Mark Bell's Power Project - Belisa Vranich - You're Breathing WRONG, This is How You FIX It || MBPP Ep. 781

Episode Date: August 9, 2022

In this Podcast Episode, Dr. Belisa Vranich, Mark Bell, Nsima Inyang, and Andrew Zaragoza talk about the importance of horizontal "belly breathing". Most of us have been conditioned to breath vertically up and down into the top of our lungs instead of into our diaphragm which can cause many health issues such as knee and back pain, pelvic floor issues, stress and anxiety and more. Follow Belisa on IG: https://www.instagram.com/drbelisa/ Join The Power Project Discord: https://discord.gg/yYzthQX5qN Subscribe to the new Power Project Clips Channel: https://youtube.com/channel/UC5Df31rlDXm0EJAcKsq1SUw Special perks for our listeners below! ➢https://boncharge.com/pages/POWERPROJECT Code POWERPROJECT for 20% off!! ➢https://thecoldplunge.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save $150!! ➢Enlarging Pumps (This really does work): https://bit.ly/powerproject1 ➢https://www.vivobarefoot.com/us/powerproject Code POWERPROJECT20 for 20% off Vivo Barefoot shoes! ➢https://markbellslingshot.com/ Code POWERPROJECT10 for 10% off site wide including Within You supplements! ➢https://mindbullet.com/ Code POWERPROJECT for 20% off! ➢https://eatlegendary.com Use Code POWERPROJECT for 20% off! ➢https://bubsnaturals.com Use code POWERPROJECT for 20% of your next order! ➢https://vuoriclothing.com/powerproject to automatically save 20% off your first order at Vuori! ➢https://www.eightsleep.com/powerproject to automatically save $150 off the Pod Pro at 8 Sleep! ➢https://marekhealth.com Use code POWERPROJECT10 for 10% off ALL LABS at Marek Health! Also check out the Power Project Panel: https://marekhealth.com/powerproject Use code POWERPROJECT for $101 off! ➢Piedmontese Beef: https://www.piedmontese.com/ Use Code POWER at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $150 Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ https://www.facebook.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/mbpowerproject ➢ LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/powerproject/ ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject ➢TikTok: http://bit.ly/pptiktok FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢https://www.tiktok.com/@marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ https://www.breakthebar.com/learn-more ➢YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/NsimaInyang ➢Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/?hl=en ➢TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@nsimayinyang?lang=en Follow Andrew Zaragoza on all platforms ➢ https://direct.me/iamandrewz #PowerProject #Podcast #MarkBell #FitnessPodcast

Power Project family, we talk about sleep all the time on this podcast, as you know. That's why we've partnered with Eight Sleep Mattresses. And the amazing thing about Eight Sleep Mattresses, and one of the reasons why they are nicknamed the Tesla of beds, is because of the technology behind the Pod Pro cover. Not only does it literally change its temperature through the night. First off, it can go from 55 degrees all the way to 110. But the temperature changes through the night based off your own body temperature. It also tracks your heart rate, your heart rate variability, your tossing and turning,

your partner's tossing and turning. And based off of that, in consecutive nights, it will literally change the temperature settings so that you get better quality sleep on different nights. It blows my mind at how great these mattresses are. So Andrew, tell them how to get it, please. Yeah, absolutely. So the other cool thing too, is like the app will actually, you know, you track everything through the app, but then it'll send you messages like, hey, do you feel more rested today? Well, that's no surprise because, you know, it gives you all the information. And yeah, it's just really cool, like to be able to track that sort of thing. So that way, you know, like, you know, you can't get

better at something you're not tracking, and it does it for you. So head over to 8sleep.com slash powerproject. That's 8 spelled out, so E-I-G-H-T, sleep.com slash powerproject, and you will automatically receive $150 off of the Pod Pro Cover or the Pod Pro Cover and mattress combo. Again, no code for that. You guys will get that automatically. Links to them down in the description as well as the podcast show notes. I've already admitted a lot of stuff on this podcast. I'm not a closet freak anymore. He's just a freak. There's no closet anymore. No more. You guys blew that fucker way down.

Do we have rules about cursing? Nope. No, no. You're allowed to do a lot of it. Everything goes. Are we already starting i think so yeah yeah good we should so i when i worked for fox for a while um and again you know as a sex and health editor at men's fitness and then i got hired by fox to also do their sexual health and relationship content sex editor yeah i know i know like you make it more inappropriate or less

inappropriate more always more right make it more spicy or less inappropriate? More. Always more. Right. Make it more spicy so people want to read it, right? Well, yes and no. So Fox calls me in and they say we want a sex editor because everybody wanted sort of a sex in the city kind of person to answer questions. This is before the whole Me Too stuff, right? This is definitely before that. Yeah.

So they say – so we want you to write things that are like titillating. That word. I know. Just the word. It's got tit in it write things that are like titillating we want that word we want i know just the word it's not a real word right yeah titillating right we want a salacious and there was all these words that were just you know sounded like they were pervy pervy totally pervy words and they said but we don't we can't use any um body language you know anatomy so i say like vagina or penis or anything. Can't say vagina, can't say penis. I said, wait a second.

So I'm supposed to be talking about intercourse, right? And they said, yes, but don't use penis or vagina. And I said, so you want stick and berries and the JJ? And they said, yes. So I have never known so many euphemisms and silly words for body parts. That's great. Yeah. I need to go read some of these articles and see kind of like how they were just phrased.

Right. That's just the lesson in and of itself. Well, my honeypot, I think, was the best one for vagina. My honeypot was good. Susan used that one, too. Yeah, I think so. Honeypot. Yeah.

That's honeypotting. That's honeydicking. That's where it came from. Oh, that's true. Yeah. Wow. Only if they could all be honey dicking. That's where it came from. That's true. Wow. Only if they could all be honey pots. Well, you know what I mean? We're not lucky enough. Anyway, I got fired from that job very quickly.

You did? I did. Oh, okay. I did, yeah. You know, and I also got a lot of hate mail. How did you get into writing? So everybody in my family writes. I come from a family of writers and college professors. I'm the only one who is not a college professor. So even my brother, he is an archaeologist. He's

a Machu Picchu expert and he rolls, of course. So I started writing, you know, it was the first magazine was called, I don't remember, but it was a dream analysis column. So they wanted me to do a dream analysis column, which was great. I mean, I do, as a psychologist, I talk to people about dreams. So folks would write in their dreams and I would analyze them. Usually it was celebs and analyze the dreams. And then men's fitness, again, wanted a sex and health person. Actually, they wanted a sex writer. So I went in, I applied for the job because I thought, you know, why not? Right. And they offered it to me and I thought about it and I thought, you know, I don't have a degree in sexual health, you know, or, you know,

sexuality and human behavior and that sort. And my own personal life is really not that interesting that I have a good reference point to be a sex editor. And so I went back and I said, you know, I don't really think I'm qualified. Is there anything else? And my friend said, Belisa, of course you can talk about sex. I mean, you do all the time anyway. Don't worry that you don't have the degree. health though because I want to be able to talk about mental health and and health in general but uh it was a blast it was a blast being at men's fitness and being able to talk about you know all kinds of stuff so get the girl you got hate mail I in fox I got hate mail sex yeah yeah I definitely got hate mail so because you have all kinds of people listening and you have people thinking that you know you shouldn't have sex before marriage and i respect that if that's if that's what you want to do that's cool um but you i should be able to write about it and if i wrote about i know i did a column on on plan b and people got you know that was kind of kind of hard too yeah um but uh yeah everybody had an opinion

and they wanted to write in and tell me you you know, what a liberal slut I was. And I said, I'm neither. I'm neither liberal nor slut. So you're wrong. But yeah, it was a good time. Do you still utilize some of your writing skills like nowadays? Do you find that some of that experience has come in really handy with what you're doing now? The sexual part or the writing part?

Just the writing part. Yeah, yeah. The writing part. Well, I guess the sexual part. I mean, we can get to that later. But breathing, I mean. It all falls in line. Like it all works together.

But the breathing and tantra. And I got to tell you, so the last book I wrote is called Breathing for Warriors. And the publishers wanted there to be a chapter on sex. So in the initial proposal, there is a chapter on sex. And I didn't want it there. I really didn't want it there because I thought, you know, it felt cheap. It felt like I was like throwing in some gratuitous penis and vagina talk or, you know, twig and berries and honeypot talk just to sell a book. And I was like, no, I really want this to be about strength, endurance, precision, and

recovery. And thankfully, I got them to say, you know, to take that chapter out. But and I'm happy to tell you what would have been in it as well. When you talk about tantra and breathing and having sex and breathing through your balls and all that, that's the breathing that goes together with sex. Let's talk about that for a bit because like, you know, when in your book, which your book is really good, but when you talk about like vertical breathing, horizontal breathing, but vertical breathing specifically, when you see a lot of guys who are, maybe they're

pretty uptight, they're up here, right? How can that not reflect itself in the bedroom? And then how can that not be detrimental over time, right? So, like, let's talk about how that affects, I guess, men's performance and even, like, all of that and how we can fix that if that's an issue. Sure. And, I mean, that's a great question because if you're breathing vertically, you're using your neck and shoulder muscles to pick up your rib cage to breathe. And the way we should be breathing is horizontally, which means you're breathing diaphragmatically. So the middle of your body is expanding and then it's narrowing.

And also what's happening if you're breathing diaphragmatically is that your pelvic floor is involved in the breath. And it may be just a tiny amount. is involved in the breath. And it may be just a tiny amount, but if you're breathing with your diaphragm, right underneath your diaphragm and sort of flipped over is your pelvic floor. So you're going to be able to oxygenate. And again, think about all the different products,

I'm sure you don't know about them, that have to do with enlarging your penis or making it harder, their vasodilators. We know a lot. No, we don't know anything. That's a joke. I'm like, what? Now we do.

We do. Yeah, but yeah. Yeah, we've talked about this kind of stuff before and there's been all kinds of people who are like, we don't need any help with that and they're like clicking

on all these links. We have 50,000 clicks today, but everyone says it's stupid. Like, I'm 25 years old. I don't have any problems with that. I don't need any help. Click, click, click. You can't click fast enough to open up all these windows on their computer. and clicks today, but everyone says it's like I'm 25 years old. I don't have problems with that. I don't need any help. Click, click, click, click, click, click, click.

Fast enough. Open up all these windows on their computer. And then they come in forever. Then they're like following you on all your social media, right? I don't know how that got there. So when you're breathing horizontally is that your pelvic floor is going to be more involved. And again, like you can

you can do this is that when you inhale and the middle of your body expands and your shoulders stay calm and soft is that your pelvic floor, your glutes and your bicycle seat that is your pelvic floor relaxes. Now on the exhale, you're going to squeeze. You can use your core to squeeze. And you're also going to squeeze your pelvic floor just a little bit. And that's a whole body breath. So we're supposed to be breathing and our whole body is supposed to be pulsating and moving as we breathe. If you're breathing up and down with your shoulders, you're neglecting everything from your armpits down. So absolutely breathing diaphragmatically is going to help your pelvic floor and it's going to help everything that's around your pelvic floor. And we need that because right now our pelvic floors are just crushed.

Let's maybe talk about some of this in reverse for a moment. Like what happens when someone's really panicked and what happens when somebody is maybe especially expressing to you from years ago as a psychologist, maybe expressing that they have a lot of anxiety and they start maybe rehashing a story to you about why they feel they feel this way. What do you see happening with someone's breathing in those cases? So you were talking about anxiety disorders and anxiety disorders are the most common mental health problem that we have. People think it's depression. It's actually anxiety. And anxiety disorders, it breaks up into obsessive compulsive disorder, panic attacks, generalized anxiety, PTSD, and phobias. There's five. So if you think about that there's five of those and think about the people that you have around you is that you're going to know someone, if not a few people, that have one of those five types of anxiety disorders.

What happens when you are anxious is that your breath becomes faster and more shallow. Now, here's the problem. If you already breathe that way naturally, okay, and you have something happen to you or you have a stressful job or a stressful day is that you're more apt to get anxious. And now if you're in that vicious circle, getting out of it is really tough without a shot of tequila or a Xanax or something like that. So the way we can break that cycle is by changing the breath. Now, I'm not saying don't go to therapy or don't take your meds or this is going to take the place of that, but it will take you down a notch and you

can get to the point where you can control it because the mind looks to the breath to see. It's the connection. It is the mind-body connection. So you can be telling yourself, I'm okay. I'm okay. It's going to be all right. It's going to-body connection. So you can be telling yourself, I'm okay. I'm okay. It's going to be all right. It's going to be all right. But your brain isn't listening to what you're saying. It's listening to your breathing.

I'm curious about the anxiety aspect of things because also you're a psychologist. So you have way more insight on this than I do. But I know like a lot of my family is in Nigeria. In Nigeria, it's very modernized. But still, there's an aspect within the culture where like people are still using their bodies a lot more. Kids aren't nearly as sedentary. Kids still walk back and forth to school because there's a lack of infrastructure. And you see like the rates of anxiety disorders within the United States being so high. And some would say, oh, it's just not recorded in other countries.

That's why it seems to be so high. And some would say, oh, it's just not recorded in other countries. That's why it seems to be so low. But there seems to be lifestyle factors in other countries that even though they don't have as much, right, as much as we have here, they also do more with their body, which leads them to probably have more control over their breathing. And it seems that even though they have less, they also have less problems as far as anxiety disorders, et cetera. And when I talk to my relatives back there, they're not living nearly as good as some of us here, but they're happy or they're living and they don't have those types of issues. But I also, when I talk to them, I also notice the way they're breathing. They don't seem that way. So I'm curious how much of that, I know can't just be breath, but how much can be linked back to the way people are brought up, the way people breathe through stress, that type of stuff.

