It’s Boring, But It Will Skyrocket Your VO2 Max

0:03 A moment ago, you were fine. But suddenly your mouth drops open. You don't notice it at first. Then, your breathing starts getting heavier and heavier until you can't pull in enough air. You're reaching for the composure you had at the start, but you can't get back to it. You know this feeling. The basketball player who bricks an open layup in the fourth quarter, the tennis player who falls apart in the third set, the footballer whose legs are gone by the second half. No matter where you compete, you're a step slower than the person across from you, and you're absolutely [music] gassed. In the car home, I'd always ask myself the same thing. Why can't I keep up? Why is my endurance failing me when I'm doing all the conditioning work? Why can't I stay calm? And everyone gave me the same answer. Work harder, hit your conditioning harder, breathe

0:48 harder. But the people telling you that haven't seen this. In 2023, researchers screened almost 2,000 competitive athletes across a range of sports. Over 90% of them had dysfunctional breathing patterns. They weren't breathing the way the body was built to breathe. And it gets worse. Because if your breathing mechanics are failing you in the game, they're failing you everywhere else, too. They're the reason you're tired at 3:00 p.m., the reason you snore at night, the reason you can't manage your stress. It's all the same problem. You just haven't been told that yet. So, in this video, I'm going to show you how to fix your breathing in four stages. First, by learning how to use the four-part machinery of your breath that most coaches never teach. [music] Second, by understanding the science behind breathing and why ignoring your instincts is the key to higher performance. Third, by learning exactly where this pays off in your life.

1:34 Composure when you're stressed and smoother force production when you're lifting, playing, and fighting. And fourth, how to train your body to do all of this [music] automatically, so it becomes your default, not something you have to think about. Everyone's telling you that better conditioning means breathing more. But after 10 years of figuring this out the hard way, I'm going to show you why the answer is to breathe less. Breathing less. Breathing less? So, every sports scientist, every strength conditioning coach, every physiology textbook that says ventilation increases with effort, you're saying they're all wrong? Okay cool. Let's hear your explanation, Mr. YouTube influencer. >> Okay, Scott. I'll let that slide. I am a YouTube

2:20 influencer, but just stay with me because the version of you on the other side of figuring this out is somebody you didn't think you were capable of being. >> [gasps] [sighs] >> I'm Ido Portal, a movement coach, YouTube black belt, and pro natural bodybuilder. And after 10 years of obsessing over improving my breathing, I'm going to walk you through what actually changed for me and what the research backs up. And it didn't start with harder training. It started with one pretty cool idea that a jiu-jitsu legend shared with the Hulk, Bruce Banner. The embodiment of strength and rage is in Brazil looking for a way to control the monster inside. He meets a man who throws him around, slaps [music] him, and then calmly explains the first concept of efficient breathing. That man is Rickson Gracie, [music] one of the most dominant grapplers to

3:05 ever live. In that scene, Rickson shows Banner something simple. [music] Breathing up here in the chest keeps you stressed, panicked. [music] Breathing down here in the diaphragm brings you back to control. And this isn't just movie philosophy. Rickson learned it from Orlando Cani, founder [music] of Bio Ginastica, a Brazilian movement system. >> Even the legend had a teacher. [music] Years later, Rickson wrote a memoir called Breathe. And the way he highlighted the importance of breath control stood out to me. Not knowing how to breathe is like having a hand and not knowing how to use your fingers. That's how most [music] of us are handling our breath. No precision and no awareness. And the deeper thing Rickson teaches [music] Banner isn't just how to breathe. Banner learns awareness, which is the first thing you pay attention [music] to within meditation. He learns to notice his breathing is dysfunctional

3:51 and bring it back into control. So, to test your awareness, I want to do a quick test together. One hand on your chest, one hand on your belly, and breathe normally. Don't try to change anything. What moves first with each inhale? I want you to drop it in the comments. Chest or belly? If it's your chest, I have some good news. By the end of this video, you'll have the tools to fix that. [music] And it's important that you do. That breathing pattern is making you more stressed than you should [music] be. You're too tense, and you're not using your diaphragm to its fullest capabilities. [music] The diaphragm is your primary breathing muscle, your engine. It sits at the base of your lungs. When you inhale, it contracts, pulls down, and air comes in. When you exhale, it comes up and air leaves. But,

