Brian Mackenzie

One of the most frequent questions we hear is, “Where do I start with breath work?”

People know how powerful the breath can be, but they’re generally confused. What do I do if I can’t maintain nasal breathing? What if I can’t breathe well through my nose? Should I do a Cadence Protocol before training or after? What about Apnea? Should I superventilate between intervals? Should my belly stick out when I breathe in?

The questions are many. The problem is, the answer is very often, “it depends”. This leads to confusion. When we’re confused, we generally opt out and do nothing rather than try to wade through the confusion. What follows is a brief look into my personal breath work journey. It’s my hope that by sharing this, you will have a little better idea of how to apply breath work in your life.

First, a quick look at my history with breathing.

I was a lifelong mouth breather. I didn’t realize this until Brian recommended I read The Oxygen Advantage by Patrick McKeown. Much of what Patrick covered in this great book connected many dots for me.

Allergies – check.
Underdeveloped jaw – check.
Crowded teeth – check.
Bags under the eyes – check.
Snoring – check.
Repeated Sinus Infections – check
Poor breath hold ability – check.

All very attractive sounding qualities, right!?

These things resulted from my habit of mouth-breathing. Only I didn’t know it. Knowing would have saved a fortune on orthodontic treatment, surgeries and allergy medications. I may also have performed much better in many areas of life.

My journey, like many others, started with awareness.

I developed an awareness, through reading, of how I was to breathe. Then by tuning into what I was doing, I knew that I was breathing all wrong.

Fast-forward to now, I have learned a lot more about the principles of better breathing and how they apply to my life. I continue to delve deeper into the breath and how I can use it in all areas of my life.

Nasal breathing was the next step for me.

Nasal breathing in everyday life, while training and even while sleeping.

A couple of the surgeries I mentioned were to my sinuses with one including fixing up a deviated septum. I still have a bit of a deviated septum that can inhibit my ability to nasal breathe. But the more I do it, the better it gets.

To improve at nasal breathing, I nasal breathe. I tape my mouth at night to ensure I nasal breathe while sleeping. I often tape my mouth while training to reinforce the habit. I still catch myself mouth breathing from time to time but correct it as soon as I realize.

I also became aware that I hold a lot of tension in my upper back and neck. This is often exacerbated by breathing using my chest. There’s that awareness again. Now I know how it feels to use my diaphragm from the Art of Breath clinic and SH//FT’s Breathing Gear System™. I also pay special attention to thoracic and hip mobility.

So far, we have – Awareness and Mechanics.

A formal daily breath practice was the next thing I implemented.

What formal breath practice or protocol, of the many hundreds, you utilize doesn’t matter. What matters is that you put something in place that you can do daily. Make it a habit. Morning or evening. Before or after training. Between the office and home.

It doesn’t have to be complex or long, 5-10 minutes is great. Do something. This will give you insight and awareness into how practices or protocols affect you.

For example, I find anything with an exhale breath hold is a bit stressful for me. Protocols with an exhale hold up-regulate me. But anything that has an inhale hold has the opposite effect.

A protocol I used a lot for down-regulation (before bed) was 10-20 cycles of a 5-second inhale and a 5-second exhale.

For up-regulation (in the morning or before training) I used either a step-up Superventilation protocol, 20-30 breaths + :20-1:00 exhale hold + 3×5/5/5/5. I repeated the entire sequence for 3-5 cycles increasing the exhale hold time and the 5/5/5/5 by 1-second each time). Or I used a Kapalbhati protocol of 10 breaths + :10 exhale hold repeated for 5-10 cycles.

After trying different protocols for a few months I did our Shift Personalised Breath Assessment. This gave me 6 protocols based on my tolerance to Carbon Dioxide and my answers to an Emotional Reactivity Questionnaire.

To be completely honest, I don’t utilise all 6 protocols all the time these days. But that is fine. They’re designed for different circumstances. The important thing is that I have used them enough that I know what they are, when to use them and what affect they have on me.

The next part of my journey has led me to Apnea Tables. (I use the STAmina app)

My CO2 Tolerance score is generally around 60-seconds. But I am terrible at holding my breath while doing work. This has a lot to do with the stress and anxiety I experience when breath holding. That’s why I am now exposing myself daily to that uncomfortable feeling I get when I hold my breath. And, I’m improving.

