How to Use Breathing to Improve Exercise Endurance

If you don’t have any access to cardio equipment, or just find cardio machines boring, there are other techniques to improve endurance. When I say endurance, I’m talking about the tolerance to that ‘burning’ feeling your muscles get when exercising. 

This one might get a little technical, so hang in there. We have to understand some basic biochemistry to get through this. 

You may have heard that the ‘burn’ while exercising is lactic acid. That’s not technically true. Your body can use both lipids and carbohydrates as fuel. The body prefers to use lipids for energy because they produce more energy (ATP). The trade off is that it’s a slower process for the body. Carbohydrates are more readily available, yet produce less energy. So, when you are just sitting around, or doing low intensity exercise, you’re primarily using lipids. As intensity increases, the body will start to use more carbohydrates out of pure demand. 

Carbohydrates are stored in the muscle in the form of glycogen. Glycogen is broken down into lactic acid, which in turn is immediately dissociated into lactate and hydrogen ions. Lactate is a great fuel source, but its by-product, hydrogen ions (H+) are literally acid. This is what causes the burning sensation. 

As you exercise, this acid starts to build up. The body has a few mechanisms to buffer this. In the muscle cell itself, carnosine soaks up the hydrogen ions. In the bloodstream, bicarbonate does the same thing. The body is great at adaptation, so if you incrementally expose the body to this mild stress, these buffering mechanisms become more efficient. Just like resistance training, progressive load has the long term effect of making you stronger. 

It turns out that you can induce an acidic environment simply through breathing. The more oxygen in the bloodstream, the more alkalinic, the more CO2, the more acidic. So you can leverage this by limiting the volume of breathing because exhaling through your mouth off gasses CO2. 

This is where nasal breathing comes into play. Nasal breathing has many benefits including the stimulation of nitric oxide production which dilates the blood vessels (good for cardiovascular system). But, because you can’t exhale as strongly through your nose versus your mouth, it will increase CO2 build up, causing an acidic environment. If done during a low intensity exercise, such as walking, it is enough of a stressor to stimulate adaptation to the system. In other words, a mildly acidic environment during exercise will improve your body’s ability to buffer hydrogen ions. If you do this consistently, your body will be able to handle acidic environments during workouts better, leading to greater output. This is the idea of physiologic flexibility. 

Some call this CO2 tolerance, or the CO2 advantage. I wrote another blog that describes a test you can do to see how well you tolerate the buildup of CO2, you can read it here. 

So all you have to do is find a light exercise that you can do while only nasal breathing. For most, it’s walking. Perhaps you start with short bouts and increase over time. Make it something that easy so you don’t quit doing it, because it can be uncomfortable. If you are strongly feeling the urge to breathe through your mouth, that’s ok, go ahead and do that. Now you know your threshold. Progress over time and notice how it translates to other forms of exercise. 

Become Dynamic: The Hormetic Effect

Is intense exercise good for you? How about red wine? It’s good for the heart, right? How about fasting? Are ice baths good? Deadlifting is bad for your back, especially those Jefferson curls. When you look into the hormetic effect, you’ll see why there is so much confusion around these conversations. 

Whenever I hear that a relationship between a dose and a response has a U or J shaped curve, I immediately think it is due to the hormetic effect. Recently, I wrote a blog on the equation for adaptation: Stress + Recovery = Adaptation. Hormesis, or the hormetic effect, focuses on the stress component. It is described as a dose-response to an environmental stressor. It is characterized by a low dose stimulation and a high dose inhibition. 

Some examples of hormesis include: 

-exercise

-intermittent fasting

-hypoxia

-radiation

-cold immersion

-phytochemicals (depending who you ask)

-Jefferson curl

Let’s take fasting as an example. We did not evolve to always be in a fed state. Fasting will trigger ketosis (burning fat for fuel), and reduces insulin levels. However, you can’t fast forever and you will reach a threshold where it’s damaging and eventually deadly. 

This scene where Westley outmatches Vizzini by simply having a tolerance to poison, is a perfect example of hormesis.

Exercise is the same; we all know the benefits of strength and conditioning, however too much exercise can lead to rhabdomyolysis; a breakdown of muscle tissue. This segues well into another topic; how to use hormesis to our advantage. Humans are inherently resilient, but with the right training, we can become even more resilient. The person who never has worked out a day in his life, and suddenly decides to train heavy 6 days a week may run the risk of injury or rhabdo. However, if you want to train with that intensity, you can build up your tolerance to it.

Hormesis is a disruption in homeostasis. Homeostasis is your body's ability to maintain a balance. If you just sit on the couch, homeostasis is not perturbed and all is well. However, if homeostasis is never challenged, its capacity to handle new stress is not improved in any way. That’s why the couch potato injures his back when he has to travel and lift luggage overhead in the plane. 

“A Ship in Harbor Is Safe, But that Is Not What Ships Are Built For”

We should seek to improve our resiliency. However we should do this in an intentional and intelligent way. That means not doing the weekend warrior thing. If you want to play a sport, you should train for it. If there is a specific movement such as the Jefferson curl that you want to perform, you have to train for it. It’s the person that hasn’t trained who suddenly decides to play basketball that tears their achilles. Or herniates a disc with a Jefferson curl. That means progressive loading with consistency.

Despite mounds of evidence, the concept of hormesis is somewhat controversial. The opposing model is the linear model. A linear model would suggest that something is either good or bad for you, and more of that stimulus would create more of a response. This is a philosophical discussion and an important one, because it changes the recommendations for health and even policy changes. 

Perhaps it’s human nature to place things in boxes (good/bad), or a lack of understanding of the hormetic effect. I contend that it’s this idea of a linear model that leads to advice to stop playing your sport, stop exercising, and basically stop enjoying life. We know that life is more nuanced than this. This is why research can be so confusing. You can find evidence that red wine is good for the heart, and also find evidence that it is bad for the heart. Is this not just more evidence of the hormetic effect? 

I personally like the idea of preconditioning. This is the intentional practice of graded exposure to a certain stressor so that when the time comes, you are physically and mentally prepared for said event. This is why on my recent trip to Brazil, I decided to swim through this frigid waterfall. Cold water immersion is not about decreasing inflammation (debunked), it’s about building resilience.

Now I don’t think a one time swim through a waterfall is going to make me more resilient, but if I’m always seeking challenge over the course of a lifetime, I believe that I’ll be harder to kill compared to the person that shies away from anything risky or uncomfortable. That’s what it means to become dynamic. 

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