4:37 the engine can't do all of this on its own. As it pulls down, the [music] rib cage has to expand out to the sides to make room. The more your ribs can move, the deeper breath you can take. If your ribs are stiff, and for a lot of people they [music] are, you'll still get air, but the breath stays shallow. So, your body does the only thing it can. It breathes faster to make up for it. We'll get to that in a second. It's related to the second part of your breathing machinery, [music] but here's the important part. Deep breathing and full engagement of your diaphragm directly affects [music] your autonomic nervous system. When the diaphragm leads, your vagus nerve picks up the signal. It runs from [music] the brain through your heart and lungs all the way down to your gut, and it pulls you towards being calm. Now, when the diaphragm doesn't lead, the breath climbs to your chest. Your neck and shoulders start picking up

5:22 work they weren't supposed to do full time, and your nervous system reads that as a low-grade emergency. You're a bit more on the sympathetic, fight or flight side all day, every day. Most people learn what I just told you about the diaphragm [music] and stop there. They think they've got it. They breathe into their belly for a few weeks and notice they feel a bit calmer. And that's where the work ends. That's component [music] one. Your diaphragm is your engine, but the engine's just the first piece. [music] The same dysfunction that made me gas in training and feel amped up at rest had three more pieces behind it. We're going to work through all of them. [music] By the end, you'll see why the same fixes that improve your conditioning also quiet your mind. Wait. >> Are these actually different problems? Are you just stretching out one problem four different ways to stretch out an already long YouTube video?

6:09 >> They're connected, but they show up in different places. So, chill out, man. Going to walk you through them. But [music] you need to be patient. We're packing a lot into this video. Now, for your second component. Understanding this starts with the questioning how did our breathing get so disordered? Because there is a time when we all breathe perfectly. [music] And the reason we stopped is what locks up your cage. Watch cute little baby breathe. Their belly rises and falls, ribs expand 360°. The diaphragm is doing all the work. No chest heaving, [music] no tension in the neck. Then, life. We hunch over screens for hours and our posture gets [music] tight and compressed. The breath climbs into the chest. And when effort spikes or when we're just sitting there watching

6:54 YouTube, the mouth opens. [music] And we all want to walk around with a flat stomach. So, we suck in a little bit keeping the abs braced while [music] we move so it doesn't look like we have a belly. But that builds a stiff trunk. And these tissues have to relax for breathing changes to [music] stick. But sucking in isn't even the worst of it. There's a bigger breathing problem hiding in modern life. And it might be the clearest example of a locked up breath you'll see all day. Most of us have no idea we're doing it. There's a researcher named Linda Stone [music] who noticed something strange happening in herself. She'd open her email >> [music] >> and her breath would stop. She'd be holding it without realizing. So, she started watching other people and she found the same thing. 80% of people held their breath or shifted to shallower breathing the second they engaged with

7:40 the screen. She called email apnea at the app first, then [music] screen apnea once everyone had a phone in their hand all day. >> Wait, 80%? That sounds like one person's observation, not actual research. >> You're right to push back. It was observational. >> [music] >> But, the breath hold she saw is only part of it. The breathing doesn't just stop. It speeds up and gets shallow. That's the part the lab work really nailed down. 2016 review pulled together dozens of studies measuring how people breathe when they think. When reading, keeping focused tension, doing mental math, all the stuff your brain does while looking at a screen. And the same thing kept showing up. Breathing got faster. Not deeper. Faster. These people were over-breathing while doing nothing more strenuous than

8:26 looking at a screen. And their carbon dioxide dropped right along with it. Hold on to that fact, because it's going to be important later. The second your attention locks into a screen, your breathing pattern shifts towards the same pattern you'd see in someone under threat. And you have no idea it's happening. This is the modern version of what Hickson was teaching back then. So, you're fighting two [music] things here. And there's a fix for each. The first is the screen pattern itself. The fix is learning how to notice a change in breath and coming back to [music] calm. Here's the simplest version. Set a recurring reminder on your phone. Once an hour, maybe twice. [music] When it goes off, you do three things. One, notice. Awareness. Where's your tongue? Is your mouth open? Is your breath up in your chest [music] or down in your belly? You're not fixing anything yet. You're just looking. Two, slow the exhale. Push

9:12 the air out longer [music] than you pulled it in. 4 seconds in, 6 or 8 seconds out. Do it through your nose if you can. Three, repeat that for about a minute. Then go back to your day. That's it. 60 seconds an hour, maybe 16 minutes total across your whole day. Done consistently, this is what rewires your default. You're catching the dysfunction real time [music] instead of letting it run all day unchecked. The second fix is for that stiff trunk. Now, there's even research showing that braced abs can cut how much air you [music] pull in. That's why soft tissue work is money. I run a body lever across my trunk, obliques, and lower back and breathe into it. I feel everything expand against the pressure. It gives me tactile feedback that my trunk