So we have;
Awareness
Mechanics
Consistency

To sum up, here are my 5 tips for getting started with breath work.

1) Be aware of how you are breathing and how that is affecting you and your performance.

2) Breathe through your nose as much as you can. The only time you should be using your mouth is when operating at a very high intensity. And only then, on purpose.

3) Can you inhale and exhale fully without restriction, using your diaphragm? If not, identify where you’re feeling the restriction and address the issue. Is it mobility like a stiff thoracic spine? Is it structural like a deviated septum? Can you feel your diaphragm working?

4) Have a formal, daily breath practice – something you can fit into your everyday life. My formal practice, currently the Apnea Tables, is less than 20 minutes and I slot it in before training. But I still utilize all the other things I have learned about the breath throughout my day. Breathing doesn’t take time off.

5) Take notice of how your breath is affecting your body, your performance and your mental state. Make adjustments as necessary. Your body is an advanced piece of equipment, it will let you know. But you have to tune in.

To dive deeper into Breath work options we have available at Shift, there is a list of products and services below. I have compiled them in the recommended order of completion. That said you can choose to start with the product or service you feel suits your needs best right now.

By Dr. Ian C. Dunican, SH//FT Sleep Consultant

It is well known that sleep is an important process for recovery and subsequent performance in athletes and non-athletes alike. In recent years, podcasts, news and scientific articles have communicated the intrinsic details of sleep in different athletic populations and the importance of sleep to enable performance.

So why is it that many people neglect sleep or just don’t get enough?

Recent statistics from the Sleep Health Foundation in Australia in conjunction with Deloitte access economics report that 1 in 3 people do not get enough sleep [1].

We should be aiming to achieve 7–9 hrs per night.

One of the main factors contributing to this lack of sleep is that 1 in 5 people have a sleep disorder. Sleep disorders or sleep problems will affect the quantity and quality of sleep, thereby reducing the efficiency of our sleeping time. There are currently over 80 sleep disorders recognized by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine [2] resulting in $18bn of lost productivity per year or $2,500 per person.

Another factor is the societal and cultural approach to exercise and fitness, particularly with high achievers and athletes.

Too many people are advocating early morning starts, just like Rocky, before 5:00 am in order to get workouts done or even to catch up on email. So, whilst many of us need to go to work or are trying to carve out time before children awake, we need to ensure that we are bringing balance to our training.

Such early morning starts will truncate your sleep duration.

If you are exercising at this time, then to achieve 7-9 hrs per night, you will need to be in bed at a minimum by 8:30pm. This will allow for 10–20 minutes to fall asleep, followed by 8-hrs in bed for sleep that will most likely result in around 90% of sleep efficiency or approx. 7-8-hrs as we all wake throughout the night (WASO: Wake after sleep onset) which results in a reduction in total sleep duration.

In my work with a top-level physiologist who specializes in recovery with elite and Olympic athletes, they always advocate that sleep for recovery is the number one modality to prioritize for subsequent performance.

Therefore, these early morning training sessions (before 5:00am) truncate your opportunity for sleep duration and will also reduce the time spent in rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, which is important for cognitive performance and decision-making.

If you are an amateur athlete that works and has a family, then dividing your training sessions may be appropriate for you. Maybe consider a lunchtime high intensity session to augment your training or extending your evening training session. “Rise and Grind” may be replaced by “Sleep in, and Win”.

Some people get by on 4-5 hrs sleep a night, can’t I just train myself to do this?

The short answer is no, the vast majority of the population require 7–9 hrs per night.

In a recent interview Prof. Matthew Walker on the Joe Rogan Experience said, “When you look at the number of people that sleep less than 5 hrs per night, there is a small fraction of <1% of the population, that has a certain gene that allows them to survive on 5 hrs of sleep”.

So, whilst some people may be only getting 5-hrs and they might be functioning ok from day to day, they are most likely not achieving their optimal performance.

But what about people like Winston Churchill, Einstein etc., they didn’t sleep much?

Yes, they slept unorthodox hours and even slept a low number of hours overnight (4-6 hrs). However, they did nap at least once a day and sometimes twice. In my work with business leaders, coaches, athletes and the general population (more than 4,000 people), I have not observed anyone who functions or competes at the highest levels on less than 6-hrs per night. Those who have told me that they only need 6-hrs a night tend to have short naps during the day or in some cases experience micro-sleeps at their desks or when sitting down that they are unaware of.

