You might be asking yourself why you’re reading this post about breathing.

We breathe in, we breathe out, hands up, now hands down, (back up, back up), tell me watcha gonna do now.

*Ahem*

In and out. It’s that simple, right?

Yes and no.

Breathing happens automatically.

When we’re babies, we breathe through our diaphragm. This is natural for us.

As we get older, though, we generally breathe through the chest. We forget how to do deep breathing, and that means it’s easy to forget how to breathe properly throughout our day, and especially during exercise.

In this article, I’m going to explain why breathing is the foundation of exercise and of life, and how to get the most of out of your DDP Yoga workout with proper breath.

Why Breathing Is Important

To be blunt, you need to breathe in order to live.

You can survive without water for around a week, and you can survive without food for several weeks.

You can only survive without air, however, for a few minutes. Even trained divers can only hold their breath for an average of about five minutes.

That means that breathing is the key to life.

More specifically, breathing fuels your muscles.

The Physiological Purpose Of Breathing

Breathing consists of two parts: the inhale and the exhale.

(Wikimedia/Cruithne9)

When you inhale, your trachea carries air to your lungs. Muscles in your torso raise up and outward as your lungs expand and pull air in. Finally, your diaphragm contracts and pulls downward.

This inhaled air brings oxygen into the blood, which is first delivered to the heart before being transported to the rest of your body.

When you exhale, the reverse happens. Your diaphragm relaxes and springs upward. Your lungs shrink as they push air out. Your torso muscles relax as your ribcage moves downward and forward. Your lungs shrink as they expel air through your nostrils or your lips.

The exhaled air is rich in carbon dioxide, a waste product. Too much CO2 in your body can lead to respiratory failure.

In short, inhaling fuels your body, while exhaling eliminates waste.

Why Breathing Is Significant In Yoga

The term “yoga” is Sanskrit for “union,” the integration of mind and body disciplines.

Pranayama, another Sanskrit term, is “the practice of voluntary breath control, consisting of conscious inhalation, retention, and exhalation,” according to the American Council on Exercise Personal Trainer Manual.

The nonprofit American Council on Exercise (ACE) educates, certifies, and represents more than 60,000 fitness professionals, health coaches, and other allied health professionals.

Pranayama could be coupled with a posture, or “asana,” to prepare an individual for practicing breath control and meditation. Practitioners used these asanas to acquire spiritual freedom and meditative states.

Physiologically, ACE says yogic breathing has been found to create a “mind-body” pathway between muscles and the brain, “affording direct access of muscular activity to the mechanisms of perception and cognition”.

In other words, according to ACE, breathing is an intermediary between the body and the mind.

“The fundamental purpose of breath work is to develop the ability to:

(a) sustain relaxed attention to the flow of the breath,

(b) refine and control respiratory movements, and

(c) integrate awareness and breathing to reduce stress and enhance psychological functioning”

The Medical Benefits Of Proper Breathing

In my research for this article, I found literally dozens of benefits of mind-body exercise and, specifically, yogic breathing.

For this article, I’ll look at three benefits: blood-pressure reduction, stress reduction, and increased blood flow.

Yogic Breathing Can Reduce Systolic Blood Pressure

Using a 2:1 breathing pattern, people with high blood pressure can decrease it.

From ACE:

“Adhana (2013) found that, in patients with hypertension, exhaling twice the time of inhalation caused a response similar to those patients taking one or two blood pressure medications.”

That’s a stunning finding.

Simply by altering our breathing pattern, we can cut out blood pressure medication. We can save money and prevent side effects by doing something our body does naturally for free.

ACE warns, however, that people with cardiovascular or pulmonary disease should focus on standard breath work and not progress to advanced techniques, such as rapid breathing, breath retention (pausing after inhaling), or breath suspension (pausing after exhaling). These techniques are mentioned later in this post.

Yogic Breathing Reduces Stress

In Yoga for Regular Guys, Dallas and the Yoga Doc mention another benefit of yogic breathing: it helps reduce stress.

(US Air Force/Jason M. Webb)

Long, slow breaths decrease the “fight or flight” feeling, a segment of the sympathetic nervous system that is activated by the perceived threat of danger, such as a thug or an angry dog.

