One of my favorite things about health and fitness is that it’s so much more than physical. Through resistance training and proper nutrition, you’re able to fine-tune your body how you want physically, but the mental, emotional, and sometimes spiritual areas of your life often get elevated at the same time. You’re physically pushing yourself, which makes you mentally stronger and seek out ways to continue improving in other areas of your life. Understanding that getting better in one area affects many others is a trickle effect that has me obsessed. Obsessed with pushing myself in the gym and out, and it’s what led me to my most recent challenge/obse
ssion – Breath Retention Exercise.
If you follow along, you may have seen me post random screenshots of numbers/bar graphs illustrating random times between 1:35-3:00. These are the durations of each round of breath retention exercise I have been doing. Several people I follow on Twitter had been boasting about the benefits of this practice and enough was finally enough. Entering June, I decided to take on the challenge to perform 5 rounds of breath retention every day and I must say, not only has it been one of the best challenges I’ve taken on, but it has also been one of the toughest to tackle!
Following the practices of the Ice Man – Wim Hof – I decided to challenge my body and my mind to see what all the fuss was about with this whole “breath retention” practice.
For those unfamiliar, Breath Retention is the practice of performing a number of continuous deep breaths in/out without break, with the last exhale leading into a timed session of retention without air in
your body for as long as you can hold. Once you reach your max and must breath again, you stop the timer and take a large inhale and hold for 15 seconds before releasing and beginning the next round again. This continues for however many rounds you want and the initial deep breathing can be anywhere between 5-60 breaths.
I had heard about a few benefits of this practice including:
-Stress relief
-Increased alertness
-Better circulation
-Becoming more relaxed
-etc
So I was excited to see if this really was the bees knees or just another fad in the long list and spoiler, it was great!
In doing a little research, I learned that the best way to approach this was to set time aside preferably in the mornings, on an empty stomach. This allowed the breathing and retention to help wake up your body and vascular system to its fullest potential before being introduced to the energy of the day. On days when I could not get to it in the morning, there was a significant difference in my ability to hold in retention. In the evenings, my mind was quicker to wander; I was less focused on the here and now; and just overall felt less mentally strong in the moment so I tried to stick with mornings as much as possible.
After some trial and error, I found that 25 breaths was the sweet spot for me and led to increased retention each day of practice with some interesting physical side effects.
Most days when I would practice, if I was able to cross the 2-2.5 minute threshold, I began to feel tingling sensations throughout my body and even began to experience what I would call, minor tinnitus (ringing in the ear). I never passed out, but a few small muscle spasms of the diaphragm on longer held rounds were not uncommon as I tried mentally to overpower my physical request to inhale.
Aside from these in-the-moment effects, I must say I was pleasantly surprised that the other benefits of the practice as mentioned before were also experienced.
The practice itself through the three phases (deep breaths, retention, recovery hold) increased the flow of the vascular system and the bodies’ ability to transport oxygen through the body while flushing out toxins that may have been held up in various areas. Most notable effects were mental.
The increased flow of blood and oxygen to the head allowed for mental fogs to clear and help me wake up, feeling more alert. A couple of times I had begun my session with a slight headache and found that by the end, the ache was gone. Not only that, but the retention tested me mentally to truly feel my body. Focus on relaxing new areas of the body that I hadn’t paid much attention to. Focus on controlling my heartbeat and keeping my mind on the present moment rather than flittering around on to other things.
Being candid, the increased blood flow and cleansed vascular system has also seen a rise not only in my physical prowess in the gym but has also helped, in conjunction with heavy weight training, facilitate a higher sex drive and stronger and more frequent erections in the bedroom. Something I can’t imagine anyone would complain about.
The vascular systems health and ability to funnel oxygen and blood around the body where it needs to be under any stressor is a fascinating thing and having only scraped the surface of this training, I must say that I am very happy with the results mentally, physically, emotionally, and even spiritually as I’ve tapped into a part of myself I didn’t give much thought to.
If you’ve ever heard or thought about experimenting or trying this, I would highly recommend and would be happy to answer any questions about it that you might have.
As I mentioned, I believe a lot of the benefits I felt with this breath retention were also in alignment with my weight training program which is focused on building maximum strength. Strength training has it’s own benefits for clearing the mind, making the body better, funneling oxygen and blood through the vascular system, balancing and boosting hormones and in combination with breath retention, is helping me reach a new level internally and externally.