10:00 and my rib cage are actually moving. This is the kind of work that people in the Stronger Human community are already doing together. I'm going to go deep on soft tissue in another video. It's a whole topic on its own. >> [music] >> For now, you can learn more in the Body Worker course in the Stronger Human. Just know your trunk and your rib cage are part of the breathing picture. And a locked-up trunk >> [music] >> works against you. There's even an old practice for improving your tissue health of your core. It's called Nauli Kriya, where you roll your abdominal wall in slow waves. The same thing Rickson Gracie does in the Choke documentary and the Hulk movie. You literally can't do it with a rigid trunk. It's like giving yourself a massage from the inside. And TMI, when I do it in the morning, >> [music] >> makes me want to go take a Okay. Back to the components. Number three

10:46 is your gait. >> [music] >> Problem is you can do everything in this video perfectly during the day and do all of it while you're asleep. Sleeping 6 to 8 hours with your mouth open, shallow breathing. That's a third of your life reinforcing the exact pattern [music] we're trying to fix. In your mouth, where is your tongue sitting right now? Roof of your mouth or floor of your mouth? Because when your mouth is closed and you're breathing through your nose, [music] your tongue is supposed to live at the roof of your mouth. It should sit just behind your front teeth [music] and the rest gently sealed against the palate. When it's up there, your jaw stays in place, your lips stay closed, and the airway behind your tongue [music] stays open. Obviously, when you need a mouth breathe, the tongue has to drop. That's normal. The mouth becomes the airway and the tongue gets out [music] of the way. The problem is when the tongue lives at the floor of the mouth all the time,

11:34 even when you don't need a mouth breath. So, without your awareness, your mouth falls open and your jaw drifts back. And when you're definitely not aware, the tongue's more likely to slide backward and partially block your airway. That's where a lot of snoring comes from. The airway fighting to stay open while the tongue's in the wrong place. The gate is falling. Drop your tongue to the floor of your mouth [music] right now. Feel your jaw release. Your mouth might fall slightly open. That's where a lot of people spend their entire night. So, has anyone complained about your snoring? Because as someone who used to snore, one of the simplest things that helped me was mouth tape. It's [music] cheap and it changed my sleep quality almost immediately because I wasn't reinforcing mouth breathing at night. I can now sleep without it and not snore, but I still like using it. I'll stick some tongue exercises. And there's a wild study from 2006 where playing the

12:20 didgeridoo for 4 months reduced people's sleep apnea. We're going to come back to that because most of you aren't going to pick up a didgeridoo, although I wish you would. But there are simpler tools. If you're a heavy snorer, your partner says you stop breathing at night, or if you wake up exhausted no matter how long you slept, yeah, you should get a sleep study done before you try this. Taping your mouth shut when your airway's compromised can be iffy. And if you usually have a stuffed nose, here's a quick fix you can do right now or before bed. Breathe in and out through your nose. Pinch it shut and hold it while you walk or just sit there until you feel a strong urge to breathe. Let it go. Breathe in and out through your nose and [music] slowly your breathing back down. Wait about 30 seconds, then repeat it five times. [music] The held breath builds up carbon dioxide, which people

13:07 think relaxes the vessels in your nose to open the nasal passage. [music] It's temporary, but it's usually enough to get you breathing through your nose and off to sleep. If you give what I'm going over in this video consistent effort, at some point you might really get rid of your sleep apnea. And it's not just about sleep. There's a strong case that chronic mouth breathing, especially as a kid, shapes how your face and jaw actually develop and even drags your posture forward. That's a whole rabbit hole of its own and it's not what this video is about. But if you want to go down it, read Jaws by Sandra Kahn and Paul Ehrlich. I sat down with Sandra and talked about this a few years back. So you can check that out later if you want to learn about it. That's component three. Now, component four, your filter. Since I was a kid, the term mouth breather was always used to make fun of people and unfortunately, there's