Physiologically, “fight or flight” manifests as an increased heart rate, resulting in quicker breathing, as well as tense muscles and sweating. According to Harvard Health Publications:

“The carefully orchestrated yet near-instantaneous sequence of hormonal changes and physiological responses helps someone to fight the threat off or flee to safety. Unfortunately, the body can also overreact to stressors that are not life-threatening, such as traffic jams, work pressure, and family difficulties.”

The Harvard link also mentions a study in which relaxation techniques (which included yoga and deep abdominal breathing) helped wean participants off blood pressure medication, supporting the study referenced by ACE in the previous section.  

Yogic Breathing Increases Blood Flow

Dallas and the Yoga Doc say in their DDP Yoga certification manual that people get sore when they work out for the first time (or after a period of inactivity) because blood oxygen levels are low, and your body doesn’t get the oxygen it needs.

Accelerating your heart rate brings a 25% increase in blood flow through vertebral and internal carotid arteries, according to a study referenced in the DDP Yoga Level 1 manual (that I couldn’t track down in the October 2007 issue of the Journal of Applied Psychology). This means that your blood vessel diameter increases and is sustained during exercise.

The Importance of Breathing in DDP Yoga

Proper breathing during your DDP Yoga workout will help you sink deeper into your positions so that you can increase flexibility and your heart rate.

You’ll also be able to acquire mental and physical focus, endurance, balance, flexibility, and power.

“If you try to consciously fill your entire body with oxygen each time I ask you to inhale,” writes Dallas, “you will break up the tension that lives in the different corners of your body. You will get even greater benefits if you try to ‘push’ each inhalation into those tight spots.”

Breathing in this manner also increases your heart rate to get into your fat-burning zone, a topic I’ve covered previously.

Focus on each breath you take in class. It is challenging, but it is worth it.

How To Breathe

The key to breathing in DDP Yoga, and in general, is your belly.

Just like when we were babies.

This is called diaphragmatic breathing, or deep abdominal breathing.

The goal is to fill your abdomen up like it’s a balloon.

Both the DDP Yoga system and ACE recommend similar ways to achieve this goal (each with their own unique personality), and I’ll explain them both.

The DDP Yoga Way

1. Lay on your back.
2. Bend your knees.
3. Put both hands on your belly.
4. Inhale for a count of 3, expanding your belly like Santa Claus.
5. Exhale for a count of 3, pushing your belly button to the back of your spine.
6. Repeat.

If you’d like, you can use counts of 5, 10, or whatever number you like. A greater number means greater breath control.

See Dallas walk through it on video here.

The ACE Way

1. Lay on your back. Place a blanket or pillow underneath your head.
2. Place one hand on your abdomen and one hand on your chest.
3. Take 10-15 slow, deep breaths.
4. Expand your abdomen during inhalation. Pause for a few counts after you finish your inhale.
5. Contract your abdomen during exhalation. Pause for a few counts after you finish your exhale.
6. Keep your chest as still as possible.

Each method varies just a bit, but I think you’ll see the similarities.

When we do this deep breathing, we see a host of benefits (in addition to the ones listed above):

• We create space between each vertebra, which helps heal compressed spinal discs.
• We squeeze trapped blood out of our organs, eliminating waste.
• We bring fresh, oxygenated blood back to our organs.
• We fix our posture and break up scar tissue caused by slouching, sitting, or driving for extended periods.

When To Breathe

(Air Force/Margo Wright)

ACE recommends a warm-up of 3-5 minutes of quiet contemplation or meditation before low-level aerobic activity or flexibility exercise. They also recommend ending those workouts with a similar breathing cool-down.

You’ll notice a similar model in DDP Yoga. Classes typically begin and end with a breathing focus, and your certified instructor will be able to guide you through it.

Your DDP Yoga instructor is also trained on how to cue you for breathing during the workout. If he or she forgets, though, Yoga Journal has some better breathing tips that inspired this short list of how to breathe during DDP Yoga workouts:

Exhale when bending forward

• “Hulk it up!” on Diamond Cutter
• Catcher
• Cat Arch
• Down Dog
• Butterfly
• Broken Table Crunches
• Extended Side Angle
• Human Cannonball

Inhale when lifting or opening the chest

• Ignition
• Diamond Cutter
• Superstar
• Cat Lift
• Cobra
• Thunderbolt
• Road Warrior 1
• Bent-legged Bar Back (or Stiff-legged Bar Back)
• 3-legged Dog
• Broken Table
• Bridge

Exhale when twisting

• Road Warrior 2
• Twisting Lunge
• Twisting Triangle

Again, there are a number of other breathing cues throughout the DDP Yoga workouts on the DVDs and in person with your instructor, so pay attention to them.