What is of interest is when “short sleepers” are provided with an uninterrupted period of time in bed to maximize sleep, they tend to achieve 8-hrs of sleep.

If you are an athlete, non-athlete, business leader or an individual looking to optimize your day, then the cheapest, most effective solution may lie within your sleep…pun intended.

References

1. Robert Adams SA, Anne Taylor, Doug McEvoy, and Nick Antic. Report to the Sleep Health Foundation 2016 Sleep Health Survey of Australian Adults. Sleep Health Foundation: The University of Adelaide:The Adelaide Institute for Sleep Health2016.
2. Berry RB BR, Gamaldo CE, Harding SM, Lloyd RM, Marcus CL and Vaughn BV. Academy of Sleep Medicine. The AASM Manual for the Scoring of Sleep and Associated Events: Rules, Terminology and Technical Specifications V2.2. Darien, Illinois: American Academy of Sleep Medicine; 2015.

Dr. Ian Dunican has over 20 years international professional experience in health, safety and performance/productivity improvement and commenced his occupational life in the Military. He has a PhD from the University of Western Australia (UWA), where he worked with elite sporting organizations and their athletes to optimize sleep, recovery and performance. Ian has worked with elite athletes at the Australian Institute of Sport (AIS), West Australian Institute of Sport (WAIS), professional teams in Super Rugby, Australian Rules Football, Basketball and with athletes involved in Ultra-Running, Swimming and Combat Sports like Boxing, & MMA. Read more about Ian, here. 

*NEVER train breathing efficiency in the pool or underwater breath holds unsupervised. We don’t and neither should you.

Over the past year, we’ve been getting more and more questions regarding our integration of breath work with the competitive swimmers we coach.

The focus of this post will be on the ways we are integrating breath work both in and outside of practice … for those interested in learning more of the science/physiology behind what we are doing, we’d encourage you to reference Brian MacKenzie and Rob Wilson’s various articles and podcasts on the subject. I’ve broken our article down into four sections: pre-workout/pre-competition, post-workout/post-competition, during a workout, and evening/prior to bed.

While we are strong advocates of nasal breathing while workout out/training, obviously breathing efficiency in the pool is not practical (it can be utilized while kicking with a board). Our primary use of nasal breathing will be while on the wall during rest periods. During light aerobic swimming, this won’t be too much of a challenge for most of you. What we look to develop is how quickly you can initiate nasal breathing when you are “redlining.” Improvements in this area will indicate a few things … improved efficiency/effectiveness with nasal breathing, an improved tolerance to CO2 levels, as well as a psychological/emotional adaptation in terms of your ability to maintain composure under stress.

Why do we want to nasal breathe during rest intervals?

1. You will recover quicker and be able to have a higher work output on subsequent repeats/sets.
2. You will improve your body’s ability to tolerate CO2
3. Psychological/emotional adaptation in terms of your ability to maintain composure under stress
4. Engage diaphragm

Pre-Workout/Pre-Meet warm-up

Immediately prior to starting warm-up, the team does 10-12 rounds of cadence (1-1-2-1).

This should help “warm-up” the respiratory system and also be mildly “up-regulating.”

Post-Workout/Meet

We’ve greatly cut-down the amount of swimming in our warm downs and have replaced the swimming with a 1-1-1-1 breathing protocol.

A post-meet warm down used to typically be in the 800-1200 yard range (approx. 15–20 minutes). We now typically employ something along the lines of 3 rounds of:

3-4×50 easy on a :40 intervals and 4 rounds of the 1-1-1-1 protocol.

Post workout we will typically do 4–10 minutes of the protocol.

As I mentioned earlier, we have cut about 1/3-1/2 of our typical warm down volume, as the swimmers feel completely recovered.

Within Training Sets and at the conclusion of training sets

One of our favorite training sets is “Bolles 50’s”

8×50 with each being attacked as if it is the only swim of the set (we don’t want people “saving up” or looking to “hold an average” … done right the swimmers should not be able to sustain the same speed from #1-#8 … true distance swimmers with high breathing efficiency in the pool can be an exception).