13:53 actually something to it. If you breathe through your mouth while chilling, you're not dumb, but your breathing does have issues and mouth breathing does have a place when your everyday exercise is climbing, sprinting, [music] sparring at high intensity, mouth can open and that makes sense. But outside of that, most of the time your nose should be running the show. [music] Your filter should be doing the work. It isn't just a smaller opening for air. It does things your mouth just can't. The smaller opening creates a natural resistance that encourages [music] you to breathe deeper into the diaphragm instead of those shallow chest breaths. So your nose actually helps [music] your engine work properly. And one more thing about your filter. Because since the nose is a smaller opening, you naturally breathe slower through it. That slower pace keeps you from blowing off too much carbon dioxide which most people think is just a waste. [music] It turns out carbon dioxide is the key to this whole

14:38 thing and I'll show you why in a minute. The nose also warms and humidifies the air [music] before it hits your lungs. It's literally an air filter attached to your face trapping dust, [music] pollen, bacteria, all the bad stuff your mouth just lets climb right into your lungs. And the mouth can't replicate the nose's hidden ability to release nitric oxide into your blood. Nitric oxide is a compound that widens your blood [music] vessels and helps your lungs absorb more oxygen. How about this? Do you get sick often? Because your breathing [music] could be some of the reason why. When you mouth breathe, about 37% more particles end up in your lower lungs including the bacteria and viruses that [music] ride in on droplets. Nitric oxide that your nose produces is anti-microbial and mouth breathing cuts that nitric oxide that reaches your lungs in half. Meaning, the system that's supposed to be killing the pathogens at the front door isn't able

15:24 to do its job. All of this power your nose brings [music] biases your nervous system towards more calm. You'll have a steadier heart rate, clear thinking, better decision-making, all because of [music] this. So, that's your full first part, four components. Your engine, your cage, your gate, and your filter. Breathe low into your engine, keep your cage flexible, [music] keep the gate closed unless you need it open, and let the filter do most of the work. This needs to be your default gear, not your only gear because there are times the mouth opens and that's fine. But, many of us are living in our emergency gears [music] without knowing it. So, we just spent all of this time on your nose, your built-in air filter. It warms the air, cleans it, and screens out the junk before it reaches your lungs. But, your nose can only do so much when the air in

16:10 your [music] house is dirty to begin with. And mine was bad. I've got four Hold on. Don't tell me this is an air purifier ad. That whole sector's overpriced fans with a marketing budget. If I can't measure it's making a difference, I'm not buying it. >> Same thing I thought, Scott. I've bought the cheap air purifiers. They do nothing. But, this air scrubber puts the measurement right in front [music] of your face. Jasper's different. Like when I cook, I watch it spike, then I watch it scrub everything back down to clean. [music] It's a little unsettling how much is in the air, and mold is a big one. A lot of people have it in their air and don't even realize [music] it. So, Jasper ran a test. They filled a 500 sq ft room with mold spores, [music] turned the unit on, and just watched. Within 1

16:55 hour, 97% of the spores were pulled out of the air, and by the 3-hour mark, the unit pulled all of the spores out of the air. So, not having one of these is like breathing in your entire home. All that gunk just pours straight in, no filter all day long. The Jasper is basically >> [music] >> a nose for your home. You spend a third of your life in this bedroom recovering. And the cleaner the air, the better you sleep. Researchers [music] tested it. A real air scrubber versus just a purifier. And people slept longer with the cleaner air. That's the Jasper's job. You're going to sleep tonight no matter what. Might as well do it in clean air. It's a top-of-the-line unit, and that's [music] exactly why I trust it. It covers up to 1,600 sq ft, has a lifetime warranty, and a 30-day money-back guarantee. So, there's no risk in trying it. Check the link in the description and use code stronger human

17:42 for $300 off your Jasper Air Purifier. >> [sighs] >> Now you understand the four parts of your breathing machinery. But here's the question that always comes up. Why does breathing less actually make you better? Understanding this will unlock physical and a mental state you've never thought possible. I initially learned this when I read The Oxygen Advantage by Patrick McKeown back in 2016. When I first came across it, breathing less sounded backwards. If nasal breathing already means slower air with more resistance, how could taking in even less of it while exercising be the answer? Every gym poster, every training app, when we're watching competition, our instincts say [music] breathe more. Open your mouth. Pull in more air. That has to be the way to perform. But the physiology says something different. It starts with carbon dioxide and what most