Try It Out

As we’ve learned, breathing is essential. Breathing should be an active – not a passive – part of our everyday life.

We should look to babies as models for how to breathe so that we get full breaths each time.

Proper breathing assists you with getting a great workout, and provides a number of physiological and mental functions, as well.

On your next DDP Yoga workout, concentrate on your breathing. See how it affects your activity during your workout. 

Maybe you’ll find you get more out of it.

Interested In A Class?

I teach DDP Yoga. Come out do it during your 1:1 personal training session at Titan Fitness in Washington, or my group fitness class Thursdays at 6:30 p.m. at the Metamora Park District office.

This past week, news broke about a class-action lawsuit Fitbit Charge HR now faces due to inaccurate and dangerously low heart rate readouts.

The Fitbit Charge HR is the only heart rate monitor I’ve ever used. I first bought it in February of 2015 to use for DDPYoga, but also because I was curious about how many steps I was getting in a day (turns out, it’s not a lot). Back in June, I said I was underwhelmed with its performance. No matter how hard I was working, sometimes my heart rate was barely breaking 100 (and my zone is 134-154). Or, sometimes I’d be near my zone, and literally seconds later I’d be back in the 90s again.

In December, some people on the private Facebook group for DDPYoga certified instructors were asking about new heart rate monitors. DDPYoga instructor Christina Russell commented that the DDPYoga Performance Center uses the Wahoo Tickr X because it’s the most accurate they’ve tested. With some Christmas money, I bought the Tickr X.

I wanted to see how the Fitbit did compared to the Tickr X, so I put them both on at the same time. It only took me a few workouts to see that the Tickr X killed the Fitbit in direct competition.

Obviously, this isn’t a scientific comparison. But, with each workout, my heart rate was about 10 bpm higher on the Tickr X compared to the Charge HR. That number may not seem like much, but look at the difference in calories burned.

Also, my right shoulder was sore during these workouts, so I wasn’t necessarily looking to get into my target zone and stay there. Instead, I was just looking to stretch out a bit. So keep that in mind.

DDPYoga – New Year’s Eve

On New Year’s Eve, I did a lower body workout so I wouldn’t have to use my arm as much. I don’t remember which one, but I was using the DDPYoga Now app (which is pretty cool, by the way).

Martial Arts – New Year’s Day

When I was training with my karate instructor, he told me about a tradition he’d had at one point – training your whole system on New Year’s Day. I kind of did that. I warmed up with some DDPYoga stretching before doing the old Yang-style tai chi chuan form, followed by the five Hsing-i elements and the animal forms I’ve been taught thus far. After that, I reviewed my karate forms and ippons, taezus, and kihons in 2 directions. If the should would’ve been feeling better, I would have done 8. Notice the downward trend at the end, which was me trying to remember some of those wazas since I haven’t actively practiced them in eight months.

DDPYoga – Jan. 02

This was probably Stand Up 2.0. The average bpm was closest here, though there are still widely varying numbers.

After this workout, I decided to ditch the Fitbit entirely. I know I don’t get as many steps as the “gold standard” of 10,000, and I’m tired of feeling inferior to people telling me they have three times as many steps as I do for the day. I know I think I’m sleeping 7 hours, but may really only be getting 5.5 hours of sleep (as we compared Fitbit stats, a person I went on a date with was shocked at how restless I was). And I know, with pretty convincing supporting evidence, that my heart rate is better measured with the Wahoo Tickr X than the Fitbit Charge HR.

I hear you loud and clear, Metamora. You want evening yoga? You’re gonna get it.

Through a partnership with Metamora Parks & Recreation, I’m happy to be bringing DDPYoga to central Illinois for the first time ever.

What’s DDPYoga?

Well, first of all… It ain’t your mama’s yoga!

