Training Week 6- 29th April/1st May

Breathing Control

Aim- The aim is for Athlete Z to control his breathing through this programme which will enable him to take greater command of his body’s abilities. By harnessing the breath, he can take control of his body, his mind, his emotions and inner spirit for any pursuit.
While there’s no shortcut for sheer hard work, whether you’re a world-class athlete or a casual mall walker or jogger, it’s all about breathing efficiently. The goal for all endurance training is to build a more extensive cardiovascular system or network. The lung muscles and diaphragm will only achieve a certain strength, but, says famed marathoner Alberto Salazar, “What you’re doing is creating a capillary-blood network to service the muscles so that whatever amount of air that you can get in, you can keep as much of that oxygen as possible. The less oxygen you have for whatever reason, the more you have to rely on stored blood sugars, and eventually you run out of that. The better you breathe, the more oxygen you can get in, the less you have to use your glycogen stores. When you get to that point, you are able to go a little faster and a little harder.” 
Normally in high endurance sports, you focus on trying to take natural, deep breaths, both through your nose and through your mouth concurrently, and exhaling at the appropriate time. If it becomes forceful, where you’re straining to blow everything out, he says, “People feel like they’re losing control of their breathing and they sort of panic and start gasping. He suggests finding a natural rhythm that can go with flow, and this can work with most kinds of exercise. “It could be, like in swimming, with a certain amount of strokes, every stroke or every other stroke,” he says. “In running, it could be every other stride. You have to find that natural cadence that you have, and stay relaxed within that cadence.” 
Mental Aspects
Without understanding the effects the breath has on the mind, on mental clarity, on achieving, you’re likely to feel that you’re driving with the hand-brake on. Certainly the body must be kept in shape to be able to perform physical functions, but unless the mind is in tune, it can’t effectively captain the multifarious functions that need to occur for peak physical performance. But that performance can be taken even a step further. Awareness of your breath is the first place to start. Knowing how to achieve that focused relaxation will keep you from stressing and knotting up.
The mind, as we’ve all experienced, can be both a powerful ally in achieving our goals, and a major impediment in keeping us from them. Often the mind is ready to quit well before the body hits its limitations, and can easily grow confused, with distracting little “voices” dictating your course of action.  Thus, it often needs to be coerced and cajoled into shoving aside or even obliterating your often self-imposed physical limitations, allowing you to go far beyond what you might imagine.
Simply, the single most important effect awareness of your breath brings is focus. If you are focused on even a single breath, you aren’t distracted by the regrets of yesterday or the anxiety of an unknown tomorrow. That breath brings you to the here and now. Being conscious of a single breath and staying in the moment is a simple yet valuable perception for easing anxieties about the past and fear of the future, keeps you tuned to whatever task is at hand, and provides a strong bridge between mind and body.

The Zone

On an even deeper level, breath awareness can also play an active role in helping you find what sport psychologists call the zone. Everybody has had a brush with it, that rare place or moment of mental perfection, physical clarity and performance, when all your cylinders are firing in perfect harmony, when there’s absolutely no disconnect between your mind, your body and your emotions. It’s when time stops and there is the freedom of complete absorption in the activity at hand. We see examples of it all the time in sports world – the odds-defying last shot, an error-free performance, an impossible comeback.
How it works

For this exercise the breathing cycle is divided into three parts, with each part getting a set number of counts:

 1. The Inhale (2 counts)

 2. The Hold or Retention, before the exhale (2 counts)

 3. The Exhale (4 counts)

 Try this breathing method a few times to become familiar with it.

Now, let’s look at how we can use this technique while walking, for example. In this case each count corresponds to one step, for example:

1.Inhale for 2 steps

 2.Hold for 2 steps

 3.Exhale for 4 steps

To adapt to cycling, each pedal stroke gets one count. For swimming, each stroke gets one count, and so on.

Suggestions

 ■It is important to find a pace and count that you can maintain and that feels natural. As you become more adept with this technique, you will want to try and increase your counts while keeping the same ratio. For example inhale for 4 counts, hold for 4 counts, exhale for 8, or 6, 6, and 12. Experiment and find a combination that works well for you. Slower, deeper breathing will give more energy, endurance, and focus.

■If your mind wanders, or you lose your count, gently bring your mind back to the count. This may take a little practice, but if done regularly, it will become second-nature. The goal is to find the perfect pace for your body and your breath. This will help you to slip into that meditative performance state often referred to as the “zone."

Athlete Z says:

This was a great way to end a six week psychological skills program as it has really made me feel much better about myself and remain calm as well as positive. Working on breathing control has helped me to stay in control of my mind and body. I feel my breathing get easier as well as healthier. Breathing much easier has helped me with my fitness work, as the season has come to a close I have been keeping fit so I don’t get battered in pre-season. Working on my fitness levels by going for regular jogs and endurance based activities has been boosted by my breathing control which has helped me to enhance my levels of fitness. This has been really enjoyable and I will be using breathing control techniques to maintain my fitness levels throughout the rest of next season as this is like a psychological drug to help me get through matches next season having that extra in the tank in the latter parts of the game.

Conclusion
In conclusion to this training week six shows it has been another success as athlete z has worked really hard at this and it has helped him a lot. He really has come on leaps and bounce in terms of his fitness levels as he finds it very useful which it is. It is also good to see athlete z enjoy it and see the work that comes out when putting the work in. All in all athlete z enjoyed this training weeks and will take this forward to next season where he will use this weekly to help maintain is fitness levels.

Great success!