ie, when doing bicep curls, why do they always instruct us to breath in when bringing the dumbbell up, and out when extending our arm out straight? Is there a scientific reason for this? Does it have any benefit? What would happen if I do it the other way round, or if I don’t maintain any fixed rhythm/sequence at all?
In: Biology
two things i thought of, having trained w weights for many years:
1. it forces you to breath rhythmically. holding your breath while lifting weights would be a bad idea.
2. breathing out, especially forcefully like when youre lifting, forces the contraction of your core muscles. this helps stabilize your body when you move against the weight. maybe not as important for something like bicep curls, but for more complex movements it helps protect your spine.
Just commenting to thank you for this question, as I’ve been wondering it too. It seems counterintuitive but if many of them are doing it, then there must he a reason. So, following.
I’m a yoga teacher, I can’t really speak for weights but I can tell you why we do it in yoga.
When you exhale you should be contracting your abdominal muscles by drawing the navel to the spine. This extra support with help you maintain proper posture and alignment while exerting yourself. In addition, for the full body postures of yoga, an exhale by its nature is a contractive motion while an inhale by its nature is an expansive motion. In yoga we inhale to do movements where we expand the body and exhale when we contract the body (we exhale to fold from a standing position down to touch our toes and we inhale to expand back up to standing).
Inhaling on the contraction isn’t going to make your brain or muscles explode. It is a way of keeping your mind on your breath, movement, and posture to make sure you are doing it well. You can fall out of rhythm as well or even hold your breath, its just better for your concentration and your respiration if you focus on consistency with your breath and movement.
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