Such a great question and such a great summary. That was beautiful. summary. That was beautiful. So the first thing you're talking about is countries that have diseases or problems that have to do with overconsumption, which is us, right? And then diseases of poverty or situations that have to do with poverty. So there's a big thick line that divides those two. So we have diseases of overconsumption. So we have obesity is obviously the best example of that. So what happens when you stop moving is that you don't discharge energy. So for instance, when, and this drives me crazy, is that when people tell kids to sit down, like sit down, be still, sit down, be still. And even the whole movement to bring meditation into schools is fantastic. But kids need to discharge energy before you calm

down. So even us, you know, before we say, hey, I'm a little antsy, let me take a couple deep breaths. You got to do 10 burpees. You got to do something to discharge the energy. I always look at history and anthropology and the animal kingdom to see what happens. And we're the only organisms who go straight to the brain and try to figure it out and don't think about, well, what movement should I do or what do I need to help my brain understand this concept? So, for instance, in – and I'll bring in an example from jjitsu, is that Hickson does his right. Okay. And if you look at it, it's partially his thing, which is totally cool. Like everybody has their thing that they do.

What is that? I guess you're going to explain. What does he do when he does that? So he's actually doing everything he teaches comes from yoga. Right. And he does it brilliantly in a way. He's, you know, a genetic freak when it comes to jiu-jitsu and sport. But that exhale is kapalabhati. I call it an exhale pulsation. But you're squeezing your body and you're getting air out of your body. you are dispersing irritability when you do that.

That's the yoga philosophy behind it. And I'm going to look at the muscular part of it. The anatomical part is that you're exhaling completely. So you're focusing on the exhale. The exhale is the underdog. So in general, we exhale very, very poorly. And there actually is a study that Eric Pepper did that looked at people who do not exhale well tend to be more anxious. And I'll give you the reference to that article as well.

So what he's doing is make sense anatomically. He's making sure he exhales completely before he takes the next breath. It's also a ritual that if you look at any animal that's transitioning from one situation to the next, they do something. So a horse, when you see them flutter their lips and their lips, I guess, do they have lips? When you see them, exactly. Thank you. Is that there's something that they're brushing off or there's some tension that they're brushing off. When you see an animal that's just been had to run or was almost attacked is that they shake, right? And then they're fine. Your dog freaks out because Amazon's here and then goes back, circle, circle, circles and lies down again. So we don't have those rituals that have to do with like shaking it off. I mean, we have the words of

like shake it off, walk it off, but we need to have more of that because we're, we're beings that need the discharge of that energy before we're told sit down even more than we already sit, which is, you know, we already know how much that is. And that's not good. Yeah. Yeah. I've heard Andrew Huberman talk quite a bit about the sigh. You know, we do this sigh, we kind of sigh of relief. And he mentioned that we do it a lot more than people think in some studies. And I don't know what studies you're referring to, but I think he mentioned that people do it approximately like every five minutes or something without even really being aware of it. And I would imagine, again, maybe some people that are more anxious are probably doing it a little bit less. Maybe they're not – even though it might be part of our subconscious, maybe for them,

maybe they're a little more locked up or something like that. So that's called a physiological sigh. And it is fascinating how quickly that goes to your brain and can calm you down. And what it is, and we can do it now, is you take a big belly breath, so a horizontal breath, and I'll go into, you know, whether belly is the right word or not later. So inhale, bottom of the body, and then you go into whether belly is the right word or not later. So inhale, bottom of the body and then you add a little bit to the top and then you exhale. And that's an amazingly efficient reset.

And that's what you're doing is that you're resetting your brain. It also is – You can sometimes even feel it in your head sometimes. Absolutely. Yeah. You can feel it in your head sometimes. Absolutely. And sometimes if you look at the emotional again because I'm a psychologist is that you look at a sigh and it usually means, okay, let's go. Like I'm going to transition from this to the other thing.

It can be a little bit of self-pity sometimes of like, oh, geez, really? Or it can be like, all right, well, this is the way things are. Let's move it along. But there's usually the breath has an emotional component to it as well. And when you look at the lungs is that when you take that breath, you're stretching things out. So your lungs have been moving and then it's a stretch. And they need that.

And they found that people that were in iron lungs, if that's the word, it was the containers that they put them in. Yeah, iron lung. Yeah. I think there's just one person left in one if she hasn't died yet. Is that when you didn't add the size to the iron lung, people would die. So the first bunch of people that were in them, everything was perfect but they didn't have the size because we need it. We need that stretch of the lungs. perfect, but they didn't have the sigh because we need it. We need that stretch of the lungs.

So interesting you bring up that people who are anxious will actually sigh more. I sometimes will notice, you know, I mentioned to you yesterday, I really try to pay attention to people's words. It's important to me to try to make my own progress. And so I try to pick up on the way other people speak sometimes. And I'm not afraid to share my thoughts with people and say, hey, you said always, you said never, like those are absolutes. And maybe you don't want to say those things, you know, things of that nature. But what I have noticed with some people that I know, they're a little bit more stressed. Sometimes when you say, hey, how'd your day go? They go, and they do that. And then they, they unload on you, you know, hey, how'd your day go? They go, and they do that.

And then they unload on you with a lot of usually kind of they have a negative perspective or interpretation of the day. Yeah. Yeah. And that size of transition to tell you. But it's also, again, about like how tough their day was. So one of the reasons. They're kind of showing you. They're kind of like, is that right? was so one of the reasons showing you they're kind of like is that right yeah they're they're with their body they're they're showing you like this day was fucking rough for me and here yeah

they open up okay you want to know i'm going to open up the book take a big sigh and start to read right so people who are saw who sigh too much or who you notice wow you're sighing a lot. You know, what's going on? Usually our breath holders. Usually our breath holders. So yes, there is a percentage of the population that over breathes. It's about 9%. But we also have a lot of the population that hover. They take tiny little inhales, tiny little exhales and breath hold. And breath holding has become actually quite a serious problem. And it happens

because our screens are small. So yeah, so if you look out into the horizon, you will take a wider, bigger breath. And you will do it naturally. So next time you're at the beach, you look out into the distance, automatically, you'll take a bigger breath and sigh once your screen starts getting smaller you get into this modern predatory mode where you are hunting right and usually you crane your neck forward because you're trying to get there faster it doesn't really work it's the way i've always eaten because i had two older brothers i would always eat like all my food so i was yeah being here tight you know like yeah looking out for with your arms yeah your arms like circling your plate right yeah so and that's what you bring up is that it's really when

you ask someone why they do why they're doing something is that you have to look at their history as a person so if you were to have really bad forward head posture, I would want to you about how many years did you spend hovering over your plate because of your brothers? And although it's a funny example, it's like, if you spent 10 years protecting your plate with your head craned forward, like, it's going to actually affect you as an adult. So asking those questions that seem to be psychological are really important when you're looking at breathing. Sometimes we'll just have like, I'll be making like a fist and I'm not doing anything. And I'm like, what am I doing? Like, why don't I just fucking relax? Like, what's going on? Like, where's the threat? There's nobody around. I don't know. So I have to like kind of do that a lot

where I just kind of sigh and relax. I don't feel like a stressed person, but I'm sure there's things locked in there that I don't even know about. And again, like if you're baseline, it's interesting because I've had people when I first started doing this work as well, is that my relaxed may not be relaxed for someone else, right? How often do you have that friend where you're like, relax? And they're like, I am relaxed. hey you know you know a thing too like the thing where you're mentioning the fists i find myself like i mean i'm way better at now but i still catch myself kind of keeping some tension up in my traps i'm like fucking just drop your shoulders drop your shoulders let yourself walk because like there's an aspect of it and we'll probably

get into this you know how people you talk about how people hold their stomachs in but also people that are bigger they tend to kind of like just like could go like that instinctually a little bit to just get a little bit taller right or not even taller but like look like they're bigger so i'm just like dude bring your shoulders down get that tension out because i hold a lot of tension in my traps yeah so these are just little things that you mentioned out with running you sometimes said you had to relax your shoulders. Especially when I started running, it's something I noticed because I was keeping up. I'm like, dude, fucking bring your shoulders down. And that's something I had to remind myself, but it's been helpful because now, daily life

too, I can catch myself. It helps me be even more relaxed. And I'm out there in the sun running like this. And I'm like, dude, just relax. Makes it so much easier when you relax. Makes it feel smoother. Yeah. But if someone's looking at you, they're like, oh, he's not trying hard enough.

So, and this comes from if you did sports as a teenager, right? Is that you wanted people to know, your coach and other people, that you were trying really hard. So, furrowed brow, you know, fists and being as dramatic as possible because you wanted them to know you were doing a good job, but that is tapping into your energy. So when we talk about, you know, one of the things that got me interested in breath work was a book I read, Let Every Breath. And it's about, it's Russian special operations training and their take on how to breathe. And that was a book that weirdly enough, that was formative for me as far as changing from being a therapist to being a

coach. What was it called again? Sorry. Let Every Breath. Let Every Breath. So, and they talk about how they talk about things you can do with your breath to tolerate pain.

They talk about things you can do with your breath to tolerate pain. But they also talk about how you need to be relaxed to conserve energy for when you need it. So if you're tight, you're using up energy. And you know this from jiu-jitsu is that when you can be – especially when it comes to body weight distribution is that if you can be relaxed and heavy, completely different. You've got someone on top of you who knows body weight distribution. Actually, Henry Akins is one of my favorite. You definitely need to talk to him. He's kind of brilliant when it comes to body weight. Is that Henry feels like he's 600 pounds, right?

And he's calm. Like he's not tight. And he's calm. He's not tight. And so anyway, if you're going to conserve your energy for when you need it, you need to be able to switch from relaxed to explosive, to relaxed to explosive. And I think this translates to the gym in that nobody goes to relaxed. They go from lift heavy brace to brace a little bit less and then go back to lift again. So we never go to the relax.

And part of it is that we're so scared that if we relax, we won't be able to pick back up again. That relaxing can be a little scary. That's why when I was focused on powerlifting, I loved watching Russians lift. There's always this U.S.-Russian rivalry the russians be ahead of shit man because like you watch and lift for some reason people like oh they're so stoic or they're so serious and they have no emotion well why are they lifting 900 pounds so fucking relaxed like it looks like nothing right there's an aspect to that and that like i think uh shako talks about that shit in terms of like his lifters he doesn't want them having any emotion.

He doesn't want them hyping themselves up. He wants them to be able to be calm, approach the bar, lift it and not have any residual tiredness. For some reason, they seem like they can lift that over and over and over repetitively and it's beautiful. Whereas you see some lifters who are still very strong, American lifters, don't get me wrong, and they're strong. I'm not trying to dis any American lifters, but they get off and they're just like fucking broken right um an example of actually someone who does this really well is russ swole we had him on the podcast before but if you watch russ lift heavy weights he's talked about it he's very chill his face looks like he's just like no emotion everything no emotion rep after rep after rep and he seems to just recover really fucking well. So, hey, it's an aspect to it.

So, and there's, again, anatomically it makes sense because your brain takes cues from your jaw. Okay. So if your face is tight, is that your brain is going to be interpreting that a certain way. brain is going to be interpreting that a certain way. And there is one study that shows that when you're serious or angry, your nostrils are more narrow. So you're getting less air into your body. So the whole face tight and hands tight is that it's really hard to relax when you're gritting your teeth and when your hands are tight. So to get someone to relax, really getting them to relax their face and their hands is super important. Question about that real quick. You know how strong men, and some people who power lift, they'll use mouth, like there's a brand called, I don't know, it's a mouth guard. There's a mouth

guard brand for power lifters and strength athletes. And it's so that like, you know, guard there's a mouth guard brand for power lifters and strength athletes and it's so that like you know they they say that you know when you lift more weight to lift more weight you want to clench your jaw against this it'll allow you to produce more force but there's the opposite side of the spectrums that's like relax your face because if you relax your face you'll be able to zone in and lift more weight what do you think is kind of like is there a both sides do they have some of it or what's the answer there and a a lot of it is personal because although you know I love studies and I love numbers and data, is that if you're an elite athlete and you're doing something that is specific to you and doesn't have a foundation in science but it works for you, do it. I am not a purist in that way because so much of your performance has to do with your mental game. And if clenching your teeth or not clenching your teeth actually gets you a better lift, you know, don't change that.

That works for you. So I would have to ask you what you do, Mark. So for me I used to just make a lot of noise before I'd lift I've heard this I would breathe a lot I think Andrew's kind of looking for a clip I'm fine

I would go to our chalk bowl and basically play patty cake with the chalk bowl it was sort of like a ritualistic kind of thing I don't know why it's in slow motion I don't know for me if it pulled any more out of me than what is normal. I would oftentimes

pace back and forth and I would breathe a lot. Smokey kind of does the same thing. He does one of our lifters in the gym. I don't know if you can hear. There's some smelling salts. I don't know. This probably doesn't have... No, it doesn't have audio. When he does that, he's like...

It sounds like that. You know what I mean? It's fucking crazy. It sounds like you're letting a lot of air out of a tire. And then I would breathe the same way when I was lifting. So once I actually went into the lift, I would take air in and I'd breathe the air out as I'm going

and trying to be explosive. So it was a way for me to like jog my memory and kind of jog my brain through what I was about to go through. So that's, that's a brilliant answer. Okay. Is that you practice the breath that you were going to do when you did the movement right before it. So it was almost like prepping your body for that with your breath. And you're prepping your brain as well, because remember, your brain looks at it. So fantastic. And those are the questions you have to ask is like, why are you breathing that way? And what does it do for you? And I felt good. Like I personally felt good turned up. Maybe not everybody feels good that way.

Maybe some people feel like I'm drawing too much attention or maybe it's distracting to them. But for me, it always felt good. I kind of also felt like, you know, I've been powerlifting my whole life. I got 60 to 90 seconds to be in front of everybody. Like, let's make this a fucking thing. You know, let's make this fun. And people would get fired up with me. Yeah.

Check this out. This is great. Don't make this fun. Yeah. And people would get fired up with me. Yeah. Check this out. This is great. Don't go, Bill. Let's go. All right. Wrapping those wrists up tight. Come on. Right now.

Right now. Come on. Right now. Let's go. Let's go. Come on, Bill. Let's go. Let's go. Come on. Let's go. Let's go, Melvin.

We're going for 500 pounds. Let's go, Melvin. Sounds like an air compressor. Let's go, Melvin. Let's go. Let's go, Mark. Let's go. Let's go, Mark! Let's go! Let's go, Mark! Let's go! Let's go!

Let's go! Let's go! Let's go! Let's go! Let's go! Let's go! Let's go! Let's go!