The set starts with a lot of rest (the first 4×50 are on a 2:00 interval, so everyone is getting around 1:30 rest; the next 2×50 are on a 1:30 interval and the final 2×50 are on a :50 interval).

Here is how we do the set now:

After the first 4×50, immediately upon finishing the 50 do two rounds of :20 nasal breathing + exhale hold.

Then, After #5 and #6 (which are now on a 1:30 interval), we go one round of :30 nasal + inhale hold.

When #8 is complete, we go 3 rounds of :30 nasal + exhale hold and then 3 rounds of :30 nasal plus inhale hold.

After the 6th round of breathing the swimmers will generally feel 100% recovered with no need for “easy swimming.”

Examples incorporating breathing protocols into a set

3 rounds of 3×100 as follows:

3×100 @ 1:30 best average
Immediately upon finishing the 3rd 100 transition to nasal-only breathing as quickly as possible, and then nasal breathe for 1:00 and then begin the second set of 3×100.

6×300 for time.
Upon finishing each 300 transition to nasal-only breathing as quickly as possible, and then nasal breathe for 2:00 and then begin next 300.

20×25 fast.
Upon finishing each 25 transition to nasal-only breathing as quickly as possible, once you can take 5 consecutive nasal only breaths start the next 25

Examples incorporating inhale holds and exhale holds

Our most standard breathing protocols during long rest periods or at the end of sets involves incorporating rounds of :20-:30 of nasal breathing with “inhale” and/or “exhale” holds.

3 rounds of 3×100 as follows:

3×100 @ 1:30 best average
Immediately upon finishing the 3rd 100 transition to nasal-only breathing as quickly as possible, and then go three rounds of (:30 nasal breathing + inhale or exhale hold)

6×300 for time.
:30 rest after the odd # 300’s, after the even # 300’s transition to nasal-only breathing as quickly as possible, and then go three rounds of (:30 nasal breathing + inhale or exhale hold)
Take another :10-:15 rest and begin the next 300.

20×25 fast.
Upon finishing each 25 transition to nasal-only breathing as quickly as possible, once you can take 5 consecutive nasal only breaths start the next 25. At conclusion of set go three rounds of (:30 nasal breathing + inhale or exhale hold)

The final breathing protocol we employ is an Apnea protocol (1-3-2-0 or 1-4-2-0). This is done in the evening prior to bed and has been a huge help in terms of recovery, quality of sleep, as well as CO2 tolerance.

Feel free to reach out via Instagram with any questions about breathing efficiency in the pool!

By Charles Oxley

“No man has the right to be an amateur in the matter of physical training.” — Socrates

A key to health & longevity is to keep active as late into our lives as possible. It’s undeniable that movement is integral to our physical and mental well-being, and therefore the quality of life, now and as we age. How should you be training for life?

Move your body more and move your body well.

Move More

The more we move, at any age, the healthier we are. It’s no surprise that you’re most likely to move more doing something you enjoy over something you don’t. Pick something you enjoy (important to note, by ‘enjoy’ I don’t mean ‘find easy’, but instead something where you find a joy in the effort of performing the movement).

I like to ask clients, “What’s the one thing you do movement wise for an hour but only feels like only 5-minutes?”
Hiking, Running, Skiing, Cleaning the house, Tennis, Walking the dog, Surfing, Weightlifting, MMA, Dancing, Triathlons, Yoga, DIY, Rock Climbing, Kicking/Throwing a football with the kids, shooting hoops, Pilates, Sailing, Hunting, Calisthenics, Gardening….

There are literally hundreds of activities that come up. Going forward, we’ll call this your ‘Recreation’.

It’s inclusive in that it can be anything, can be multiple things and can change over time, the only caveat being it must be done with good movement.

Move Well

This is moving safely and as the body is designed to move. Moving well allows us to remain active, and therefore healthy, as we age. It’s all very well to move a lot now but if it’s done badly it’s likely to be at the expense of being sedentary or in chronic pain at some point in the future.

This is where the true role of exercise comes in.

Exercise should be a dedicated time to focus on testing, developing and improving the fundamental skills and quality of how well you’re moving in a general sense and specific to your recreation.

It’s to support your ability to do your recreation and therefore an investment into your future quality of life. While your approach to physical activity should lead you to move more, it is equally important that it leads you to move well.

