Weekly Way of Breath | 005 | Oct. 21, 2022

A quote to ponder: "Get nasal, get control" -Laird Hamilton

This is something Laird would repeat after each workout, exercise, or activity. The key being that if you can exhaust the carbon dioxide buildup within the body that you can get back to a parasympathetic state sooner. the sooner you can use your breath and get back to light breathing, the better. It allows for recovery and ultimately performance to significantly improve. The thing were all striving to achieve is higher performance in our personal lives but also in our professional lives too. Think of performance as the pursuit of your highest potential.

The other quote Laird brought up a few times is a motto of the US Navy SEALs. It goes, "slow is smooth, and smooth is fast". Doing exercises, activities, and completing any tasks requires a certain amount of focus and control. This quote sums up how to be thinking, moving, breathing. 

A podcast I've been listening to this week: There's been two that I've mainly listened to this week. The first one is from Dr. Andrew Huberman, and has a focus on optimizing our physical health. It's one of his Fitness Toolkit episodes. 

 Huberman Lab - Fitness Toolkit Episode 94

The second is one that was released yesterday on Thursday. It is a Joe Rogan podcast with 2 former Navy SEALs on it and there is a good amount of time spent discussing their training. I love pulling resources, skills, etc from the special forces community. To me, the Tier 1 & 2 special operations units are the best example of top-performers. The XPT retreat had members of DEVGRU, CAG, and the 24th STS, and all of these guys were the highest performing people there. They could stay calm under stress, take multiple different instructions while tired, and continued to push themselves even when they might've wanted to quit or stop. These are the skills I am trying to coach for my clients. Helping them bring these skills into every area of their lives.

Joe Rogan Experience - Mike Sarraille & Andy Stumpf

Breathing protocol: I have been playing around with "air hunger" myself. Air hunger and resistance training for my breathing and respiratory system. The protocol that impacts both my ability to dance the line of "air hunger" and also increase my lung's ability to handle resistance is: 

Light breathing (all through the nose) as light possible. Placing 1 hand on your belly and the other on your chest try to breathe as light as you possibly can to not make either hand rise and fall. Make your breaths as shallow as possible. The focus here is walking the line of air hunger and through that you will build up your resistance training.

The upcoming next few weeks will be focusing on Hypoxia and Hypoxic Training. Another word for this is Altitude Training. To increase your body's co2 tolerance, increase red blood cell count, white blood cell production, cleaning out old dead cells, boosting your immune system, among many other benefits. In order to get into a Hypoxic state we will be doing a minimum of 90 second breath holds. Our other focus will be on our recovery after each round.

Have a great weekend, and see you next week!

Shea