Let's go! Let's go! Let's go! Let's go! Let's go! Let's go! Let's go! Let's go!

Let's go! Let's go! Let's go! Let's go! Let's go! Let's go! Let's go! Let's go!

Let's go! Let's go! Let's go! Let's go! Let's go! Let's go! Let's go! Let's go!

Let's go! Let's go! Let's go! Let's go! Let's go! Let's go! Let's go! Let's go!

Let's go! Let's go! Let's go! Let's go! Let's go! Let's go! Let's go! Let's go!

Let's go! Let's go! Let's go! Let's go! Let's go! Let's go! Let's go! Let's go!

Let's go! Let's go! Let's go! Let's go! Let's go! Let's go! Let's go! Let's go! Let's go! Let's go! Let's go! Let Oh, cool. Yeah. So what – like let me ask you this. With that type of breathing, what's going on?

You're upregulating. So you're waking yourself up. And if you think about – you think about your arousal in a curve, right? Is that you want to be in different places depending on what you're doing. And you also – that's what your breathing does is it keeps you – it's called Yerkes. I forgot the second word. But it's a curve that has to do with arousal. Now, you don't want to be too much to the left and you definitely don't want to be too much to the right.

If you're to the left, you're kind of numb. You can't get yourself to perk up. You know the feeling, right? The middle is when you're in the zone and you're doing well and your breath is connected. And to the right is when you're in the black, David Grossman calls – Lieutenant Colonel David Grossman calls it in the zone and you're doing well and your breath is connected and to the right is when you're in the black, Lieutenant Colonel David Grossman calls it, in the black. And that's when you don't have control. So for instance, in that lift, you want to be slightly to the right but still within the zone because you don't want to lose control. Yeah, I've gone too far before where I like cried and like it had opposite impact.

I was like, that wasn't good. That was crappy. Yeah, that wasn't good. That was crappy. Yeah. That wasn't good. So with the breath, you are pumping yourself up or you're getting yourself excited and focused and aggressive in a place that's very narrow on that curve. if I was to work with you, is that I would want to make sure that that was replicable so that you know what you're doing and you can do it over and over and over again exactly the same. Because most of us, especially with someone who's elite, is that you do it because it comes naturally, but you don't really know what you're doing. And I've had some great conversations with

folks who are really elite to see what they're doing. So I could now take it and go like for us common people, what are those folks doing that we need to be able to learn? So for instance, golf is a game that has no breathing in it at all and part of it is cultural. So I do CrossFit. I also golf and part of the reason I golf is – and it took a little while for it to get me to get to the golf course because it didn't feel like a – Trevor Burrus Sport. Kirsten Ruhl Didn't feel like a real sport. But it's a precision sport, right? And I'm writing a chapter about precision sports. I'm writing

about shooting, about archery, about billiards, about golf. So I have to go out there and try this because I'm going to be writing about it. And you ask great golfers what they do and they'll say, oh, I do this, that and the other thing. Do you do it every single time? So your natural elite athlete will do it every single time exactly the same. But the first question to ask is what are you you doing exactly? And do you do it every single time? Because then your performance shouldn't change. And in most sports, what's interesting is that we're obsessed with repetitions and practice and training. But the one element that we haven't focused on is the breath. So it's kind of a secret thing that hasn't been worked on. So how good would your performance be if you threw the breath into that? So for instance, you obviously are a

fantastic athlete. Your age, you're at the pinnacle of your breathing, being 29. Your mechanics get better. It's going to be 30 soon. It's going to be 30? Oh. Very soon. It's going to be 30 soon. It's going to be 30? Very soon. It's going to be 30 years old. I ain't going to look at it for another 10 years. It's going to be old. Old. 30. Remember when 30 was old? Yeah. When I get to be – you always have these things about when you get to be 30.

Yeah. Yeah. Missed all of those. Is that you take as good as you are at what you do and now you actually get your mechanics to be in A and get your breathing muscles to be crazy strong. What happens to your performance? That's what's fascinating to me because endurance isn't just cardiovascular. Endurance is cardiovascular and respiratory conditioning. And we haven't been – we've completely omitted the respiratory conditioning.

And that to me is crazy because you do cardio, it's your heart, right? So what about your breathing muscles? You have 10 pounds of breathing muscles and you're omitting that from the equation. So endurance has to have those two elements, working out, getting the mechanics in your breathing muscles strong and the cardiovascular, then you have optimal endurance. I have a question that I think actually ties into this. And it was something that I was talking to Mark about after I read your book, because when you're talking about, and you'll definitely explain the muscles of breathing, how vertical breathers, muscles here and et cetera.

But hopefully this question can be formulated in a way that makes sense. Cause even if I was talking to Mark about it, I'm like, I don't know if this can make sense, but you know, when you breathe, right. And let's say you're breathing through your nose, you start your breath here and yeah, it ends up expanding here. But as I was reading your book, I'm like, what if I just, just focus on just moving the muscles here while a breath happens. Right. So what if I like, and I was curious, is there any advantage with, do you get what I'm saying by starting the breath with the muscles? Not with taking the breath, but instead moving the muscles to breathe. Is there a difference or is there an advantage?

I understand what you're saying. And when you take a breath, even though it doesn't feel like your muscles are activating, they are. Because there's no way to take a breath without your external intercostals or your diaphragm moving. Yeah. Okay. Or your neck and shoulders pulling your rib cage up. So something is happening to get the air in. It's not just like, it feels like your nose is doing something, right? Your nose is not doing anything. Actually, the muscles have to

be working. And sometimes it's a very, very small movement and you don't feel it because you don't have nerve endings on your diaphragm. So you don't feel your diaphragm fatigue. You don't feel the burn that you do with other muscles. Yeah. So when you actually move your body and you feel and you make your muscles expand and contract your body, then it's going to be a bigger breath is this breath efficient? Especially when, if you're doing your sport, maybe you breathe 15 times a minute, I'm sorry, 15 times a minute in daily life. And in your sport, you're going to go up to what, 50, 60, maybe 70. Yeah. So you want efficiency as far as your breath. And I'm curious too, I too i'm curious mark if you've noticed any difference when you're in any of your runs but i i noticed there was a run that i did

after i was like okay let me try because okay when i breathe i usually breathe and it ends up here but let me just try initiating the breath with the musculature that's what i was trying on a run and i was like this feels less stressful for some reason. For like, for some reason, it feels like I can continue this run for longer than I typically could by focusing. The breath is going to the same place, but it's like initiating from here rather than feeling like it's initiating from here, if that makes sense. I love that. Now does, but is what I'm saying, is that just, is that just a feeling? Like, am I totally putting false correlations there or is there something to what's going on with, with that? So feeling? Like, am I totally putting false correlations there or is there something to what's going on with, with that? So when you move the middle of your body, and again,

what I'm talking about really is that your diaphragm is flattening and pushing your ribs open and pushing the middle of your body open in some way is that the pull of air is coming from the middle of your body. Okay. Rather than you taking some air because you're using, you know, some muscles to pull the rib cage up a little bit. So I say this is that smokers actually are better diaphragmatic breathers. Hey, let's start smoking, y'all. And it's because they actually feel the suction and they understand how to get the suction, that feeling of taking a deep breath. You're pulling the air in deeper into your body.

So, yes, the air goes throughout your lungs. But if you breathe in a shallow way, it only is the top part of your lungs. I'm starting to explain why my wife breathes so well. Oh. Because she's a swimmer. Swimmers do have great breathing. Something I noticed with what he's saying is sometimes if, like once we try, then we tend to kind of screw things up. We like observe and then we, I don't know, we somehow screw things up

when you start to think about it more. And I noticed for myself sometimes, if I'm thinking like, oh, I'm gonna take a deep breath in my nose, I'm immediately gonna move my chest and shoulders. But if as we're standing here, I was just trying to observe like, how am I kind of actually breathing?

Let me just keep my hands on my stomach for a moment. And I've done this before, like just try to keep them there for kind of a long time to really observe even when I'm sitting down and stuff like that. And a lot of times it is, you know, my belly is moving. One thing I have noticed though too is sometimes it's hard to really relax the stomach. And I don't know if that's because I'm trying to stabilize my back or just because I'm standing or sometimes walking. I'm not sure exactly what that is. But as we're standing, what do you believe is like good posture in general? I know it's a loaded statement because of all the different – everyone's body is a little bit different. But in general, a kind of a universal rule, is there some universal rules that we should try to be following?

So this isn't, this is something I read from someone else named Blandine Kellys. She has a beautiful book. I think it's called The Art of Breathing or Breathing or, you know, something with breathing in it. It's hard to have a book title about breathing that's actually interesting. This is the moral of the story. You know, my books included because they sound like that. But is that she divided this in a way that made so much sense to me is that you have an anatomical breath and you have a mechanical breath. Okay. And I simplified it further because I like simplifying things is that there's the breath you're taking when you're walking around and moving and doing things. that there's the breath you're taking when you're walking around and moving and doing things and there's the breath that you take at the gym. Two completely different

things that you're doing. So an anatomical breath is one pretty much that when you extend your body, when you're opening up, is that you're going to inhale. Your body wants to do that. And even in utero when babies are starting to stretch to try to practice a third trimester, is that when you extend, that's an inhale. And when you exhale, you sort of curl up. So inhale, exhale. And that's what your body needs to do. That's what you want to do. So when people talk about one posture for breathing, yes, when you're in the gym and you're practicing a mechanical breath, your diaphragm and your pelvic floor need to be stacked. That zone of opposition, you know, that's tremendously important. But however, in your walk a day life is that your body's pulsating. So you have your stomach, there's peristalsis happening right you have your

heart moving your lungs are moving is that the last thing i want is your posture to be something that doesn't move i want your body moving i want inhale i want you to have a tiny little bit of a anterior pelvic tilt and on the exhale i want you to be have a tiny bit of of an exhale and a posterior pelvic tilt like Like not super crazy. Like when you're learning, it's going to look kind of nuts, right? But later on is that inhale, your glutes are relaxed, your pelvic floor is relaxed. You may have a tiny tip of your hips. And on the exhale, you know, you should be narrowing your body and you may have a tiny

bit of a posterior pelvic tilt. So there should be movement. There isn't one posture that I want you may have a tiny bit of a posterior pelvic tilt. So there should be movement. There isn't one posture that I want you to have. And part of the problem, you know, part of the reason we have so many lower back problems is because there isn't movement in the vertebrae when there should be. So if you are a vertical breather, it means that your spine is not getting this movement. It needs to have the fluid that's healthy moving through it. So that's kind of a long-winded answer, I hope. I hope I got there. Yeah. Yeah. But so there isn't

one posture, although I do have to say that when you're in the gym and there are people who specialize in this, DNS and PRI. I mean, I have my favorite folks who can explain that you need to have a very specific posture when you're lifting. If you're going to have the strength and the stability, the stiffness that you need, your ribs have to be over and stacked with your pelvis. Now, if you're a vertical breather trying to figure that out, like, do you know what that feels like? Are you scissors open most of the time? Or are you a rib gripper? So you have all these people, you try to get someone who is a rib gripper, which is that person and look around. Shoulders are kind of forward. try to get someone who is a rib gripper, which is that person and look around you. Shoulders are kind of forward.

Shoulders, but more than anything is that the ribs are squeezing into the body. Now, they're completely – that's not a good posture. Yeah, that's uncomfortable even just to go to. I almost hurt myself. But look around is that you'll find – you'll go, oh, how do I get that person to actually be able to move so that now they're stacked, right? It's harder than the person who's what's called scissors open that you're trying to bring the ribs down.

Now, you leave the gym, please move your body to breathe, you know, depending on if you're holding something, if you're stretching, if you're in the car, like you're in all different – you should be moving all different ways and your breath should be changing with it. And there's also I would imagine depending on like what your parents do and what you saw as a kid, right? And you see your brothers maybe breathing the same way. Maybe you have family members that are all in sports or maybe you have the exact opposite in your household. Maybe you have a dad that has a 9 to 5.

He can't get off work for vacations or has hardly any downtime. Maybe he's overly stressed and you kind of see the way he breathes. You see the way he eats, see the way he walks. And maybe it's all stuff that makes it very difficult for you to be on a healthier path. Absolutely. And as a kid, you look at superheroes. Show me one superhero. Yeah, exactly, right? Show me one superhero that's a diaphragmatic breather. And the superheroes actually, we have one of our friends here who I don't know if you'll meet because he's probably not going to be back in time. But Graham Tuttle, he's the barefoot sprinter. And we were watching something at my house and we're just sitting there. Everyone's just like enjoying enjoying this superhero movie. I can't remember which one it was.

And he's just sitting there, and he's folding his hands over, and he's just looking at everybody. He's like, I can't watch this. He's like, look at these guys. They're all mouth breathers. He's like, this is terrible. He's like, can't they shut their mouth and breathe in out of their nose? And no one else really, except for me, knew what the hell he was talking about,

but it was really funny. I have a hard time watching movies as well, because I will go, And no one else really, except for me, knew what the hell he was talking about. But it was really funny. I have a hard time watching movies as well because I will go, that's not someone who's bipolar. That's not someone who's schizophrenic. That's not someone who's hallucinating. So I'm a pain in the ass to go to the movies as well because I sit there and I analyze it. But for acting purposes, they probably need to amplify the situation, right? So Batman needs to stand there with his arms out. Sure.

He needs to be like something important happened, I guess. Yeah, something important. And that's, again, you know, when I see someone like this, A, a lot of it is, you know, bravado. All right. Because we live in a, you know, we live in a dangerous place, either as far as ego. And SEMA has no idea what you're talking about.