So far, we’ve covered,

Approach to Physical Activity: Recreation – move your body more + move your body well

How: Perform your recreation to move more and include exercise to move well

Why: Improve your quality of life in the short and long-term

Distortion of Exercise

However, if you think about it the majority don’t take this approach toward their physical activity. Instead, you see a distorted and different meaning to the word exercise, a word that’s become the leading approach people believe they need to take:

Approach to Physical Activity: Exercise.

How: Go hard or go home, push through the pain, wear expensive sports gear, go to a gym, use every ounce of self-discipline, do what you see on Instagram, in magazines and adverts. It doesn’t matter if you enjoy it or not, just move as we say.

Why: It’s good for us. It’s what we’re meant to do and what everyone else does…

Here, ‘exercise’ means something different to the role presented earlier. It’s meaning has been constructed and reinforced by advertising, social media and leads to our own actions being based on what others are doing rather than what we want to do.

It has stripped away a solid grounding in ‘why’. In fact, the ‘why’ is very vague and has little to no concept or regard for your future quality of life. Without this foundation, the ‘how’ becomes very tribal and explicit in an attempt to take up the slack. Not only does the ‘how to exercise’ not value moving well, you also can’t pick what you do based on what you enjoy. It’s a do ‘this’ and not ‘that’ approach.

An approach that doesn’t value the joy in effort, only the effort. It doesn’t matter if you like what you’re doing or not, it just has to be something that complies with what culture defines as exercise.

As a result, the word ‘exercise’ in our current culture evokes certain subtle connotations, restrictions, and expectations in our minds as to what ‘exercise’ is.

This has created a boundary around physical activities that are considered exercise and therefore, by default, those which are not.

Rather than being inclusive, it becomes divisive. From our earlier list of recreational activities, we can see that not all would fit into this current cultural role of ‘exercise’.

Exercise: hiking, running, skiing, tennis, surfing, weightlifting, Pilates, MMA, triathlon, Pilates, Calisthenics, Yoga, Rock Climbing, shooting hoops

Not Exercise: cleaning the house, walking the dog, kicking/throwing a football with the kids, DIY, hunting, sailing, dancing, gardening

There are some that could go in either, but that just reinforces the point that there are division and ambiguity where there shouldn’t be. If you enjoy an activity where you move, and you move well that’s all that really matters.

This is far from the approach to physical activity discussed earlier of ‘move your body more and move your body well’. We seem to have majorly distorted the role of exercise in a narrow group of activities and ways of performing those activities.

Societal Effects

You can see why some in society enjoy ‘exercise’ and some don’t. Those that enjoy this version of ‘exercise’ are those that have their recreation fall within the boundary while those that don’t typically enjoy exercise have their recreation fall outside.

It’s a matter of luck if your recreation falls within what is culturally defined as exercise. Those that don’t have their recreation fit within the boundary, gardening, for example, are not necessarily people that don’t like to move at all.

But they see their recreation doesn’t fit into the ‘exercise’ boundary so believe it has no value to them doing it. They may believe it’s not of benefit physically, mentally and sadly socially.

Most people enjoy moving in some capacity but culture trumps physiology. The cultural expectation behind the word exercise trumps a lot of peoples innate physiology to move. Instead, it causes them fall into one of the following categories:

• don’t like exercise but force themselves to exercise
• don’t like exercise so don’t exercise
• are scared to exercise

On the other hand, those that have their recreation fall within the ‘exercise’ boundary are also likely to not continue moving as late into their lives as possible. Due to the ignorance of moving well and instead focusing on volume and intensity, they will increase their chance of injury or chronic pain that will leave them less active or sedentary in old age. How many people do you know with a bad ________ (insert a joint or body part)? How do you think that bad________ will feel in 20 years?

We can see this approach is harmful to most. We now have a significant section of people in our society that is moving a lot less than they would, moving and hating it, or not doing it safely. These people are reducing their quality of life now and as they age. All due to the distorted approach to the physical activity we are presented with and believe in our culture.

You are built to move. We have inbuilt physiological reward systems for moving. But we are seeing many people who feel socially restricted from doing so.

Ask Questions – Seek Answers

It’s important to question and understand your approach to the movement you do or don’t do. Ask yourself, “What do I actually value and what are the things I am told to value?” It’s sometimes hard to tell the difference. But it’s important to continually question and evolve.

Why do you exercise?