Gym Basics - How Do I Breathe While Lifting Weights

Breathing is a crucial element to understand when lifting weights. It is important to understand what your breathing does and how it affects you weight training.

When we breathe we inhale oxygen into the lungs, from here the oxygen is transported into our cells. Once in our cells, the oxygen is used to do a variety of complex functions but on a basic level, it is used to create energy. Without oxygen we will pass out and if no oxygen enters the body while we are passed out we will eventually suffer brain damage and then death.

It is important when lifting weights to NEVER hold your breath. When you hold your breath you are depriving your body of oxygen, resulting in you become light headed or passing out. This may lead to you falling over or dropping a weight on top of yourself. Something you don't want to happen. A general rule of thumb is to breathe in on the eccentric phase and out on the concentric phase. Put simply, breathe in on the easy part and breathe out on the hard aspect of the lift.

For example: If you are performing a bench press you breathe in when lowering the barbell to your chest and breathe out when pressing the bar back towards the starting position.

It may take a few training sessions to become familiar with timing your breathing with lifting. Try inhaling through your nose and exhaling through your mouth.

There is another aspect of breathing that I need to mention. It is called the "Valsalva manoeuvre." Put simply, the Valsalva manoeuvre is when you try to exhale through your mouth but keep your mouth shut. This significantly increases the amount of pressure inside your chest cavity. This is exceptionally troublesome for trainers suffering from high or low blood pressure.

The Valsalva manoeuvre mostly occurs when a trainer is struggling extremely hard and forgets to breathe. As a spotter you must always encourage breathing and be aware if you do this when training alone.

An example of a correct breathing pattern on a bench press is as follows:

• Un-rack the bar

• As you lower the bar in a controlled fashion breath in through your nose

• When the bar slightly touches your chest begin to breathe out through your mouth until the bar reaches the starting position.

Note: There are times at the very beginning of the upwards phase of the bench press where you hold your breath for no more than half a second. A breath held for any longer than half a second is unacceptable.

Author: Matt D'Aquino
http://www.workoutsforjudo.com/

Matt is the founder of Beyond Grappling fitness and conditioning. He is a 2008 Beijing Judo Olympian as well as nationally ranked freestyle wrestler and National Champion in Brazilian Jujitsu. Matt has a passion for teaching all aspects of grappling especially the fitness and conditioning aspect. Recently he has been traveling the world aiming to qualify for his second Olympic Games. To learn more about Matt and his fitness and conditioning training visit http://www.workoutsforjudo.com/

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How To Lose Fat While Retaining Muscle

Virtually anyone who has participated in a bodybuilding or weight lifting routine has asked this question. The entire premise behind bodybuilding is to add muscle while losing fat. It's what we think when we look in the mirror, it influences what we eat, how we train and what supplements we buy.

The exception of course, would be the guy or girl who's metabolic rate is so genetically high that their only concern is adding weight to their already lean frames. But for the majority of the population, the age old secret of being able to burn our unwanted fat while building or at least retaining muscle mass seems elusive and difficult at best.

Bodybuilders and fitness experts will tell you that building muscle requires food. It's impossible naturally to add lean mass to any skeletal frame without additional calories to feed and grow your new muscle fibers. However, those same experts will also tell you that the only way to get rid of those pesky love handles is to reduce your calories. So what is the answer? Is there an exercise and diet plan that even exists for this scenario?

The short answer to this is no... but there are several logical approaches to this that can still help you reach your fitness goals. I've listed below some general guidelines that you should consider if you're training is not giving you the results you want.

Change The Way You Eat: Completely change the way you look at breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Adopt a technique called grazing, where you eat every two to three hours instead of three meals a day. Professional bodybuilders have been eating like this for years and for good reason. By consuming small portions of protein and complex carbs systematically throughout the day, we are maintaining a more balanced level of amino acids in our bloodstream for the constant repair of muscle tissue.

Additionally, by eating frequent meals we are forcing our digestive system to work overtime which in turn, burns more calories. This burning of calories contributes to an overall change in our metabolism allowing us to burn calories at a more efficient rate even when we are resting.

Split up Cardio and Weight Training: Another excellent approach in our quest to burn fat while building muscle is to separate the times we weight train from when we do our cardiovascular workouts. These two categories of exercise are both necessary and helpful, but they are both designed to do two completely different things.

Weight training tears down muscle with the intent of rebuilding stronger, once it has been repaired. Repair can only happen when the right nutrients are shuttled to the fatigued muscle group via the bloodstream. This is why the first hour after weight training requires a feeding of proteins and carbohydrates so as to optimize your muscles ability to get stronger.

Conversely, aerobic or cardio activity is to burn fat. The fat burning results from these exercises depend upon the length of time, intensity, and the amount of sugars (carbohydrates) present in our bloodstream. By doing your cardio with less carbs in your body... and by waiting at least 30 minutes to eat after completing it, you give your body a much better chance to use fat cells for energy rather than carbohydrates.

Eat And Train Smarter: By including these tricks into your daily regimen you are really improving your body's ability to build muscle and burn fat when it's supposed to. Medical studies may not be conclusive with the best approach to burning fat while holding on to precious muscle, but many professional athletes and fitness experts are big proponents in the timing of our meals and the scheduling of strength-training versus aerobics.

George C Taylor has been a fitness enthusiast for over 25 years. He currently resides in Southeast Asia where he works as a freelance writer for internet marketers and web masters all over the world.

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