18:28 people get wrong about it. Most people think of carbon dioxide as just some waste product you [music] exhale. That's wrong. Carbon dioxide is something we want to learn to tolerate. Oxygen's your body's currency. Carbon dioxide is the key [music] that releases it to your muscles. Your blood carries oxygen to your muscles, but it needs carbon dioxide present to actually let go of it. That's called the Bohr effect. When you over breathe, [music] like the people locked onto their screens, or like the instinct to breathe harder when training gets harder, you blow off more carbon dioxide. You're throwing [music] away the key to your own vault. Your blood is carrying the oxygen, but your muscles can't access it. [music] Higher carbon dioxide tolerance means your body stays calm while carbon dioxide builds. The key stays in the lock longer and your muscles keep getting fed. That's the whole game. And if that just flipped the way you think about your own breathing, [music] the key you've been throwing away, do yourself a favor. subscribe and hit the bell icon. On this

19:14 channel, I try [music] to give you a deep dive, nuance, and actionable steps on these topics with the goal of helping you become a stronger human. Now, I know this breathing idea still feels backwards. So, let me show you what happens when you actually [music] try it. Because the first time most people try nasal breathing during training, it doesn't feel calm. It feels suffocating. When I first tried this on the mats, the second the round got hard for me, my mouth fell open every single time. I'd be gasping like nothing had changed. I remember thinking that I was wasting my time. We already know the nasal airway is smaller. Air comes in slower with more resistance. If you've spent years mouth breathing, whether you know it or not, switching to nasal honestly feels like you can't get enough air. But, here's the key thing. For most healthy people, that I can't get enough air feeling isn't an oxygen emergency.

20:00 Your blood oxygen is normal. body reacting to slightly higher carbon dioxide, the same carbon dioxide you used to just blow off through your open mouth. You've over breathing for so long that normal feels like you're suffocating. Every time my mouth fell open, I was shutting off everything we just talked about, the nitric oxide, the carbon dioxide retention, the signal to my nervous system to stay calm. The good news is that nasal breathing during exercise is trainable. Your body adapts surprisingly fast in some ways and slowly in others. The panic itself starts lessening within a few weeks of consistent [music] practice. Your body has sensors that monitor carbon dioxide and tell your brain when to breathe. They're called chemoreceptors. And as you keep practicing nasal breathing while training, [music] they recalibrate. Your tolerance to carbon dioxide goes up and your rate of breathing drops a bit. Then over a few more weeks or months, your diaphragm and

20:46 the muscles around your ribs get stronger from the extra resistance. By 6 to 8 weeks, your ventilation [music] will probably be more efficient at moderate efforts. But, what we're really after, being able to push that close to maximum intensity and still maintain nasal breathing, [music] that takes longer. George Dallam studied runners who'd already been training nasally for 6 months or more. When he tested them, their VO2 max was the same nasal as oral. No performance drop. >> [music] >> But their ventilation, literally the volume of air that moved in and out of their lungs, was 25% [music] lower because they were able to use that air more efficiently. The non-adapted runners in earlier studies dropped their VO2 max by about 11% [music] when they tried nasal only. The adapted ones lost nothing. This is why you need to give the practice time. Might take a few days or weeks for [music] the panic to chill

21:33 out and a few months to achieve higher intensities. Because if you've never trained a tissue, it doesn't perform. And right now, that tissue is your nose. The discomfort you'll be feeling [music] is part of an adaptation process. So, if you commit to nasal breathing during hard training and your mouth falls open, that's fine. Notice it and bring [music] it back if you can. That's the practice. I kept applying it. Kept trying to stay nasal. Kept noticing when I was over breathing and [music] pulling myself back. And then things clicked. I was able to do more work with less perceived effort. My recovery between rounds got faster and I could train more sessions [music] per week without feeling wrecked. I wasn't hitting that panicky gasping place nearly as often. My carbon dioxide tolerance had built up and once that shifted, everything else got easy. So, what you're telling me is, it's going to feel impossible for a few

22:19 weeks and I should just trust that something's happening underneath. Yeah, I know it sounds like I'm asking a lot, but that feeling you're describing, [music] that's the adaptation happening. It'll feel easier over time and your nervous system will recognize something's changed. You'll literally be calmer. So, now you understand the four parts and you also understand the chemistry as to why breathing less actually works. The question is, where does this show up in real life? Well, there are two key places and the first is going to change the way you react when things get hard in any aspect of sport. If you've ever going to watch Roger Federer play tennis, you've seen this.