What are you talking about? What doing a vacuum everywhere vacuum we need a t-shirt vacuum right um but that that corset that emotional corset or it's a muscular core set. So your obliques are either so tight that you can't take a breath, so that's the muscular core set, or you're so stressed and you're prepared, right? When you're going to go into a meeting or go into a competition or something, you automatically get into this stance where you're braced. So that's normal, okay? However, if your day continues that way, so you're constantly braced, is that that's normal okay um however if your day continues that way so you're constantly braced is that that's not good that's not good and we live in a world where it's one thing after another

one thing after another so you consciously have to go okay wait let me actually relax my middle inhale and exhale so i actually want to go back to the belly breath because I do say belly and a lot of people bristle with that because the air is not going into your belly because I've had people say, you know, am I going to get gassy? Nothing really happens with your belly. you brought this up, Mark, because of the position of your diaphragm, which is slightly leaning backwards, is that if the the coral part of the diaphragm, which is the middle, if that's going to descend, it means that the middle part of your body needs to soften. OK, so it's a belly breath for you to be able to take a good breath. So I see a lot of folks that stay braced, but then they move their ribs. That's not a diaphragmatic breath. Those are your intercostals and the coastal part of your diaphragm

opening up your rib cage. A true diaphragmatic breath is abdominothoracic. And that's why the breathing IQ that I do looks at the bottom of your ribs moving and your belly moving. Now, if you're going to breathe behind this shield, so if you're going to do a farmer's carry, you're going to do something where you have to stay braced in front. How are you going to breathe? You have to learn how to breathe through your sides and even through your back. So you can take a really good deep breath, and you might want to try this right now, where you inhale and you round your back and then you exhale and think about just in your mind's eye squeezing your shoulder blades together and your and your straightest posterior and like the back squeezing but you can take a great breath

through your back because your lungs that was a doctor's looking at with the stethoscope thing or listening yeah okay so they're listening're listening to what the sounds are. They don't want to hear like an obstruction of some kind. Exactly. Nice and clear. Nice and clear. Lungs, I guess. But think about it.

When you were a kid and doctor comes over and does – Then you go – Yeah. So what do you think? You're like, oh, they said take a deep breath. And they put the stethoscope up here. So my lungs must be up here. And actually I know my lungs are up here because my superheroes and my mom and my dad breathe like – so this is how this whole thing starts to fall apart.

Is that stethoscope up there. My lungs must be here. They just told me to breathe. I see everybody breathing this way. Life is complicated. I start tensing my belly. Breathe lower. Breathe into your balls. Breathe into everybody breathing this way. Life is complicated. I start tensing my belly. Breathe lower. Breathe into your balls. Breathe into your balls. Exactly. Exactly.

You know what? I have the FP thing. I want you to kind of explain maybe what you've been learning from that and kind of what he mentions about breathing because I'm curious about the difference in thought. But when it comes to this, we'll keep it on the fitness side for a bit. Within fitness, people want to keep their abs tight. People want to perpetually be lean. You see it in shows. I know friends who are bikini athletes and their coaches want them to train in waist trainers. Y'all shut your mouths, bro.

Don't say nothing. I'm laughing at Mark posing back there. But I know friends who are bikini athletes and their coaches like have them like want them to train in those because they don't want the obliques to become too developed over time. It's all about the look. Right. But that also causes that upper breathing. So I'm curious, like if somebody is within that, how can they rectify, make sure that they're breathing well, but also make sure that they can show up where they need to show up as far as competition? So you answered this question on a podcast or on a YouTube video a while back about compromise, right?

Is that with all sports is that there's a compromise in what movements will be affected by your sport and also the time in your day. So am I going to not have time to do other things? When you're wearing a waist trainer, is that you're trying to get those muscles not to develop and not to move, right? Because it makes for a more beautiful shape in our eyes. I get it. I get it. And again, you know, if I'm wearing something that's tight fitting and going out, I am holding in my gut the whole entire time. I'm not saying I'm breathing diaphragmatically or belly breathing if I have something tight on. Absolutely not. But that's one of those compromises that you want to make, that you have to make, is that if you want your waist to look like that, it's not a normal shape. I mean for some people, some girls are lucky enough that that shape is the shape they are normally.

It's pretty amazing. But again, I look at some of the girls in my CrossFit community and we're just straight down and that's kind of how I'm shaped. I'm like straight down and if you put me in a waist trainer for long enough, I probably would have a smaller waist. But do I want that and what's the tradeoff? Yeah. And again, one of the things I worry about with waist trainers is not only is your breath going to go up to your shoulders because it's the only place it can, is that that's going to make you anxious. So what's your anxiety baseline?

Do you have people in your family who have anxiety? Are you prone to anxiety? Because now if you're wearing a waist trainer, you're definitely going to get anxious because you're breathing in a way that makes you more anxious. And then at the other end of the spectrum is that what's happening with your pelvic floor. more anxious. And then at the other end of the spectrum is that what's happening with your pelvic floor. Because if you squeeze something in the middle, so take your toothpaste and squeeze it in the middle, it's going to go up and it's going to go down. So what's going on with your pelvic floor? All right. Mark, go ahead. The pelvic floor thing, man, y'all have seen this. We talked about this a little bit yesterday. Now, some people, I guess, do have issues, but you know, when sometimes you'll see

powerlifting videos of certain women and you'll, you know, like, okay, well, she's about to dead lift. We know the platform's about to get wet right now. Some, some of them say there's nothing that can be done about it. Gone to doctors. There's really nothing to do because it's just what happened when you lift heavy weights. Is that the case though? Is that really, is there really nothing they can do to strengthen that area so they don't pee on the platform? And I'm not dissing that. I don't want to be, I'm not dissing them.

But it seems like- It's a situation that nobody wants. They don't want to have that happen. No one wants to have it happen. But can that be addressed and fixed so it doesn't happen? So two-part answer. And the first part is that if you have lower back pain, any kind of hip issue, any kind of pelvic floor issue, you have to see a pelvic floor physical therapist. We have them in the United States.

States. Usually it's not covered by insurance because, you know, insurance and, you know, people do not care. Industry does not care about the pelvic floor. In other countries, it is absolutely covered by insurance and people are encouraged. So this is a very American thing is that Australia, the UK, you go to a pelvic floor physical therapist. It's covered. It's normal. Here, absolutely not. So if you have anything going on, hips, lower back, incontinence issues, pain, any kind of pelvic floor pain, pelvic floor physical therapist. And it is a very intimate appointment. Okay. And so it can't be done from the outside. If you go to someone who's a pelvic floor specialist and they're only looking at you from the outside, they're kind of missing the point. So that's not OK. But a lot of pelvic floor dysfunction doesn't come from a weak pelvic floor. It could be a tight pelvic floor. So how many muscles in your pelvic floor? muscles in your pelvic floor 20 20 muscles that's the small and the look this very small on the outside 20 muscles in your pelvic floor and again um it's your bicycle seat so all that part of your body that hits the bicycle seat that's your pelvic floor super important so usually when i talk to

people and the first time i talk about the pelvic floor regardless of who the audience is because we all have one so i remember i was at um dod department of defense working with da and and uh first responders there and i asked this was about 10 years ago i asked the group it was mostly men who had a pelvic floor and i kid you not i'd say 80 of the group went no and a few guys you know raised their eyebrows and did this movement i'm like oh no all right and then i said well what is the pelvic floor i had two or three guys go like oh you know vagina before like i don't have one of those yeah exactly you can do kegels too and should and should so um if you have anything going on with your pelvic floor, you have to see someone.

And they go, whether it's for a woman or for a man, they go up and in. Okay? They go up and in. So not the funnest appointment. Or it could be. It could be. I knew you were going to go. But you need to see someone.

And again, doing Kegels is not – especially when you have someone who's super fit and muscular, the probability that it's muscles that are too tight is much higher. So don't go doing Kegels. It's actually you need to find trigger points and get those muscles to let go. Yeah, yeah. And again, here comes the compromise is that if you're leaking when you lift is that it's a very slippery slope is that it's going to get worse. It's going to get worse. At that point, there's really minimal way to improve it unless there's a bit of a back-off period dealing with the pelvic floor, then going back to that weight? Yes. And I mean how many – we don't talk about this enough.

I was in the gym the other day and there's a guy and he had just had a hernia fixed pelvic floor and he's lifting. And I said, did they tell you, you know, did they let you lift? You know, how soon did, you have stitches there, right?

There was something that needed to be fixed and now you're pressuring down. He's like, no, no one told me anything. I'm like, this is going to be back in there again and then they're going to want

to put mesh in there and metal and all kinds of things to like hold things up. And that's really tough. Is the pelvic floor, is it like only like the pee muscles or is it like peeing and pooping? Like how specific? Because like there's many different controls down there, you know?

Yeah, there are. There's a lot of controls down there. That's X, Y, Y. So it's all those muscles. So once you get good at Kegels, you can actually draw a quadrant and you can squeeze the top half and you can squeeze the bottom half. And you can actually go in quadrants. Look, he's doing it. I can tell.

Yeah. Yeah. Let me back up a little bit. So yeah, it's all the muscles all the way around. So when you go in for an appointment and they go up and in, right, and I'm doing the up and in, is that you will – I went because, again, if I'm going to tell people to go, I need to see what it feels like, right? So – and I remember the physical therapist saying like, oh, here's your bladder. I'm going to need to move that over. That shouldn't be there.

Okay. Well, that's good. And then hitting a point where I was like, whoa, what is that? She's like, oh, that muscle is way too tight. And then hitting another muscle and going, yeah, we have to strengthen that one. I'm like, wow, this is crazy. This is like the Starship Enterprise down there. We really need to get this coordinated.

Yeah. And especially when it comes to lower back pain. If you go again, up and in, you're at your lower back, you're at your, like your coccyx and, and the very bottom of your spine, of course it's related to it. So I would say go to a pelvic floor physical therapist. You might have to back off, but I understand like if you're, if you're going to have a a great pr it's hard to like care about p in that moment you're just like i really like and this makes me so happy to be able to lift this much like it's hard to to think about what it's might be breaking so yeah yeah ben i guess ben greenfield was right we had him on the show and he said he was like, he shoved that thing up his butt and he was like on his bathroom floor. That's right.

Yeah. One of the guys we had on the show. It was electric. He has like a massager or something. It's like a TENS unit for his anus. Yeah. Yeah. Great guy.

Sounds different. You've got to have some questions over there, Andrew, right? Well, in regards to what we're just talking about right now like so when i really can allow myself to release as much of my body as i can because i've been dealing with my back for for a while now um so when we're like yesterday when we're down on the floor and it takes me a while but when you're like you know um relax your glutes and like really start to fall into it. When I take a big belly breath, my back will actually pop pretty hard and then it's like kind of okay, but then I'm kind of stuck there. What's going on? So again, I refer out to people all the time. I know the breath. I'm a psychologist. I know the psychology behind it. I can pretty much work with anyone and figure

it out and teach anyone because the words and the cueing are so important to me. So with back, I would send you to one of my favorite back people. I would send you to, like I said, Stu McGill, who would tell you what's going on there. So I definitely don't try to be everything to everyone, especially if I didn't go to school for it. But again, what you have to think about is that we don't move our backs as much as we should. And that diaphragmatic breath is one that is really helpful to the spine. And we're braced so much that there isn't the movement and all those muscles are probably overused because you don't need to be as braced as as much as you think you are yeah um outside of the gym yeah because i definitely like spent my entire life basically up until fairly recently uh just breathing up here and you know

i've had back pain for quite some time so even just like when you're telling us to exhale and like really curl into it like that's pretty painful like it actually will kind of trigger some some pain there but then going the opposite feels amazing especially some of the stretches that you were showing us yeah can you explain some of those stretching like the like the sure all that good stuff because those felt incredible yeah you know it's wild and i'll i'll work with folks and i don't see people one-on-one that much anymore i teach teachers so i I teach coaches. I teach anybody who works with humans in some way. I teach them because I can't be everywhere all the time.

I appreciate all the time you spent with us yesterday too. Oh, thank you. That was awesome. You had such good questions. You were so enthusiastic about it. Like it was just hard. It's so nice to be around. When I first started this, people would laugh.

Like you're teaching – my mom was just – you're doing what? Like, yeah. You're selling bottled water? Yeah. Like what's going on with that? So to have folks be excited about it is so great, is so great because otherwise you're really lonely with your weird thing that you're teaching people and it's now cool and trendy. So hopefully it will keep being that way. So you have to think about – you can have really great lungs.

And actually you have a very long rib cage. So if your thoracic cavity becomes a rib cage is that you can have great lungs, but you're actually not going to fill them. So getting your rib cage to be flexible is possibly the most important thing you can do. I mean, having hamstrings not be tight is really important for your body, but your rib cage being flexible, I'd say is the number one most important point of flexibility in your body. And again, T-spine, people are so tight in the top of their body. When you ask them to twist, it's all at the waist, which again, you know, destabilizes you. But T-spine, top of the body, you need to be able to turn around without your ribs turning as well,

right? And again, if you can't do that, you're prey. So it's important for you to be able to look behind you because otherwise you're prey. And we have gotten to the point as modern humans that our rib cage is so tight. So think about the muscles that are in between your ribs. So if you eat ribs, that rib meat, the muscles that, and usually I use a lot of food analogies in general. So the rib cage is a pizza or a skirt steak, which it actually is. But those little muscles between your ribs are super tight. And you should be able to stick your thumb. So take your thumb and go to one of the bottom ribs and stick your thumb in between there. And stick it in there hard is that there should be movement in between your ribs. is that there should be movement in between your ribs.

Because think about it, when you inhale and tip over and do that intercostal stretch, you want those ribs to open up as much as possible. Because if you were to go straight in, there is the densest, most oxygen-rich part of your lungs. So if that part of your body doesn't move, then you're not getting there, right? And that's going to happen when your diaphragm flattens out and you allow it to open up. So with a lot of folks who have a breathing IQ, which is the measurement I do around the outside of the body, and they don't have good range of motion, often it's those intercostal muscles and those obliques that are so tight they're not letting go. Power Project fam, this episode is brought to you by Vivo Barefoot Shoes.

