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Should you try to breathe through your nose when you run? How about when you’re weightlifting? While breathing isn’t complicated in everyday life, does how we in- and exhale during exercise matter? Writer Nupur Trivedi explores how much of breath science is just hot air.
Think back to your last workout. If you were running, did you take deep inhales through your mouth when the going got tough? During your last strength training session, were there moments when you forgot to breathe altogether? How we breathe during exercise can have a considerable effect on our performance; with good technique, we can efficiently supply more energy by way of oxygen to the muscles, leading us to longer and stronger workouts.
But what is the best way to breathe during exercise? According to James Nestor’s book, Breath, nasal breathing is optimum. But when Breath was released in 2020, it ignited a debate in the fitness community about whether nasal breathing really is preferable to oral breathing, or if the concept is just hot air.
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