Is It Really Harmful to Hold Your Breath While Lifting Weights?
You might spend most of your life not worrying about how or whether you’re breathing correctly, but as soon as someone mentions that you need to breathe a certain way at the gym, it’s easy to get confused. When should I exhale? When should I inhale? Oops, I held my breath—is that bad?
As with everything else in the world of exercise, there are different recommendations for different people and sports . If you’ve heard conflicting advice, don’t worry, we’ll clear it all up. First, I’ll talk about whether you should breathe while lifting weights, and then we’ll discuss how to breathe properly.
Should you hold your breath while lifting weights?
I don’t breathe during most of my exercises. I spend most of my time in the gym performing large, multi-joint exercises: squats, deadlifts, snatches, and clean and jerks. For most of these, I use a belt . And I keep my core tight during them. For these exercises, the Valsalva maneuver is a powerful tool. It’s the scientific name for creating tension in the torso by holding your breath. You’ve probably done it on the toilet at some point.
Thanks to the belt, a tense core, and the air pressure in my lungs, I exert significant effort to stabilize my torso and protect my spine from injury. Furthermore, this way, I can lift more weight than if I weren’t tensing my muscles or holding my breath. Watch how red the face of any professional powerlifter gets during squats, and you’ll see they do the same.
While safe for most people, some people should generally avoid holding their breath while lifting heavy objects for safety reasons. The Valsalva maneuver can temporarily increase blood pressure and lead to dizziness and even loss of consciousness, especially if the breath hold lasts more than a few seconds. The American Heart Association recommends that beginners and people with cardiovascular disease avoid holding their breath while lifting heavy objects. The Valsalva maneuver is also not recommended during pregnancy , as the increased pressure poses a risk to the placenta. (If you have any questions about whether you should avoid holding your breath while lifting, consult your doctor.)
If you’re using the Valsalva maneuver, you’ll hold your breath during each repetition, pausing between repetitions to exhale and inhale (for example, when standing up between squats). To remember this, imagine you’re squatting in a pool of water that reaches your chest. You hold your breath while “underwater” and take another breath when you stand up again.
If I breathe while lifting weights, how should I do it?
First, there’s really no wrong answer to the question of how to breathe properly, but there is a rule of thumb that will help in most cases. You should exhale during the most difficult part of the exercise and inhale when the exercise gets easier. This usually means exhaling during the concentric phase (lifting the weight) and inhaling during the eccentric phase (lowering the weight). If you’ve forgotten, simply ask yourself which part of the exercise is the most difficult.
Let’s say you’re squatting. You can inhale as you lower yourself down and exhale as you rise up. The hardest part of the squat—the so-called “sticking point”—is the moment right after you start the lift. What about the deadlift? The hardest part of the movement is lifting the barbell, so exhale at that moment. You can inhale as you lower the barbell.