We've been wearing these shoes for almost a year now. They're flexible. They have a wide toe box. They allow your feet to get connected to the ground and they will make your feet stronger. And they don't look like shit like a lot of these other barefoot shoes. Andrew, how can they get them? For the best barefoot shoes on the planet and they also look really, really really good, head over to vivobarefoot.com slash powerproject at checkout. Enter promo code powerproject20 to save 20% off. Again, vivobarefoot.com slash

powerproject, promo code powerproject20 to save 20% off. Links to them down in the description, as well as the podcast show notes. Let's go ahead and get back to this podcast. I have a kind of an odd question. Since you've observed so many different bodies and so many different types of people breathe, you know, like one observation that people have about certain ethnicities is like, for example, black people typically have longer Achilles tendons and smaller calves. One thing people notice about Asian people as just a general population is they have big calves, right? Just like a lot of them tend to have big calves. So when, you know, when you were noticing Andrew's rib cage yesterday and you said, wow, you have a long rib cage. It just got me thinking,

are there just general potential ethnic differences between, and I'm just wondering, just observational, maybe if you've seen anything between like rib cage size or whatever, have you not noticed any type of thing? Like everybody's different in that way. So there is a difference with gender. Oh, I can tell you that. And the difference when I think about culture, I think about cultures that don't mind, that don't have you bracing all the time. all the time. So, um, for ins, I'll say for instance is, um, you know, I was in, I'm Cuban and Cuban Serbian, and I was in Puerto Rico and talking to a friend of mine who is curvy, but also has a belly. And she had just moved there from the United States. And she's like,

this is amazing. Like, I don't have to suck in my gut because guys don't mind, you know, that I have a little bit of belly fat. They actually think it's sexy, you know. And I was like, okay, well, that's interesting. So a lot of it is cultural. It depends on where you're from and is that okay or not. So are you beating yourself up because you don't have this particular shape. So I think culturally that's pretty interesting.

When you go to countries where my female Brazilian friends – and again, there's no judgment – all have fake boobs because that's what you do. It's easy to get them and it's just – it's a cultural thing, right? So I think the differences in culture as far as what you do to your body and what's considered beautiful is really fascinating. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. With men and women, again, I always like – the comparisons I like to make is primitive man and modern man.

And man, I mean human. Okay. Got yourself. Before anybody gets mad at me. More hate mail. More hate mail, yeah. God damn. And then men and women.

So in men and women, women tend to be more vertical breathers. And it's because of the position of their rib cage. So their ribs are actually slanted more. And the reason is because their body is set up to be able to have a fetus and be able to breathe with a fetus in it. Okay? That's just what it is. Men tend to have their ribs be in a more horizontal position.

So I find that pretty fascinating that, you know, already you have a difference in the way you breathe and what it affects. Right? difference in the way you breathe and what it affects, right? Primitive man had stronger diaphragms, bigger diaphragms, more lung capacity. They were more back breathers. They had wider nostrils and they had less innervation to the intercostals. And that's the one I really love. So they had less control over their intercostals. There, I'll give you a hint, internal intercostals. Any idea why?

Mark, you so would get this. Yes. Okay. Okay. Internal intercostals are the exhale, squeezing together, controlling, controlling, controlling. Okay. Why do we need that? Because our sentences are so much longer than they were when we were primitive man and grunting. Oh, wow.

Yeah. Damn. OK, so pretty fascinating. So when I work with people who present and have anxiety over that, usually anxiety is they don't know this, but it is that I'll run out of breath halfway through a sentence and that it will feel like I wilt and then I won't have enough air to get to the end of the sentence. That's what really freaks you out. So next time you speak in public, do that and watch how like your anxiety goes up immediately. it goes up immediately. Now, if you don't have a good breathing IQ and you don't have a big breath that you can use when you know you're going to have a long sentence, that's what I work on is let's get that exhale to be something you control, control, control. So I don't do breath holds,

but I do something called extended exhales where you see how slowly you can get the air to leave your body and in a controlled way why would a primitive man human uh be back breathers like what was in their mechanics that would make that happen think about it think about it a second were they standing up all the time like us squatters big squatters right You spent a lot of time on the floor. You know, you spent a lot of time in a squat position. So it's easier to breathe through your back. And you can try this right now or next time you get into just a squat as a sitting posture is that your back opens up. So there you go.

Inhale and exhale. And actually, we have really good long real estate in the back of our bodies and we don't use it, especially if we're posturing this way in a chest forward breath is that we're squeezing all that good real estate in the back of our body. No back support. Yeah. Like not a lot of chairs, right? Exactly. Yeah, not a lot of chairs. Maybe just sitting down on the floor and stabilizing yourself that way. So the stabilization, you've brought this up a couple of times.

And one of the things, and again, I am obsessed with the musculature of the breath and the psychology, is that your diaphragm is your main muscle of respiration, but it's also your main muscle of balance. So breathing diaphragmatically is going to help your balance. And there is a study that shows that when you breathe vertically with auxiliary muscles, you're more prone to knee and ankle injuries. But again, think about it when you watch, and again, you know I'm an MMA fan, is that someone's super tired, the round ends, and usually if they're really tired, they go over to the side of the ring and hold on to it. OK. And working with firefighters is that you will lean on any equipment you have that you can lean.

You will hold on to the banister as you're going upstairs. And the reason is because if your diaphragm is supposed to be helping you with balance is that what does it defer to if you have to breathe or if you have to balance which one is it going to take first breathing which means your balance is at risk so having a strong diaphragm and breathing diaphragmatically is terrifically important for your balance and for your stability what about when it comes to something like a lifting belt? How should we be utilizing those? And then also, are there belts that can help cue us to breathe properly or are you not a fan of that kind of stuff?

So the belt and lifting, again, that's one of those things that I would probably defer to and call you because that's your expertise. What I have found if someone relies and has been using a belt for a long time is that their exhale is horrible. Okay? Because you inhale into the belt, which is fine. But then your exhale isn't actually bringing your belly away from the belt because you don't ever want to bring it away from the belt. You want to use the belt. So if I work with someone who has been using a belt for a long time, I'm focusing on their exhale because their exhale is really shitty. Yeah. And as far as the

belts, the cue, the 360 belt by a physical therapist I love named Aaron McGuire is the one I like because it has cue points on it where you can actually feel your body moving into it. So that's the one that I like. Would people wear that during like an activity or mainly just for standing, walking kind of thing? You know what? I think you can use it, you know, for all kinds of different things. Like if you're running, maybe you could wear it and like just get a little cue or maybe it would be too cumbersome or something. Again, I think there's individual differences and whatever – I'm big on whatever works for you.

I use that belt to help people understand a back breath or a lateral breath. around breathing that the more practical and simple and kinesthetic we can get hearing the breath. So when I was working with you guys, I want to hear the breath. I want you to put your hands on your bodies that we need to actually bring everything down to be as tactile and kinesthetic as possible when it comes to breathing because otherwise we go back to this romantic or, you know, version of the breath, which is beautiful or one that's, you know, mechanically unsound. What about the way that a baby breathes? I heard people refer that and I think most people can kind of visualize like a toddler

when they're breathing. They just sit there and they kind of naturally let their belly be distended and they don't have any of the thoughts that we have. And then also I've heard people talk about like an alligator breath before. And I don't know if you think that's a good cue or if that's poor or what your stance is on it. So I never use the baby breath because toddlers don't, I mean, babies, infants don't have a choice. They can't actually breathe vertically. They can't breathe apically. So when it gets interesting is when kids have a choice, what happens? And that – when we have a choice and we start being able to manipulate the breath is when we screw it up, right?

So baby breathing, it's good because you can look at your kid breathe but I don't use it as an example. I'll say look at a toddler, look at a three-year-old, look at a four-year-old. Five-year-old things get a little sticky because the breath changes between the ages of five and six. I did the study looking at that. By six, you have kids that are predominantly vertical breathers because they're looking at their parents, because they're sitting in school, because they're starting to be tested and be social animals. So the breath changes at that age. If you're a parent, is that please, please keep your kid at least being able to understand what a horizontal belly diaphragmatic breath is.

Even if they have to use the vertical breath for whatever, you know, whenever they want to, they need to not lose the understanding of the belly, the diaphragmatic breath. So I don't say baby for that reason. But I do ask people to look at their pets because we are the only dumb animals on the planet that have taken a beautiful, perfect breath and made it completely dysfunctional. Anatomically incongruous. We were not designed to be breathing vertically all the time as a primary way of getting air in and out of our bodies. So I do say look at your dog. Look at your cat. Look at your fish.

Look at any animal you have around you and you will see them breathing diaphragmatically. Even those – I always have somebody say, what about kangaroos? You know, because they're upright. Like, no, kangaroos are not vertical breathers. They're still diaphragmatic breathers. They're still going to inhale and expand and exhale and narrow. So I don't use babies. I use animals usually.

Ooh, that sounded awful. Alligator. So the alligators, it's interesting because they don't – again, I love the verbal cues is that you have to pick your words so carefully when you describe something where there's so much misinformation. And even looking at Chris breathe yesterday, this was fascinating, is that he was having a hard time taking a belly breath and then exhaling. More his exhale because, again, he lifts. But as soon as he was talking about getting under the bar and he got under this fake bar, all of a sudden he tipped his hips and took a big, beautiful, horizontal breath. So every time you have a new person in front of you, and this is how I teach my teachers, is that you have to figure out what are the words that work for them. What has their experience with breathing been? And what's the cue that makes them go, oh, man. So when I have someone and they say

to me, God, I feel like I know this already. I'm like, bingo, that's intuitive. That means it feels right to you. And that's what I want. Because you're designed to breathe this way. And you used to breathe this way. So I'm just reteaching you something that, you know, you should know that should feel somewhat familiar, hopefully soon. But you wouldn't believe how many pulmonologists I have taking my course. believe how many pulmonologists I have taking my course because they say I know about lungs, but I don't know how to teach someone the mechanics of how to breathe or I don't know how to get someone who is, for instance, a paradoxical breather, a reverse breather, to be diaphragmatic. So it's always astounding to me when I have someone who's a pulmonologist who comes in. Alligator.

When you think of alligator, you think lean, right? You don't think of a belly breath when you think of an alligator. So I don't use that. Alligator is, you know, if you don't know, is that you take the breath and your belly down. And what you're supposed to be feeling is on the inhale, you're supposed to push the floor away. And on the exhale, you're supposed to flatten. However, your shoulders can still move. And I don't love to teach breathing completely on a horizontal plane all the time, prone or supine, because what happens? You stand up and all of a sudden your perspective is different.

You lose it. And that's why when you get adjusted, you go to the chiropractor, physical therapist, whatever. Everything is done this way. And you're like, okay, great. I can breathe diaphragmatically, belly breathe, great. You turn this way, you're back to breathing vertically. So that's why you have to learn the breathing in all different positions. I love cat-cow the best.

different positions. I love cat-cow the best. So if you're going to do a movement with breathing, cow is the inhale, cat is the exhale. And that gets your hips moving in the right direction and it gets you understanding, oh, well, this is also rock and roll. Inhale, belly, middle of the body opens, exhale, it squeezes. My, my mentor, Louis Simmons, he taught me how to utilize the belt. He would talk about breaking the belt, uh, filling your stomach up with as much air as possible to, and he'd also taught like to keep their belt not super tight. He was a big proponent of that. I know some people like to really latch those things down and they have their, their own things that work for them, but that's kind of the way that I was taught. And I was also taught to do exercises with the belt on. So, and not just a squat and not just a deadlift,

but abdominal exercises. And those exercises were done standing up and oblique exercises. And Louie, at the time I was only like 210 pounds or 215 pounds. And it was really hard for me to figure out how to like blow my stomach up. And he was always like, you're not going to ever squat anything, like moving your stomach like that. Like this is – he would just shake his head and like walk away.

He's like, this is horrible. But he really did hammer that home. Like you need to be able to flex your obliques. And he was like, the belt is not necessarily for your back. He's like, it's actually more to activate. Think about it more as an activating brace for like your stomach. And then you can brace the whole body better because you have it on. He's like, so it's just a piece of material that you're putting on that is assisting your body in doing what it can already do.

I was like, oh, that's an interesting way of looking at it. But it made it work a lot better for me. See, that's why I would have called you for the belt answer because, yeah. cues and again about valsalva and and intra-abdominal inter thoracic pressure is that the cue of exhaling against a closed glottis is not the best and we've been using that forever with valsalva but it makes you focus on exhaling against this part of your body and what you're wanting to do is brace your middle so that I don't love that cue for that reason for those words. And you really don't want to be messing, pushing too much against this part of your body and your neck and your face. And that's when you get that feeling in your face.

Yeah. People like blow their, all their, all the capillaries out of their face from doing squat or deadlift. Lose your mud, right? When we were talking about, like, Chris, it made me think about, like, pain in general is an interesting thing when it comes to breathing. Because when I think about the times that I've had, like recent injuries and past injuries, when I pay attention to where my breathing starts to go

without me realizing it, it starts to become very shallow and it starts to go without me realizing it it starts to become very shallow and it starts to kind of come up top and then i have to remind myself whoa whoa whoa longer breaths take that to the diaphragm it's like when you're in pain it's almost like you want to oh yeah you want to tighten up so different especially like getting up or trying to get out of the car carefully you're like like in your and it all seems a lot of yeah you're just trying to be as rigid as possible and then sometimes like for me if i take a deep breath like it makes it worse that's like i have to like and then and then try to get up and move where you know wherever i'm stuck exactly but i found that like for example with the recent thing that happened with my scap when everything crunched

in and i was i was it was messed up for a little bit. I was like, okay, I found that I was actually able to handle it better when I was just folk, like when I shifted and like, okay, take a deep breath to read through your diaphragm. I was able to handle that pain better and I was able to do more because I was more relaxed. So then it makes me wonder, well, if some people already have dysfunctional breathing and then they get injured and then their breathing starts to become more dysfunctional because of the pain. It could end up being a continuous cycle because now that injury is harder to recover. Their breathing's fucked. Maybe they get to train through it, but something else happens.

Breathing becomes more fucked and it seems really just messed up. So I'm wondering how can somebody pull themselves out of that cycle of dysfunctional breathing and pain? Because it seems that that tends to sooner or later just melt together. Absolutely. And there's places where there's not a lot of research when it comes to breathing and there's places where there's tons. There's a lot of research that shows that dysfunctional breathing and a lower pain threshold go together, period. Okay. So not only does your breathing become more dysfunctional, the pain becomes more acute and more chronic.