DDPYoga is a fitness system that combines elements of yoga, traditional fitness, sports therapy, and dynamic resistance to create a kickass workout.

With it, you can:

1. Burn fat standing still!
2. Increase your cardio without running, jumping, or lifting!
3. Get more flexible!

The best part is you can do all of this with minimal joint impact.

What I like most about the DDPYoga workout is that you can make it as easy or as challenging as you want. People of literally all ages and fitness levels can do DDPYoga.

See some more inspirational transformation videos with this playlist:

What Are Some More Details About DDPYoga In Metamora?

Classes will be held Tuesday and Thursday evenings at 7 p.m. in the Metamora Park District activity room starting January 5.

The first session will last 13 weeks, with the last class finishing on March 31.

A minimum of 8 people must sign up for the session, but we’ll have to limit it to about 15 people because of the space.

How Do I Get Started?

Edit: Learn more about my current DDP Yoga class offerings here.

Several months ago, I made what I considered to be a startling discovery: I am consistently in my fat-burning zone when I do Chinese martial arts forms.

To put that into perspective, my heart rate is usually 10-20 beats per minute higher doing martial arts than it is doing DDPYoga. I do DDPYoga to burn fat and to build muscle, so imagine my surprise when I noticed that martial arts get my heart pumping faster than a program that touts itself for its heart-rate-jacking, fat-blasting workouts. (See my experience with using the Fitbit Charge HR for DDPYoga here.)

I’m not knocking DDPYoga here. In fact, as I write this, I’m just a few hours short of acquiring the teaching hours I need to become certified.

What I’m saying is that Chinese martial arts have almost a stigma attached to them. Many consider them to be just a way for old people to stay healthy as they age. And yes, while that’s true, it’s only one aspect.

Chinese martial arts help people burn fat.

I’ve experimented a few ways – doing my tai chi chuan form and Hsing-i forms without any other workout for the day, doing those forms after DDPYoga workouts ranging in length from 20 to 40 to 60 minutes (which is usually my favorite) – and the bottom line is that Chinese martial arts raise your heart rate and allow you to get into your fat-burning zone.

Let’s take this morning, for example.

This is what my heart rate information looks like doing DDPYoga Mix Tape.

I started off doing the DDPYoga Mix Tape routine – one of the most challenging 35 minutes in that set. I was able to raise my heart rate quicker than I’m usually able to, shooting up into the 120s fairly early. (Remember, my fat-burning zone is 134-154.) I peaked in the workout at 159, and you can easily see from my chart that I backed off pretty quickly. Overall, I stayed at 122 average beats per minute.

It should be noted here that it’s hard for me to get in my fat-burning zone. Even when I’m putting all my energy into it, I’ll still see myself in the 120s, about 10 clicks below where I should be.

This might have to do with the placement of my Fitbit Charge HR. It needs to be placed on my wrist just right. I usually wear mine so that the sensor is on the top of my wrist, but for working out, I’ve found it works better when I turn it inside. If it wobbles from punching or it slides from sweating, I can see myself going down 30 bpm. Literally. So, I may be in my FBZ without even knowing it sometimes.

An 11-minute workout incorporating tai chi chuan and Hsing-i chuan forms yielded more beats per minute over a longer period of time.

After I finished that, I went to go do my tai chi chuan form outside in the park since it was nice out this morning. That took me about 5 minutes. I followed that with the five Hsing-i chuan element forms and the four animal forms I know so far. Even though I was only working out about a third of the time with martial arts, this chart looks like I’m staying in my target zone longer. It’s been that way on other workouts, too – I’m consistently noticing myself in the 130-150 range.

The kicker here is that I don’t feel like I work as hard at Chinese martial arts as I do at DDPYoga. That’s usually the reason why I do it at the end of my workout, so I can cool down. With DDPYoga, I’m drenched at the end of the workout, “sweatin’ and swearin’,” so to speak. But with martial arts, what I feel like would be a “light” workout can still put me in my zone.

So, if you’re looking to complement your main exercise program, think about martial arts. In addition to all of the great values martial arts teaches, they’re also a fully capable weight-loss and muscle-building system.

If anybody has any heart rate advice related to martial arts, please comment.

