the technique that should be used when doing any type of pushing movement, is to exhale as you thrust and inhale during the negative part of themovement. With pulling exercises, it's just the opposite: exhale on the pull. Justremember to exhale on the exertion, pushing all your breath out from deep down, muchlike in karate when you go to strike an opponent." The one exception to this rule,according to Haney, are exercises that have a very slow movement and don't call for much energy. "For example," he says, "seated concentration curls. It doesn't matter howyou breathe, as long as you don't hold your breath. But anytime you're going to have tospend a lot of energy, anytime you have to grunt to complete the movement - thebreathing technique must be correct."

Scuba diving: "The one breath technique I know a lot of civilian divers do is skipbreathing," says Navy SEAL's diving instructor, Lieutenant Mike White. "They'll breathedeeply, then hold their breath to conserve air. Holding your breath is something younever ever want to do." If these divers change their depths by even a few feet," Whitedarkly warns, "the compressed air they're breathing will expand and can rip a hole intheir lungs where it will bubble into the blood stream and possibly kill them."

Once you learn to breathe with your diaphragm, practice it all the time until it becomes areflex.

There is a breath technique that is often confused with skip breathing. This is when

divers wear very little weight but rather use their lungs to control their buoyancy. At fullcapacity, your lungs carry six to eight pounds of floatation, so by adjusting the amount of air you breathe, you can regulate you depth. Breathe in more deeply and you'll increaseyour buoyancy; breathe in less, and you'll submerge. The major technique for conservingair underwater is to breathe in as relaxed a mode as you can. Remember that breathingair underwater is different than breathing air on the surface. As you dive deeper, thedensity of the gas increases so you'll be working harder to breathe unless you'reemploying long, slow breaths . Says David Taylor, PADI Dive Master and Nitrox andTechnical Diver, "That's something people don't usually catch on to until 40 or 50 dives."

breathe right and win

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