And think about it. When you're in pain, you try not to move. You said this. Yeah. Is that that's the natural reaction when it's acute. Right. Now, what happens if it's chronic and you try not to move? Now you tighten up, right? And the pain gets worse or it doesn't go away. So you have to break that

cycle by actually taking an inhale, relaxing your body, you know, knowing you're not going to hurt when you take that inhale, relaxing it, and then exhaling well. So there's a great book by John Sarno called The Mind-Body Prescription. Yeah. And it was actually another book that really pushed me in this direction. And he talked a lot about back pain and breathing. So he would treat, he was a back surgeon that stopped doing surgery and started teaching breathing and doing therapy. So I was like, huh, well, I do therapy. I'm starting to learn how to teach breathing. This is exactly what I want to do. So you wouldn't believe how many people that have chronic pain,

once you get their breathing to be diaphragmatic, it can't be just like a big breath. It actually has to be diaphragmatic. So you have to do the breathing IQ or something called the MARM, which is Dr. Rosalba Courtney out of Sydney does, or a diaphragm ultrasound. Once you get breathing to be diaphragmatic, it just ripples throughout your whole body. So your diaphragm, you know, along the same lines is your main muscle of detoxification if you're not breathing diaphragmatically you're not getting lymph lactate adrenaline you know the toxins your body has out of your body efficiently so it's getting that diaphragm to be able to do what it's supposed to do can you explain that a little more because i think

when some people hear toxins they're automatically just shut off. They're like, bullshit. So can you explain like what, like, detoxify? Exactly. Can you explain exactly what you mean though, when breathing through the diaphragm, how that can actually help? Sure. I mean, you think about a body or anything where you are pulsating. Well, obviously you're going to be able to squeeze things out and get movement in your body. And in general, you know, our circulation and lymph, if you're rigid and you're not moving, whether it's because of the myths you think about posture or because of weight or because you're not healthy, is that it takes you longer to detoxify. So it takes longer to get lactate out of your body.

And there are studies that show that if you breathe diaphragmatically, you're going to get lactate out of your body faster. Yeah. Great. You're also going to have cerebral spinal fluid, which is that flush through your brain, happen more regularly. Okay. You're also going to have more regular bowel movements. I was going to say, it's interesting because the body's always, you know, seeking to take stuff in

and it's also seeking to like get rid of stuff that's not valuable to it. Right. And we do very badly with the getting stuff out. We do really well with putting things in, but the getting them out, not so much. And, you know, I, um, I worked in the prison system for a while. And when I would, when I would see someone, I would ask two questions. Um, I would ask lots of questions, but the first two were, um, when's the last time you cried and why? And the second one was, how often do you have, do you poop? Do you have a bowel movement? And because one would tell me about their emotional health and one would give me a lot of information

in just one question about their physical health. So those were two. And I always had the guys be, and it was mostly men, because it was out of the Brooklyn DA. It was the men's program. They'd be surprised at those two questions. They're like, I cried yesterday and I poop at eight o'clock every morning.

You're like, you're free to morning. You're free to go. You're free to go. You're good. You shouldn't be in jail. What are you doing here? Yeah. That's funny. Yeah, Dr. Sarno,

he was on to some really cool shit. I was reading just healing back pain on the mental side of things. I thought that shit was pretty powerful, especially for me

just because I've been dealing with this for a long time. Do you ever work on like, I know you just said you asked those two questions, but do you ever like start out with a questionnaire and kind of get to the mental side of things? All the time. I mean, when I said I teach teachers is that you have to have skills to be able to do a good clinical interview. If somebody comes in and they don't breathe well, or they're like, they're upset about their breathing. So most people will come in and they either say, I've been diagnosed with asthma, or I had COVID, or I want to not be so breathless during my sport. Or they say, I'm anxious and my

doctor said I need to work on my breathing. So you have the reason people come in, but there's always another reason. There's always something else. So it's really wonderful because you all have folks that won't go to a therapist or won't address their mental health, but they will come in and talk about breathing, which always leads to mental health as well because the two are so intimately connected. So you have to ask about, you know, when did this start? And sometimes, you know, I'm thinking about a woman I had come in and she was a breath holder. Okay. Fine. We write it down.

We go around in circles, talk, you know, blah, blah, blah. And finally I say, you know, why don't I just ask her? I said, when did you start doing this? And she said, oh, my child was abducted six years ago. Okay. It turned out okay. It turned out okay. Yeah.

But she knew exactly when it started. But we have to ask questions. So I said, she knew exactly when she started. And she's like, I got my baby back. It was okay. Everything's fine. Yeah, I know. That's good.

But I still, it's a stress response and I still do it. But knowing that made me change how I was going to deal with her because she needed to actually come to some peace before she was able to stop holding her breath intermittently throughout the day to really, really get her heart to understand that like, it's okay. This won't happen again. We did the right thing. Everything's okay now. So you have to bring in the psychological and it may be something as easy as, you know, why, why are you sucking in your gut all the time? I used to be chubby when I was a kid. It may just be that simple. Yeah. Yeah. The breath holding thing is really interesting because, um, it's something that you see a lot in new, even actually you'll see it in some upper belts who haven't really dealt with it. But in jujitsu with new people, because it's if you've never been body to body with somebody like that and now they're on top of you and they're getting ready to choke you out and you have to use force. So many times I have to remind white belts, I have to stop and be like and be like breathe start breathing because when trying to produce force on somebody they're like

you get nervous and stuff too like there's nerves of like rolling and there's other people watching right but then you guys also do mean evil shit to each other where you put your knees in certain spots on belly like you're so strong and probably good at that where almost anybody's going to be like, I don't do that shit to white belts. Come on. But, but that's the thing. It's like, I think jujitsu is kind of interesting in that sense because when you see an individual progress from white belt to blue belt, it's like you'll start, you'll roll with them again

and wow, they're breathing better. It's like, it's almost like a crash course on breathing because you can't develop in jujitsu if you're holding your breath continuously you'll gas out too much you won't be able to practice you'll injure yourself you're fucked it's a big part of the game right it's to kind of manipulate uh manipulate the way the other guy feels so you can get them into other positions right in a lot of a lot of ways right you stack the guy up that makes it hard to breathe inverting yeah you. Yeah. You were talking about breathing and inverting. All the different movements, right? Yeah. So it's somewhat interesting because I think like you can develop with dysfunctional

breathing through jujitsu. I've definitely seen that. But many people do have a benefit on being able to breathe better under stress as they progress through that martial art, just because of the nature of having to breathe through stress. And again, jujitsu is fascinating in that reason. I grew up watching a lot of wrestling. So my high school was a big wrestling and football and cross country, which I was on. So I love watching wrestling.

It's just I'm weirdly really happy watching wrestling. She went to the school that beat my school when I was a senior in the playoffs. Oh, shit. She went to North Rockland High School. So your school paid refs is what he's saying. No. We had our defensive back was so slow.

And I was always so pissed that he was back there. And I knew he was going to fucking blow it at one point. And he did. He got smoked. And we lost seven to nothing. Seth Santos. I punched him right in the face last season. Isn't it funny how we remember the names?

I can't remember my pin or my password to anything. I used to tell the coach all the time, like, I'm so much faster than he is. Why is he back there? He's horrible. He's going to get smoked. Yeah. He was horrible. Yeah.

But you're saying about jiu-jitsu? Oh, jiu-jitsu. So when I first started teaching, I thought it was like yogis that were going to call me. I thought it was yogis. I'm like, okay, fine. Like, you know, the yoga community, they love breathing. And the yoga community didn't want anything to do with me. I literally have never taught yogis now that I think about it.

So I sort of said, okay, well, I'll teach anybody who listens. This is how you feel when you start doing this. And you should be open-minded. When I talk to my teachers, it's like, don't come in with a plan. Come in being as open-minded as possible because people will come to you and you just have to be ready for a group of people that you might not have thought of in the past. So I get a call and it is Steve Cardian who is a black belt in Gracie Jiu-Jitsu and he actually opened the first Gracie Jiu-Jitsu gym on the East Coast. He's a fantastic person, wrote a book called About Your Superpower, about women's intuition and self-protection. So Steve calls me and he has me come into his gym and teach. So jujitsu and then I get called by the

DEA in New York. So the first two groups of people were jujitsu and law enforcement. Yeah. And that was great because then I could talk about breathing and arousal. So not just endurance and gas, which is, you know, jiu-jitsu always wants to know about gas, but also arousal, which is super important, especially in a tactical and a combat sport. Yeah. What about things like myofascial release?

You know, we're talking a lot about breathing, and breathing seems to be able to help a lot of things. But I'm imagining there's things that can assist your breathing. So like if something's tight, something's, you know, you were kind of doing a little bit of it to us yesterday because we were doing certain movements. And then you would come over and kind of scrape on some of those areas. What are some of those areas. What are some of your thoughts on that and how does that impact our breathing? So much. So I work with an organization called Leadership Under Fire. And we work with different fire departments and first responders, anybody who's in a volatile sort of fast changing environment when it comes to their careers.

One of the people that took my class probably like 15 years ago is a guy named Jimmy Lopez. And Jimmy Lopez is a special operations firefighter in New York City. And he owns a gym in Staten Island. Jimmy, super quiet during class, super quiet during class, listening, listening, listening. And then I find out who he is and what he does. Intense human being, intense, incredible human being, right? He's in his mid-50s. He is so in shape. He is so flexible. Just fantastic human being. So, of course, I scoop him up, get him to teach for me. And we actually work together and we work to go to different fire departments and talk to people. And Jimmy talks about movement and breathing and strength,

but he actually focuses on fascia. And he's a big fan of Jill Miller and Tom Myers. But it's great to bring in Jimmy, who people always say, we went to Canada and actually taught some firefighters there, is that they wanted subtitles because he's from Staten Island. And, you know, the accent's really heavy, but it's fantastic because he's talking about fashion, all these like, really interesting, very progressive things to a group of people that in general, can be pretty close minded and traditional. Okay. I don't say that in an insulting way at all. It's just fire departments in general, it's a very closed group of people.

Understandably so because folks want to look at them like lab rats. It's like here we have people who run into fires rather than run away from fires. So sheepdog is what they um sheep dog is what they sheep dogs is what they call them um and uh anyway so jimmy actually addresses fascia um in in detail he's my go-to for fascia and he will talk to groups of people and he brings in an orange and he peels the orange and he shows you like that netting on the orange and he like this is what it looks like and talks about hydration.

And especially with sports where there's so much injury. So, for instance, with firefighters is that you have uneven weight on you. Like it's different when you have even weight. OK, I can do that. But all of a sudden the weight's uneven and the amount of equipment that you now have to carry, it's gotten more and more, you know, progressively. So now it's 80, a hundred pounds. So if you work in structural fires and you have to go up 10, 20, 30 flights of stairs carrying a hundred pounds, like that's, it's really tough on your body. And then, you know, get into a room that's 600 degrees. It's a, it's really tough on your body.

But again, not my area of specialization, although I have somebody who talks about it in my classes. And I know that Jill Miller, who's a big fascia person, is coming out with a book called, I think it's called Breathing in Bliss. I think so. I got to check on that. But she is... Jill makes that ball that everyone always looks at. at and like, what does that thing do? Because it's really soft. It's actually super squishy. But when you layis ball I use for people that need help exhaling. So I have them lean on it to push their ribs into their body so they can feel what an exhale should feel like. So I do love those balls, yeah. That sounds great.

You know, quick question about breathing through the back when we were talking about that. Because when we were talking, I was just like messing around and seeing how that feels. Obviously in jiu-jitsu with neon belly, that's kind of what ends up happening. When somebody has their pressure, their knee on your stomach, you then, when you breathe,

your breathing goes through in a bit. Yeah. You kind of crunch in your breathing kind of goes through this area. But if you were to stand here, keep your hand on your stomach. So you make sure that doesn't protrude and you don't want this to come up and you just focus on like, it's weird.

Cause when you breathe into your back, it's like your stomach actually starts to come up and you just focus on like, it's weird. Cause when you breathe into your back, it's like your stomach actually starts to come in. Right. Whereas usually when we inhale, but when you breathe through your back, it's like this comes in and then this starts to protrude. What, um, your stomach will go like in and out, right? Like when you take a real, start to get into like a real deep breath. Well, you should be able to breathe again, the breath you want. I say belly breath because it resonates with people and it gets them out of a vertical breath, okay? You need to do things in steps.

But once they understand that, I want you breathing 360 degrees. I want you to be able to breathe forward if you need to, to the side if you want, and back, you know, maybe, sometimes when you're breathing all the way around, you don't see any movement in the body when you're good at that, but your breathing IQ is really great. So, um, the, you should be able to expand this way, but you also want to be able to do this way.

So your, your belly might stay tight, but your back opens up or both of them may be able to go like this. And again, remember again, in your mind's eye, I want you to think about the diaphragm and you know I use the colander, the steamer, is that it descends, it flattens, and it pushes the ribs open all the way around. Yeah. Cool.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. What do you think would be like three things that somebody who's listening to this could do if they're like going on a walk or just trying to practice some of the stuff that we're talking about here today, could somebody potentially, uh, like a weight vest might be a horrible idea, but I'm just thinking like, can somebody put some weight on themselves or can somebody like farmers walk? Cause sometimes the, sometimes the weight gives you like some feedback. I'm not talking about like hold 100 pounds in each hand or anything.

Something light. Are there some easy practices that people can employ to get them to breathe just a little bit better in general? So you just mentioned two things that I don't – it's not like my first line of – but it's actually great. that's actually great is that if you have a weight vest, and I'm not, you know, vests, bulletproof vests and vests for law enforcement actually can really hurt your breath because they have to be tight if you're going to run. But if you have a vest of some sort where you can have it be loose and then you inhale and you feel yourself fill into it without moving your shoulders. And then exhale, come away from it. That's a great cue. The other thing is I do have people do lighter farmer carries because I don't want them to pick up their shoulders.

So I say breathe and don't pick up your shoulders. But along with that, you have to say tip your hips. And again, you don't want to do this with a lot of weight obviously. Along with that, you have to, say, tip your hips. And again, you don't want to do this with a lot of weight, obviously. It's a little advanced, but one of the things I like is going upside down. So not in a handstand because I want all the weight to be on your shoulders. You can do this putting two boxes together.

There's a gadget called the Feet Up, which I really like. You put it up against the wall. If you don't want to buy that, I always give people, you know, suggestions that they can also do their own thing is that two boxes of paper, you can put those against the wall. Then you flip upside down with your shoulders. You open the boxes up, you put your head in between, and it's called an assisted headstand. It's still on my Instagram store if you want to pull up how she had it set up. I just found that. Oh, there we go. There's that.