23:06 Watching him in a long rally, 20, 30, 40 shots, his face stays calm, his jaw's soft, his breath is almost invisible. Now, watch his opponent, gritting their teeth, pulling in huge breaths, not as nearly as calm as Roger. Federer's mouth is closed a surprising amount, even between shots. He looks composed in the middle of a battle, and people assume that's just who he is. But that calm is trainable. Remember the Bohr effect we were just talking about? Federer's carbon dioxide tolerance is high. He holds the key longer. His system keeps delivering oxygen to his muscles while his opponents [music] are panicking and throwing the key away with every gasping breath. So, most of the time, his breathing stays quiet, his nervous system stays a bit more calm, and he makes better decisions because his brain [music] isn't hijacked by a system that's panicking. Federer's just playing

23:52 tennis. That's what breathe less [music] actually means in practice. You're training your system to stay calm at higher carbon dioxide levels, so you can do more work before having to shift into higher gears [music] of effort. To be fair, scientists are still trying to figure out how much of this is cause versus [music] effect. Did athletes like Federer develop quiet breathing because they trained while nasal breathing and built carbon dioxide tolerance? Or did decades [music] of elite conditioning just make their systems that efficient? Probably both. What the research is clear on is this: if you're over-breathing at moderate effort, fixing [music] that will improve how you perform and how you feel. And that gaspy feeling in healthy people, that's not low oxygen talk. That's rising carbon dioxide. Okay. >> [music] >> The Bohr effect is real, I'll give you that. But you're drawing a straight line from a biochemistry principle to the

24:38 dominance of a tennis [music] goat. There might be one or two other variables. But the carbon dioxide tolerance piece, that's actually compelling. Fair point, Scott. One athlete's dominance doesn't prove anything. But this isn't just a Federer thing. It's something competitive athletes [music] have been doing for centuries. Sometimes intentionally and sometimes by accident. But, the ones who figure it out turned it into a weapon. And so can you. Take Erling Haaland, one of the best football strikers alive. When he does his hardest conditioning, he climbs into an altitude room, puts a strip on his nose, and tapes his mouth shut so he has no choice but to breathe through his nose. >> And also normally I tape my mouth

25:23 in the hypoxic chamber. This helps me recover faster between sprints. >> For a striker, that's everything. Getting the ball a half step before the defender late in the game, when everyone else is gassed, that's where goals happen. And gassed has a sound. The opponent across from you can hear it. Like Kevin Garnett, who played 21 seasons in the NBA, one of the most intense, best conditioned players the league has ever seen, listened to his opponent's breathing during game. >> See, I can hear you breathing. I'll say something. Boy, you breathing? >> [laughter] >> I can hear you. Your ass sound like you breathing out here like I'll You feel me? >> Your breathing's a tell if you're a competitor. It signals to your opponent exactly where you're at. KG could exploit it because his own breathing wasn't giving him away. This isn't a new idea. Miyamoto Musashi, [music]

26:09 one of the most famous samurais to ever live, wrote about it 400 years ago [music] in The Book of Five Rings. I've read this book so many times and it's one of my favorites. Victory is certain when the enemy is caught up in a rhythm which confuses [music] his spirit. When your breath gets ragged, your rhythm collapses. And when your rhythm collapses, your spirit follows. But, Musashi was on to something even bigger. In that [music] same book, he wrote this. Do not let your spirit be influenced by your body or your body be influenced by your spirit. I think when he says spirit, he doesn't [music] totally mean something mystical. He means your internal state, your composure, your command over yourself. He's saying your internal state and your body are constantly talking to each other. >> [music] >> Your composure shapes your body, and

26:54 your body shapes your composure. And what reflects that state more immediately than anything? Your breath. Chaotic [music] breathing tells your nervous system there's a threat. Your muscles tighten, and it starts with the face. Musashi knew this 400 years before anybody [music] studied the vagus nerve. In his section on stance, he tells warriors, "Your forehead and the space between your [music] eyes should not be wrinkled. Do not roll your eyes or allow them to blink, but slightly narrow them. With your features composed, keep the line of your nose straight with a feeling of slightly flaring nostrils. Lower both your shoulders, brace your abdomen." >> [music] >> Read that again. Don't wrinkle your brow. Lower your shoulders. Flare the nostrils. Brace the gut. He's describing the physical setup for

27:40 nasal breathing into the diaphragm with relaxed face. He didn't have the words for vagus nerve or parasympathetic state, but he knew that a warrior who locked his face up and breathed shallow into the chest was a warrior who'd already lost. So, even when your body is screaming at you to panic, keep the breath organized. Keep the face relaxed, and you send a safety signal back to your brain. The samurai, the tennis legend, and NBA icon, a jujitsu master [music] and one of the world's best strikers all pointing at the same thing. When the breathing's [music] organized, the person is organized. And a huge part of that skill is learning to breathe less, not more. That's the first place this pays off. Composure. But, there's a second place that matters just as much, especially if you want to learn to produce force

