Learning to breathe correctly for daily living and for exercise is one of the most important things you can ever do to improve your health. I have spoken in great detail about this in numerous articles about breathing before, explaining how poor breathing mechanics can disrupt everything from PH balance, emotions and gut health, to posture, core function, and even how well we metabolize our food. Unfortunately, many people remain completely ignorant to learning good breathing techniques and do not even know what good breathing is, yet alone be able to execute it. What is the best technique? Well, just like everything to do with health and fitness there is no one way, or “only” way to do this. There are many different methods and philosophies of how to do this. Some are harder to learn than others, and many have a specific objective or population in mind for teaching the breathing method a particular way. However, the one thing that they all share in common is that you need to significantly slow your breathing rate down and keep your mouth closed. In this article, I will look at several different breathing methods and allow you to decide which version is best suited to you.
What Are The Best Exercises If You Have Hyper-mobile Joints?
When we experience pain or tightness in an area of our body we have been told we must stretch, massage and loosen the affected area to regain the lost mobility of the joint or muscle. This is the typical approach of health therapists, corrective exercise and most rehabilitation programs. And in most cases it is the most logical place to start, and often pain will subside and things go back to normal quite quickly with this approach. However in some cases this can be the worst thing you can do! For the person who has too much flexibility, otherwise known as hyper-mobile, they will not respond well to this approach, for they lack stability and need to be tightened up, not loosened. For 20 years I have worked with over 1000 people with all types of injuries and when I first started I rarely came across this case. However, in the past few years I have seen a huge increase in these cases, and many times people come to see me after having tried several therapists, trainers and various health modalities that did not work, or even made the condition worse. I am not sure as to why this seems more common, and I see this problem mainly in females, but I believe one big factor is the rapid growth of Yoga and Pilates style training that emphasize more flexibility. And while both these are great forms of exercise, they have the potential to ruin the joints of a hyper mobile person if not used wisely, and especially if you do not move well standing up.