Oh, that's not crazy expensive. It's a sweet little thing. You can have it in your living room without feeling like it's ugly. But again, I always like saying if you don't want to buy a thing is that, oh, look at that one. That one's kind of iffy, but yeah. Fancy. Oh, fancy. Is that you don't have it in the middle of the room because I don't want you balancing.

Okay? This is you breathing and not being able to move your shoulders. Because we haven't experienced that. Some of us haven't experienced not taking a breath using our auxiliary muscles in decades. So now you get to see what it feels like. Oh, there we go. There you go. Upside down we go. There you go. Upside down.

Upside down. We use two boxes for that. But yeah, not breathing with your auxiliary muscles. Yeah. So you get to feel what it's like being able to breathe without them. Because in general, we need those examples to be able to then translate them into our regular breath. So the upside down is really, really great. And then my number one recommendation is to get your breathing IQ.

Go to thebreathingiq.com. Have a soft measuring tape if you can find one. If not, you can use one of those metal ones. But know what your grade is because too often it's, you know, you don't have a reference point. And I say this, you can't change what you don't measure. So we need numbers. And again, you guys love numbers too. I love knowing how many plates, how many more, how many less. It's like, give me a number that I can beat or try to get close to that actually motivates me. And that's why I developed

the breathing IQ so that you could actually have a number. And that's why I developed the breathing IQ, so that you could actually have a number, and now you could say, oh, well, I have to go up on my inhale, or I have to actually get my exhale to be better, or now I'm a hybrid. I actually have to get to be a horizontal breather. Yeah. What about people that have like a deviated septum

or some people that may have, we've had other people on the show. We've had dentists on the show talk about mouth formation and we went way down that rabbit hole and there's things like mewing and there's chewing on hard gum and there's like lots of things that you can do. But what about somebody who just has some issues with maybe their nose? Some people will sometimes mention to us that they have really bad allergies and things of that nature. So how do you assist some of those people? You know, and it's because I work with combat and tactical sports is that I'm usually working with someone who has some kind of a crushed nose at some point. So there's so many people right

now that are hearing, breathe through your nose, breathe through their nose. And you're like, I can't. There's no way. And I actually will look at folks and to see like which nostril dominant they are, is that if you broke your nose, it was broken for you, is that which nostril has it left you breathing through. And there's a lot of great information on which nostril and what part of your brain it goes to and so on and so forth. But is that you have to consider that you might have someone who can't breathe through their nose because of the deviated septum so um if you continue to fight you may not want to get that fixed because it may get rebroken right so you have all that to consider um what i will say is that um i like in this this is a product that, again, I don't get endorsed.

I don't make anything from. I don't do that. I just, in general, I try to just recommend things I like. So the Mute Nasal Expanders I really like. And they're two little pieces of plastic, and they go inside your nose, and they actually force your nostrils open. It feels kind of great. All right? The Neti Pot, really good. Clean out your nose and they actually force your nostrils open. It feels kind of great. All right. The neti pot, really good. Clean out your nose. And again, when you first do it, it feels a little

uncomfortable. Oh, there we go. Nice. Those are cute. Yeah, thank you. You shove them in there, they open up your nostrils and all of a sudden you're like, oh my God, I can breathe. Wow. The neti pot is that little pot. It looks like a little pot. It's nasal irrigation. And with allergies, what we've found is that if you force yourself to breathe through your nose, you will have – I'm going to say it really simply is you will have less allergies. You'll be able to breathe through your nose the more you force yourself to breathe through your nose. And it might be hard to practice it, but if you do it over time, you'll get better at it. Yeah. And again, having something that helps open up your nasal cavities, having tape like you guys use to close your mouth.

Let's start with just that at night. Then during the day, I mean, we have to talk and it's hard to breathe through your nose and talk. But let's just fix our breathing at night. breathe through your nose and talk, but let's just fix our breathing at night. There's one topic I'd like to talk about, and I know that Nestor, he's a colleague, talks about that as well, is getting your turbinates reduced. Turbinates? Turbinates inside your nose. So getting that reduction because you have allergies. Please think about that. It's something that doctors, not all doctors, but most doctors will recommend immediately is having reduction of those. It can go wrong and you end up with something called, I think it's empty head syndrome. Okay.

OK. And I am on several chats about this because it's important to me, is that when they take too much out, you can't put it back in again. And if you've had too much taken out, you have this constant feeling of there being air inside your head. So you feel like this isn't there? You just feel like there's this vacuum of nothing inside your head. Yeah. Holy shit. That's horrible. Yeah, horrible.

And the rate of suicide is very high. Holy fuck. Yeah. Yeah. So please, if you have allergies, do everything you can do before getting that surgery if you decide to get it. If you get it, go for like as small an amount as possible. Be as conservative as possible because that's something that could go wrong. And, you know, with surgeries, they say one out of five surgeries, something goes wrong. But this one is so serious.

And I've been on chat boards where, oh, someone disappears. And it's pretty tragic. So yeah, long-winded answer about noses. Why is taping the mouth shut important at night for some people or just breathing in and out of the nose? I mean we have so much. There's so many people that talk about that. And I just go by the research and by what they said is we're supposed to breathe through the nose. It is cleaner air.

It's, you know, your nitric oxide. People bring that up. You tend to breathe slightly more slowly, perhaps, if you're breathing through your nose. So if you're breathing through your mouth also, you tend to have your head in more of a forward head posture if you breathe with your mouth because your chin is forward and the weight of your head varies. And at night you might have obstructed breathing. You might have some signs of some apnea or something like that. Snoring. Snoring, yeah. So snoring, it's funny because we make fun of snoring.

Like, oh, they snored like a truck driver or whatever. Is it truck driver? Train. Anyway, it's like that is air not being able to get in and out of your body. Like it's super serious. I have somebody I'm working with right now and we figure it out. It's interesting because it's a medical condition and it's like the one that like people get to make fun of someone about yeah and it's like it's not really not cool yeah

it's like the guy has got a medical issue going on here yeah and the fatigue so there's actually an app and i don't know the name of it offhand because we i just started using with this particular patient is that he puts it on at night and it will tell him the next day about you'll be able to see when you were snoring because he doesn't think he snores I had that up when I was younger I downloaded it and it records when you're snoring and you can hear it yeah and if you talk it records

too it's kind of scary yeah because if somebody else is talking and you're alone that's when it's pretty scary that's a whole nother that's the main reason why I did not get that app because i have a well had a snoring problem and i heard about the app and i'm like no i'm too scared to go back and listen you hear another voice like yeah fuck i was alone fuck that no i'm good oh man shouldn't

have taken that ambien and run out roller skating uh so um i don't even know where we're going with that. Snoring. You have a client that was recording it. So first record yourself, find out how badly you're snoring. And most people are surprised that they're snoring that much. And if you are snoring enough to wake yourself up, it means you're having interrupted sleep, which means you're probably walking around sleep deprived and really grouchy. So it's important like whether you start with a CPAP or start looking at to see what's going on with the inside of your mouth and your throat, maybe your weight. I've had people change their breathing, their breathing mechanics and do my breathing exercises and their sleep apnea get better. I'm not sure why.

I mean I'm saying that. I don't promote myself as a solution for sleep apnea. But I have had people say I've changed my breathing. I've changed the mechanics. Because of changing my mechanics, my biochemistry has also gotten better, which is what happens. And now that my daytime breathing is better, my nighttime breathing is better. which is what happens. And now that my daytime breathing is better, my nighttime breathing is better. But it makes sense because if you're not, if all of this is, that's not as prominent when you breathe. It's something that I would assume takes a lot of time to change, but you could see

how some people could potentially reverse their sleep apnea. It's not a quick fix like a machine is, but you change the way you could just reverse it. Yeah. It's wild. I mean, in this journey of being a teacher is that I'm always surprised and it's wild because I just never know what kind of problem somebody is going to come to me with. And then I have to figure it out. And it's the figuring it out that's fascinating. And that's why working with spinal cord injury is actually something I really love doing as well, is that depending on where you have, and right now we have a lot of people who are adaptive athletes and have spinal cord injuries, you know, because we've been at war

for 17 years. So how are you breathing if you're in a wheelchair? How are you, you know, are you breathing vertically? Can you breathe horizontally? Where is your injury? What can we do about it? Yeah. It gets really, it gets really cool. What about people just also learning to reinterpret stuff so that stuff in general just isn't as stressful? So like it's a great idea to, you know, breathe and breathe through all this stuff. I kind of have three rules for myself in terms of like pain or bad news. I'm allowed to breathe through it. I'm allowed to laugh about it. And I'm allowed to be stoic about it. Those are kind

of like the three. I'm not trying to stuff things down. I just those are just fun rules. And of course, if I need to be sad for something, then I will allow all those things. But what about people just kind of reinterpreting stuff, especially because of your background? So, you know, I think you need to run for president. I think that mark for president would be a great t-shirt. I'm going to buy that t-shirt when I leave, is that that's a beautiful, beautiful way to look at things. And one of the things, the active meditation that we did yesterday and that I teach people, is that, and I teach it more for muscle strength and recovery than necessarily trance, but it also puts you in the trance, which is kind of nice. It gives you perspective.

So when I ask you to look out into the distance as if you were looking at a beautiful dark night sky, is that I want you to realize that we are really tiny little specks, right? So I'm a big fan of that book, Horton Hears a Who. If you haven't read it, you need to go get it. Best movie ever, too. It's a good movie. I don't know about it. I feel left out.

What is this thing? It's because you're 29. I'll send it to you. I'll send it to you. But is that – Dr. Seuss. Yeah, there it is. So great.

Is that – You would actually really like the movie. You would really like it. You would legitimately like it. It's fun. Yeah, there it is. Oh, so great. You would actually really like the movie. You would legitimately like it. It's fun. I'll watch it. It's like on Netflix or something. It's available. Okay.

Yeah. I think it's important to ask yourself, is this a first world problem? You have so many people that their cappuccino isn't hot enough. They get upset about that. So really, is this a first world problem? Will this pass? I get upset about that. So really like is this a first world problem?

Will this pass? If it will pass, if you can fix it with time or money, it's not a problem because there's so many folks that have problems that there's no solution for. So I'm a big advocate for folks doing volunteer work. So if I have you as a patient or if I'm a mentor, it's that you have to do volunteer work. I don't care what it is, but you have to serve. Like that's the point of being here. Put some time into some other people and some of your problems might seem less and they also might start to dissipate because other things or other people might start to help you out with some stuff, right?

Exactly. Get out of your own head because it's crowded in there and go do some volunteer work. And there's so many opportunities. You don't have to sign up. I mean, being a big brother is tough because you have to sign up and I think it's three years you have to commit to. But just, I don't know, go distribute something or other to people that need that thing. There's a million things you can do and it just makes you feel good and get yourself

out of your head. So the reinterpreting things like you just said is massively important. I love that. You get my vote. I'm really curious because earlier in the podcast we talked about, you know, there's strengthening your cardiovascular skills, so your heart, right? But then you showed us this O2 trainer. And it's interesting because a few years ago after I read Patrick's book, I got an O2 trainer. And it's interesting because a few years ago, after I read Patrick's book, I got an O2 trainer. I've lost it.

But you probably know what it was. It was like this black thing that was shaped like a – you know what brand I'm talking about? It's something where it has a dial. It's black. It was like a mask. Yeah. It wasn't a mask. It is.

You just put your mouth on it. Yeah. Do you know what it is? Yeah. Yeah, it wasn't a mask. You just put your mouth on it. Yeah, you know, do you know what it is? Now I was wondering about this O2 trainer. Like, what does it do? And if somebody wants to get this one cool, but are there other really good options? And what does it do for you? Great. Thank you. That's a great question. You guys, you got the prize for the best questions. I'm sorry. Like I get so excited when I get good questions like, you know, deep, skeptical, often questions like good. No, that's good. So this is based on what's called RMT, respiratory muscle training. So for me, before I go into training your breathing muscles, and again, you know, we've got 10 plus pounds of breathing muscles, is that I've added the mechanics because if your mechanics aren't good, you're training the wrong muscles. Okay. So once your mechanics are good, you have a good A breathing IQ is that if you load the bar and it

actually is loading the bar when you use a gadget of some sort, regardless of what it is, they're all similar in that they all restrict your inhale. Usually it's called an IMT, inspiratory muscle training. So if you're using the training mask, if you're using that one that's shaped like this, there's a whole bunch of them. They're not necessarily one better than the other. But the reason I have chosen to use this one is that it feels like a piece of gym equipment. Okay. So – all right. So again, I don't make anything from promoting this.

My mouth's been on that. Your mouth's been on that? Yeah. Just letting you know. A big old thing of spit shot out of my – Yeah. Yeah. Spit happens. I always tell people spit happens

i was like what was that gross but i pulled it out i'm like oh i'm leaking everywhere you know don't share this one yeah so again this is one of the ones that's out there um i like it because it's just super sturdy rubber. It feels like a piece of gym equipment. You don't feel like you're holding an inhaler in your mouth. It's comfortable for your mouth. And you can use it with, you know, if I have someone who is post-COVID and they're trying to strengthen their breathing muscles, which is a very good idea, is that I use a bigger hole, which just makes it easier. And then it goes all the way to that one, which is pretty hellish. It's hard to get there. So I like this one, again, because it's someone in combat sports who devised it,

someone who actually understands the breathing. He has an A breathing IQ. So whenever I have somebody come and bring me a product, I always want to know how much do you understand about the importance of the mechanics. And you wouldn't believe there was one particular gadget that somebody put me in touch with, and they didn't care about whether the breathing was diaphragmatic or not they didn't care about the mechanics or not they weren't interested in doing their breathing iq and i'm like why am i partnering with you if you don't believe in what i do as well with boss rutin not only is he hysterical to hang around with is that his uh his breathing iq is an a and he understands the importance of breathing diaphragmatically. One of the most lethal fighters of all time. Oh my God.

He was so incredible. I don't know if you know that he's famous for like a kidney punch. I don't know if you've heard. Oh, liver punch. Liver. Liver killer. I think he did it with his palm. Oh man.