28:25 without gassing out. One of the first things you find yourself yelling at people in jujitsu is to breathe. At this point, it's like a meme on the mats. Someone's 20 seconds into a hard roll, and they're already red in the face, holding their breath whenever they try to push, pull, or stop a sweep. Then, they break free just like [music] they're coming up for air from being underwater, and then move right back into the same pattern. Pay attention [music] next time you're rolling. You'll see it. You might even catch yourself doing it. It's not just a white belt [music] thing. I see it at every single belt. People who've been training for years still holding their breath the moment [music] they need to produce force because their body learned that's the only way to do it. Problem is, when you do that, everything [music] tightens, including the system that's supposed to keep you in the fight. You produce force for a few seconds, then

29:11 you have to surface and breathe, then you go back under, working harder than you need to all the time. But the pattern doesn't start on the mats. For some people, it started as a threat response. Your nervous system perceives danger, so your body locks up to wait it out. You get stiff and your breath stops, the freeze response. And for kids who grew up with a lot of that, the pattern gets baked in. Years [music] later, anytime they need to produce force or push through something hard, the body reaches for the [music] only tool it knows, a breath hold. For others like me, it started in the weight room. When I started jiu-jitsu, I already deadlifted 755 and squatted 645. I knew how to brace. That kind of bracing has a name, the Valsalva maneuver. Big breath in, brace the core as hard as possible. It creates intra-abdominal pressure and turns your torso into a pressurized

29:57 cylinder, tremendous spinal rigidity. Useful when you've got a mountain of iron on your back for a one-rep max squat or peak deadlift. The Valsalva works, or so I thought. Then a few years back, I picked up a 150-lb sandbag for the first time and tweaked my back. 150 lbs after years of lifting way heavier than that. What happened? A barbell is predictable. It's rigid. >> [music] >> The weight is distributed evenly. You know exactly where the load's going, and you can organize your body around it. But a sandbag, it moves as you lift it. The setup's never quite the same twice. [music] There's a practice I do called fighting the sandbag. I pick it up, throw it, squat it, carry it, [music] move with it for a good stretch of time. The bag moves around like a training partner. You can't predict it, >> [music] >> and you can't hold your breath through it because the second you do, you lock

30:44 up and the bag wins. The Valsalva maneuver works great for a barbell, but it doesn't work best for a sandbag. And it definitely doesn't work for a human being you're trying [music] to fight on the mat. I was trying to be a steel beam when I needed to be more dynamic. My breath hold bracing didn't allow for that. [music] So, something had to give and it was my lower back. But, for a second I do want to play devil's advocate. Strongwoman and strongman competitors do this all the time. They throw kegs, they carry stones, they lift sandbags way heavier than 150 lb and they brace and breath hold through much of it. Their backs are fine. So, it's not that breath hold lifting is wrong. It's a tool and it works for them. But, if it's the only breathing pattern you use when you need to produce force, that pattern follows you. It bleeds into everything and that's a problem. To be fair, the Valsalva has decades of

31:30 evidence for spinal rigidity under maximal load. The pattern transfer technique is legitimate. Abandoning it totally isn't. I'm not telling you to abandon it. I don't use it much myself anymore, but that's because I'm pushing the boundary of breath first lifting. Use Valsalva for really heavy work, but be prepared to use rhythmic breathing [music] when the situation calls for it. Breath centric movement, you've seen it a thousand times without knowing what you were looking at. Boxers hiss when they throw punches. [music] Experienced martial artists exhale sharply when producing force, sometimes with a shout. Tennis players when they hit the ball. Lifters [music] who know what they're doing exhale through the hardest part of the rep. This is exhale on effort. Try this with me right now. Take an inhale [music] and now growl. Growl. >> Growl. >> I'll do it first. Yeah.

32:16 GROWL. >> [groaning] >> REALLY growl while exhaling. Do you feel that tension in your abs? [music] That's your body bracing, but dynamically. You can move while doing that. When you exhale [music] forcefully, your deep core muscles engage automatically. Your transverse abdominis, your internal obliques. The diaphragm pushes up creating pressure, but you're not locked into a static hold like the Valsalva. You get stability without rigidity, spinal protection, and no [music] oxygen debt building up with every breath. And with lifting, the pattern's simple. Inhale as you descend into a squat, exhale as you drive up. Inhale as you lower from a pull-up, exhale as you go up. Same idea every time. Exhale where the effort peaks. Even when I do isometric [music] training, I don't breath hold. Most people will constantly hold their breath during isometrics. The effort's high, so the system defaults.