You probably know by now I’m an advocate of the DDPYoga fitness system. I first picked it up in August 2013 after listening to Diamond Dallas Page talk about it at length during a profanity-laden episode of the Steve Austin Show.

However, after hundreds of workouts, I only picked up a heart rate monitor for the first time this year. It was the Fitbit Charge HR, and it has dramatically changed how I do my DDPYoga workouts.

Why wear a heart monitor?

The main principle of DDPYoga is engagement, or dynamic resistance. It’s a tensing of the muscles so that the more you flex, the more blood you pump to your muscles. The more blood you pump to your muscles, the faster your heart has to beat. And the faster your heart beats, the more fat you burn.

If you are operating at your maximum heart rate for up to 25 beats per minute less, you’re engaging in aerobic cardiovascular exercise. Think running, walking, biking, skiing, or doing DDPYoga. With this type of exercise, you are burning fat as your fuel source.

In anaerobic exercise, in which you exceed your maximum heart rate for a long time, you burn sugar as your fuel source, and that requires more recovery time. Think sprinting or weightlifting.

Dallas implores people to be wearing a heart monitor at the start of each workout so that your body is in its optimal fat-burning zone. If you exceed it, he recommends heading into the Safety Zone position for a few seconds so you can lower it.

So how do you know what your fat-burning zone is?

DDPYoga uses the 180 formula developed by Dr. Phil Maffetone.

Take 180 minus your age. Then, modify that number according to the rules listed on his site.

I follow 180 minus my age, minus 20 to know what my target heart rate zone is.

180-26 = 154. 154-20 = 134. So my target heart rate zone is 134-154.

How did the Charge HR help?

When I first got my Charge HR device, I did the quick and basic Energy workout to get a gauge on how it worked. Remember, I hadn’t ever used a heart rate monitor in 18 months of DDPYoga practice.

Initially, I was underwhelmed. My heart rate hovered around 100, which wasn’t close to the 130s I needed to reach just to be on the lower end of my fat-burning zone. “Maybe this thing just needs to get used to me working out,” I thought. After all, everybody’s different, so maybe there was some kind of calibration phase it needed to go through.

Later on, though, it dawned on me that I might not be fully engaging my muscles to make use of the dynamic resistance upon which DDPYoga is based. I made some adjustments, and found out that my heart rate was indeed going up throughout my workouts. With effort, I can make my heart rate soar. Not as easily as they do in the video above, but it works nonetheless.

If you’re having trouble getting into your fat-burning zone doing DDPYoga, try this guy’s video:

Four months after starting to use a heart rate monitor for DDPYoga, I’m seeing some results of using my heart rate monitor. The wrap and burn stretch on the Strength Builder (and Mix Tape) workouts on the DVDs has gotten me into the 130s, and the Mix Tape in general is the workout that keeps me the most engaged with my highest heart rates. I’m also still surprised to see I have consistently high heart rates when I’m doing Broken Table crunches. For a move that doesn’t seem like much, it sure shoots that heart rate up.

However, I still can’t find consistency in when to expect my heart rate to go up and when it won’t. For example, I noticed a drastic increase in my heart rate when working outdoors than indoors. This was especially apparent when I was doing punches a few weeks ago in the park and noticed my heart rate soaring into the 140s, a number not typically seen in my living room during the same exercise.

What to know about customizing the heart rate on the Charge HR

You have to customize your heart rate on the Charge HR if you want to follow the DDPYoga method of calculating it.

1. Open up the Fitbit app.
2. Go to Account.
3. Go to Heart Rate Zone.
4. Select that you want to use a custom zone, and then enter the Upper Limit and Lower Limit.

The caveat is that even though you select custom zones, Fitbit will still use its default zones when plotting your graph of heart rates throughout your workout. It will show you your custom zone with the graph, but it doesn’t really explain much (like what your zones are).

Tell me what you think

Now, it’s your turn to sound off with your experiences to one or any of these questions:

1. What are your experiences like with using the Fitbit Charge HR for DDPYoga?
2. How does the Fitbit Charge HR compare to other heart rate monitors for DDPYoga?
3. What DDPYoga exercises do you find help you get into your target heart rate zone?
4. What other fitness activities do you do with your heart rate monitor, and how does that compare to when you do DDPYoga?