He was just like, I don't even know. Doesn't that just like knock you out? Like you just faint. People just like, ah. Yeah. They just like hit the ground. Yeah. Brutal.

So we just, actually Bas and I just did a video that's the ground. Brutal. So we just – actually, Bas and I just did a video that's going to be out hopefully soon called Breathing for Warriors MMA. So it's a teaching video that actually is, somebody else named Mitch Lomax and Rachel Vickery, all fantastic researchers that have looked at respiratory muscle training and how it affects performance. And it's fantastic, especially in endurance sports. So not necessarily in sprinting, but in endurance sports over and over and over again. You train your breathing muscles, your performance is better. So I love that because, again, if your diaphragm needs to be strong because you need balance, if your diaphragm needs to be strong in all your muscles because you want to be able to have a faster running time, if you want them to be

stronger because you want to be able to recover faster. Like train your muscles, train your muscles like you do any other muscle in your body. Would sprinting and Metcons, metabolic conditioning workouts through CrossFit, would those things and maybe just playing a sport at high speed, would those things help train the diaphragm or you think you need like a little more specific? No. And here's the thing is that you know this is that if you're going to work out a muscle, you have to work it to exhaustion, right? If you're doing your sport, you're not working your breathing muscles to exhaustion. You stop because the rest of your muscles fail.

What about when you're running so hard that you get like a cramp? Like is that, would that be getting your diaphragm to? No. No. So what we did yesterday, our workout, that is getting

your diaphragm trained. And was it hard? Yeah, some of the aspects of it. Yeah. So it's not, again, when I say teach breathing. Different though. Yeah.

Different, yeah. Different hard because the sense of fatigue is a little confusing. Like you feel tired, but you're not feeling the burn that you usually do and you're not moving the rest of fatigue is a little confusing. Like you feel tired, but you're not feeling the burn that you usually do and you're not moving the rest of your body. So to train your breathing muscles, you have to do it separately from your sport. Yeah. I'm really big on cheating too. So

I just started cheating so bad. I'm like, I need to just stop because I'm thinking I'm just like doing the exercises incorrectly at this point. I don't know. You're pretty good. You got to 290 balloon, no, exhale pulsations, 290 exhale pulsations. That's fantastic. The balloon was kind of funny, like blowing up one balloon and then letting that one go. I couldn't do that. I didn't bring my clown shoes for that. I was laughing the whole time. I could not blow up a fucking balloon. I'm such a child. You have to be able to blow up a balloon. Your exhale has to be good. And I know we talked about this a little bit, is that given that we are in a respiratory health crisis, right? And COVID maybe, I don't know where we are in COVID today, but is that we are going to have, this respiratory health crisis is going

to continue. We're going to have other viruses. We certainly have wildfires. We have pollution. We have all kinds of things that are going to be affecting our lungs. There's a great book by Dr. Michael Stephan. I think his name is called Breathtaking, which talks about sort of the history of pulmonary health. And respiratory health is the new cardiac health. So you need to make sure that even if you're not doing a sport, you're taking care of and you're training your lungs and your breathing muscles. training your lungs and your breathing muscles. Because, for instance, one of the things that can be the difference between you having pneumonia and you having bronchitis,

bronchitis going to pneumonia and your pneumonia going to death, is that you be able to exhale and cough well. So, for instance, when I have a patient or a client that has Parkinson's, I know that they're not going to die from Parkinson's. They're going to die from pneumonia because they're not able to exhale and cough stuff up in order to be able to breathe better. That's really interesting. I've noticed before that some heavier people, when they cough, they sometimes will end up with almost like a coughing fit, like just being on an airplane and seeing, you know, observing people at an airport that are heavier or stuff like that. I've just kind of noticed that.

So that's interesting being able to, I've thought about this stuff too, like just with like running and, you know, sprinting on the bike and things like that. Sometimes you're going so hard that you, you kind of get your throat to that point where you feel like you're going to like your, maybe it's the lactic acid or something like that. You know, even sometimes your voice changes quite a bit from working out so hard and you get that burn in the back of your throat that sometimes makes you cough.

Yeah. And, you know, it's funny that coughing in a, now everybody, you get dirty lips, you cough anywhere you go, especially in an airplane, especially in an airplane. Yeah, exactly. But the weight is interesting.

I mean, when you talk about if someone is overweight, they're almost always going to have COPD, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. And that is in some parts self-inflicted. But there you have this spiral of not being able to breathe well and then having the weight and it affecting your mental health. And again, you're in that loop. And I have to tell you what we're talking about today, and Chris brought this up, is that it takes a long time for research to get to the front lines. It does. It crawls to the front lines that wouldn't normally have happened for another decade. All right.

So when I talk about breathing exercises, I look what's happening in respiratory therapy post-COVID. And right now what we are doing, what we did yesterday is so far ahead of what's happening in respiratory clinics. And I'm not insulting respiratory physiologists is that their training has not caught up to, for instance, what we're talking about right now. Yeah. It's pretty crazy. Too interesting. The tooth actually, the first question I had was, is there like a routine for the way if someone were to get this, how do they know the frequency and all that to use it? But secondly, what was the forceful exhales we were doing called where we were doing that over and over? What was it called again?

Those are exhale pulsations. Exhale pulsations. And just the interesting aspect about doing that is that literally my intercostals and my obliques, those muscles just started to burn. my intercostals and my obliques, those muscles just started to burn. Like as we were getting deeper and deeper, it's like they were getting worked in a way that's different from like, just doing crunches or something like that. So you're literally like, I felt those muscles start to burn. So I get what you're saying by those being exercised for the muscles for breathing. It's a pretty big deal. It makes a big difference. Yeah. And think about, so for instance, exhale, it's a pretty big deal.

It makes a big difference. Yeah. And think about, so for instance, when I first started teaching, SWAT and Homeland Security didn't want to hear the word kapalabhati, right? Okay. I get it, is that you want to hear words that kind of make more sense to you.

So I took some of what the breath is in kapalabhati, which is yoga. And again, I come from martial arts, sports science, and a little bit of yoga, is that the exhale in yoga, that kind of sharp, sharp exhale in yoga philosophy helps disperse irritability. Okay, great. I do it because I want your exhale to be better. So the reason why I do it is different. So we did and you did hundreds of them, right? You did hundreds. Your average person does 50. Your average athlete does 120. So you did hundreds. And, you know, we kind of ran out of time. But I think at some point you should see what your max is. Yeah, I'm going to try to figure it out. Not only are you going to break it, I can tell already. But you need, especially, for instance, say you are in a combat sport where you have to strike.

So tell me, why would you being able to do hundreds of exhale pulsations be important if you're in a sport where striking? Getting punched in the body. You're probably going to want to exhale that air. And also, I mean, I don't do punching martial arts, but you notice when boxers punch, when they throw punches, they do that a lot. So I don't know if that's what you're talking about.

So when you strike, you exhale. That's the normal thing. Now, what happens if your exhale muscles get tired and you're punching? Punching. All right. Yeah. Yeah. So for me, when I work with someone who strikes, who has a martial art where they strike, you have to be able to do unlimited amounts of exhale pulsations because maybe your arms give out, maybe your mental game gives out, maybe your opponent is stronger, but it's not your breathing muscles that are going to get in the way of your strike weakening. Yeah. So super important. Um, yeah. So that makes sense. So with this, like where does somebody

find if they were to get some of this? Cause I'm pretty sure that there's going to be quite a few people that grabbed the O2 trainer. How does someone use it? So the way a boss uses it is it's 30 reps once a day. And I think he does it every other day. So you start with a whole one of those caps that it feels comfortable, but you have to first make sure your breathing IQ is an A. Otherwise, you're just training the wrong muscles. Okay. So go to the breathing IQ, get your breathing IQ. I'll also send you those five stretches that we did to get your breathing IQ to be an A. And then you'll get an annoying newsletter. You can opt out of that. Don't worry about it. Once your breathing IQ is an A, then you start using that. And remember, that particular trainer and any inspiratory muscle trainer is only for your inhale.

Okay? So it's only your diaphragm. So you have to do exhale pulsations or use balloons to be able to get your exhale muscles to be good. And just like we did when we were training yesterday is that we flip back and forth between one and the other because they're different sets of muscles. So it shouldn't have felt like more of the same exercises. Inhales governed by your diaphragm. Exhale is all your core muscles and your internal intracostals. And this is actually really cool because yesterday you were mentioning to us, I don't know, you mentioned after the age of 29, the ability for people to, I don't know, increase their ability to breathe better starts to decrease after the age of 29, right? But with exercise, it's something like this or just paying attention to improving that over time.

Just like sarcopenia with weight training and resistance training, you don't have to lose muscle every single year. This could be something that allows people to increase their ability and their lung capacity as they get older. And think about that for an athlete or for someone in a career where breathing is important. So for longevity of career and longevity of your sport is that you need to integrate breathing muscle training into what you do,

not only because we are in a respiratory health crisis and there's more viruses coming down the pipe, but because you want to continue to be a firefighter. You want to continue to be a firefighter. You want to continue to be able to do jujitsu or run or lift or whatever at a certain level. So if you already know at age 29, my pulmonary function is going to plateau.

Got to do something about that because every year your lung capacity is going to go down and it doesn't need to. I mean, yes, we age and some things you can't control, but look at these exercises. You can do these exercises. I love that gadget. You don't need it though. I mean, you don't need any, I don't think you need any gadget personally, but so you can do breathing exercises of all sorts. It's right under your nose. Yeah. Do you have any tips for like clearing out your throat or clearing out your lungs? Because after I had COVID, it was followed up by weeks of like just trying to cough up phlegm that just either wasn't there or it was like super, super sticky. And I just I couldn't clear my throat.

So like I'm on the podcast and I'm like back here coughing and I'm sure it got super annoying. and I just I couldn't clear my throat so like I'm on the podcast and I'm like back here coughing and I'm sure it got super annoying so I apologize to everybody but like I just could not clear my throat so you have any tips on how to clear your throat okay so what you want is called a productive cough and it's so funny because like it sounds productive cough it actually means like stuff comes up, kind of gross, okay? But what I want you to do is think about the difference between a cough that's a vertical cough and a cough that's a horizontal cough, right? A horizontal cough is going to be a lot more efficient

and it's going to actually get stuff out of your body. So you have to focus on big inhale because it's going to help the exhale be better. And then you force yourself to cough horizontally and you'll feel more stuff coming up. So again, that whole idea of a productive cough, super important. What do you giggle about? I just kind of like, we were both kind of, and you can kind of feel that. So you're going to launch it forward. Everybody watch out.

Oh, no. I'm right in your life. I know, right? I'm all good now. But yeah, it was weeks and I could not get rid of it. It fucking sucked. Yeah. So part of it is deconditioning.

Another part, and again, we're doing the research on this right now, is that there is – what happens is that the oxygen going into your body, there's a problem with that. So I want you to think about like scar tissue is that it's harder for oxygen to cross that barrier. So we're learning about what you could do with that and they're learning to see how they can get that to kind of get thinner so that the oxygen can go through. But for me, if you have a vertical breather that's not using all their lungs and their lung capacity is mediocre, why don't we actually get their lung capacity to be better and we'll actually have access to healthy part of lung tissue? Makes a lot of sense. I'm curious about this because like I got your book, right? Breathing for Warriors. It was really, really good. So I think everybody should just grab it.

But what are some other books, authors in terms of the breathing space? Because, you know, we've had a lot of people in the movement space on the podcast and that's interesting. But now I think we're getting into this kind of space too. So what other books do you think are really beneficial and maybe people that we should pay attention to? Sure, sure. I mean, I'm known for, and my students, you know, sort of grumble sometimes because I recommend a lot of books and I recommend a lot of articles. There's fantastic people out there that you might not know that have dedicated their lives to this space. So as far as books, I mentioned the one by Blandine Kellace. I mentioned Dr. Stephan Michaels' Breathtaking as well. I love Dan Brulee's book. You probably have that one

already. Donna Farhi has a great book. It doesn't have a great cover. Ignore the cover. But she actually, those illustrations and the way she explained things are really good. Let Every Breath doesn't teach you about breathing, but the concepts of relaxation and of what's called locomotive pairing is really good in that book. Let's see. There's a book that just came out by some folks, The Bradcliffe Method, which also looks at mechanics and again it has one of those breathing books always have such boring titles i think it's just called the breathing book or how to breathe yeah yeah how to breathe i think is the right way um that one i love um breathe better perform better is is great uh allison mccon McConnell. It's a tough read, but it's a good book. If you really want to go deep, Leon Chaitau has a great book. And that's what I've got at the top of my head. And obviously, Nester's book is great. Like any of the popular books that are out there as far as breathing, like, you know, more information is better and different styles of writing and different opinions.

Good stuff. As far as researchers and other folks, there's a Italian anatomist, if that's the word, Bruno Bordoni, who wrote a great article about the diaphragm and also somebody named Skip George he's out of California here as well who wrote a great article about the diaphragm the psoas muscle my favorite article about that is Tom Myers

he's a movement person and he calls it the cobra muscle so that's a great one and I'll be happy to, that should keep you busy for a little while. That will. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah.

Andrew, take us on out of here, buddy. Absolutely. Thank you, everybody, for checking out today's episode. Please drop us some comments and hit that Like button on your way out. And subscribe if you guys are not subscribed already. And please follow the podcast at MBPowerProject on Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter. My Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter is at IamAndrewZ. And Simo, where are you at? all the podcast uh at mb power project on instagram tiktok and twitter my instagram tiktok and twitter is at i am andrew z and sima where you at uh guys again check out this book because again you you

reference a lot of diff especially on the lifting section you've referenced jesse burdick and a lot of other lifters too it's a really good applicable book for different types of athletes in different sport and how they should breathe so fucking get that book um at and see my ending on instagram youtube and see my yin yang on tikt. Dr. Belisa, where can people find you? Instagram is Dr. Belisa, the breathing class, breathing for warriors. I think that's the three of them. Yeah. All right. Great. Thank you

so much for your time today. Appreciate it. Thank you for having me. I'm at Mark Smelly Bell. Strength is never weakness. Weakness is never strength. Catch you guys later. Bye.