Hey, hey, my runner friend. Today we are going to focus on your breathing. Your breathing is a direct indicator of your effort level.
When your breathing feels controlled and relaxed, it means your effort level is right in the sweet spot. And when it feels like you can’t catch your breath, you are probably working above your ability in the moment. But there are lots of factors that can affect your breathing and the level of effort that you’re putting out. Let’s dive in!
What You’ll Learn From This Episode:
- Factors that can impact your breathing
- The best breathing technique to use when you run
- What to do if your mouth gets dry
Listen to the Full Episode:
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Full Episode Transcript:
Welcome to the Not Your Average Runner podcast! If you’ve never felt athletic, but you still dream about becoming a runner, you are in the right place. I’m Jill Angie, and I help fat women over 40 to start running, feel confident and change their lives. I have worked with thousands of women to help them achieve their running goals.
And now I want to help you.
Hey there, runner. Are you ready to warm up your body and mind for this run? Let’s go. You start walking and I’ll start talking. So today we are going to focus on your breathing. Now your breathing is a direct indicator of your effort level. And a really simple way to look at it is this.
When your breathing feels controlled and relaxed, it means your effort level is right in the sweet spot. And when it feels like you can’t catch your breath, you are probably working above your ability in the moment. But there are lots of factors that can affect your breathing and the level of effort that you’re putting out.
For example, Humidity, temperature, altitude recovering from a respiratory illness like COVID if you have asthma, all of those things can impact how you breathe when you run. Now, humidity is one of the biggest factors. The more humid it is, the harder breathing is going to feel. But also if it’s really cold and which means it’s going to be really dry, you might also feel that in your lungs more like a tightness.
The same if you’re recovering from a cold or COVID, you’re going to feel it in your lungs. If you are running at altitude, right, if you, if you’ve gone up into the mountains to do your run and you’re normally more of a sea level runner, the, there’s less oxygen. So again, it’s going to feel harder to breathe.
So take a moment right now and just kind of think about the conditions that are around you. Are you at your normal altitude? And are, you know, how are you feeling, right? Are you coming off of a cold? Are you coming off of some sort of Respiratory infection? Do you have, is it allergy season? Is there a lot of pollen in the air?
Notice if the air feels heavy and sticky or if it is, you know, It’s super cold and dry. And I want you to keep that in mind as you move through your warm up and into your run because conditions and other circumstances can affect your breathing when you run and it does not mean that necessarily that you have lost fitness or that something is going wrong.
It just means, okay, these are the circumstances that we’re dealing with this day. Now, if you’re if you’re running and you feel like your breathing is getting kind of out of control, there’s a very, very easy way to adjust that. It doesn’t involve controlling the weather or anything like that. It is literally to just slow down.
Okay, so if you feel like you’re panting uncontrollably or your breathing is ragged You got to slow down. It’s either that or adjust your intervals But what I want you to do is try slowing down first Even if it’s slowing just a little tiny bit and I know what you’re probably thinking you’re like Jill.
I’m already so fucking slow I can’t go any slower Right. Just trust me. Give it a try anyway Try to slow your feet down and just like lower your effort level and give that, give that the old college try. But if it doesn’t help, then you can adjust your interval. So you could take 10 or 15 seconds off your regular running interval.
So if you are normally running for a minute and walking for a minute, I want you to maybe run for 45 seconds and walk for a minute. Or you can add 10 or 15 seconds to your walk recovery. So again, if you’re running one minute, walking a minute, you might run a minute, walk for a minute and 15. I suggest trying by shortening up that run interval first and see how that goes.
And here’s the other thing. Please don’t please don’t ballpark this in your head, right? you might need to just take a quick pause in your run to adjust your watch or your timer and Or you might need to stop your workout and set it up again to finish it out with different intervals I know that might feel stressful.
You’re like, no, it’s gonna mess up my stats and everything But I would so much rather have you stop And adjust and go forward, feeling more comfortable than have you just quit entirely because it feels too hard, right? Like, your stats will survive. It is okay. Your stats are not the proof that you ran, right?
Like, you, your body, the, how you feel is way, way more important than that. So, here’s the thing, right, you can’t control the weather, you can’t control the pollen, you can’t control the altitude, sometimes you just gotta adjust your effort level so that you can breathe better and keep going. Now it does go both ways, right, if you’re out there running and you’re barely breaking a sweat and you feel like you could sing the entire score to Hamilton at the top of your lungs without feeling out of breath.
You could probably pick the pace up a little bit and challenge yourself if you want to either run a little faster Maybe add some time to the end of your run intervals and see how that goes. All right, so Again, I said at the beginning your breathing is a really it’s the best indicator of the effort level You’re putting out if the weather is against you right if there’s that humidity or that pollen That’s going to make it harder for you to breathe.
It’s going to, you know, increase the amount of effort that you have to put in when you’re running. So you reduce your effort level, the breathing gets easier. So that the breathing is just a really good indicator of how hard you are working. Alright? Now, one question that I do get asked a lot as a running coach is whether you should breathe through your nose or your mouth.
And there are a lot of opinions on the best way to breathe. Alright? All the coaches have opinions. Most of them contradict each other in some way or another. So I’m just going to give you my opinion after 10 years of coaching runners. Breathe however it works best for you. Okay, so if that is in and out through your mouth, go for it.
If it is another way, if it’s in through your nose and out through your mouth, or the reverse, right, that is fine too. I am a total mouth breather when I run. I don’t like having to think about my breathing. I also feel like I get a lot more air into my lungs through my mouth than my nose. My nose is on the small side and I tend to just be a little tiny bit congested most of the time.
So, nose breathing while I’m running just doesn’t work great for me. It might work great for you. And as your coach, I am giving you permission to experiment and do what you like best. Now, one thing I will say, if you’re a mouth breather, when you run, you might get dry mouth, right? Especially if you’re in a drier climate.
And if that is the case, You might be tempted to run with gum or suck on hard candy, right? I hear this all the time. Please don’t do this. And yes, that is me yelling at you. Please. You’re already, you’re breathing heavy, you’re running, and now you have a potential choking hazard in your mouth. And, and make no mistake, if you accidentally suck your, your, your gum, piece of gum into your windpipe, it’s not going to dissolve.
It’s going to stick there and you’re going to, you’re going to have to either Heimlich yourself or hope that somebody else comes by. Don’t do that, right? Bring water to sip on instead, or just have dry mouth and deal with it, right? It’s 30, 45 minutes out of your day. It’s fine. So if you have gum in your mouth right now, spit it out.
Right now. I mean it. Spit it out. Put it in your pocket. Spit it out on the ground if you need to litter. It’s not the best, but that’s okay. I mean it. Spit it out. Okay. Now the last thought I want to leave you with today. Is that however your run goes in the next 20, 30, 40, five, an hour, depending on how long you’re going, however it goes, I am proud of you because you did something for yourself today.
You did something for yourself today and that’s really awesome. Now turn on that interval timer and let’s go. Go
Real quick before you go. If you enjoyed listening to this episode, you have to check out my seven-day jumpstart plan. It is a free downloadable guide that will teach you exactly how to start running safely and confidently in the body you have right now, head on over to notyouraveragerunner.com/jumpstart to grab it. That’s notyouraveragerunner.com/jumpstart. I’d love to be a part of your journey.
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