33:02 You catch yourself doing that, try this. Pick a rhythm. Let's say 2-second inhale, 2-second exhale, or 3-second inhale, 3-second exhale. Push or pull hard against the resistance while keeping that rhythm. You're training your body to produce force without shutting down the breath. That's [music] a skill, and it transfers directly to sport. Once I started applying this, my capacity expanded. The sandbag that tweaked my back, now it's part [music] of my regular training. The breath isn't something I hold until the lift is over. It's part of the lift, and the same principle applies to taking force, not just producing it. In another video I did on bone density, I talked about the importance of learning to fall as you get older. Part of learning to fall is not bracing [music] in fear, but breathing into the impact. In judo, jujitsu, and most martial arts, you learn break falls in your first week. And good instructors will tell you the same thing. Exhale when you hit the ground. If you hit the ground while

33:48 you're holding your breath, your whole system's rigid. That stiffness means force has nowhere to go. It concentrates at one point of impact. That's how ribs crack. But if you exhale on impact, [music] your body has give. The force travels through a system that can absorb and distribute it. Same physics as a car crumple zone. Controlled deformation absorbs energy. Rigidity [music] transfers it to the passenger. Your breath controls whether your body's a crumple zone or if you're stiff and rigid. If you're an athlete in a dynamic sport, most of your training shouldn't live in the breath hold world. [music] Train your body to be powerful while breathing. Because when you're on the field, on the mat, or just living, you don't get to stop and set up a perfect Valsalva. For years, I trained power that required shutting everything down. [music] Now, I want power that flows

34:34 with the breath. Okay. So, that's how I produce and absorb force without shutting down the breath. But, even after training this for weeks, there was still one question I had left over. Is this something I need to consciously do forever? Will this ever become second nature? And the truth is, you [music] can make this new type of breathing completely automatic if you understand how to train your body's systems. This is where you unlock the power of breathing [music] less. There are two halves to the training. The first is the cardio side, building the aerobic engine that lets your breath stay quiet under load. The second [music] is direct resistance training specifically for your breathing muscles. [music] Let's start with the cardio side and the five gears of training intensity that are key to understanding it. But,

35:20 before we get into the gears, there's one thing most people get wrong about their energy systems. Your body has three engines that produce energy. First is the phosphocreatine system. It runs your max efforts, your heaviest [music] single, your sprint start, your explosive takedown. Big power, but only about 10 seconds before it's tapped out. The second is the glycolytic system. The end of a hard set, a long scramble, the final 30 seconds of an [music] all-out round. It keeps going for about 10 seconds to maybe a minute or two before you have to slow down. And the third is the aerobic system, the one most people get wrong. They think of it as a separate engine that only kicks in for cardio, but it's [music] not. The aerobic system's always running underneath every single effort. Even when you sprint, it's contributing. Your recovery between hard efforts is [music] aerobic, always, no matter how anaerobic

36:06 your sport is. The seconds between tennis points, the time between rounds of fighting, Lionel Messi when he's walking on the football pitch for 83% of the match. All of that is the aerobic system clearing the work the other two just did and getting your body ready to go again. Two athletes can [music] have the same max output in completely different sport performance because the one with the bigger aerobic engine recovers faster between bouts. For a long time, I thought the only way to get better at cardio was to go all out, redline, and max effort every single conditioning session. I'd push until I was gasping. But, that redline state is brutally hard to recover from. It fries your nervous system and takes days to bounce back. If you're doing that two, three, or four days a week, you think you're building capacity, but you're just accumulating tons of fatigue. I

36:51 used to think it was the only gear that mattered. I want to check in with you guys. How many of you are living in gear five right now? Workouts, sparring sessions, mouth open, and pushing until you're wrecked? Drop a five in the comments if that's you. Cuz I did it for years. And right now, VO2 max is the fitness metric everyone's [music] chasing. And I get it. VO2 max matters. It's your ceiling. But, a 1988 study tested 14 [music] cyclists who all had the same VO2 max. When they pushed them to sustain high effort, one group lasted over 60 minutes. The other gassed out at 29. Same oxygen capacity, completely different ability to spend it. And no, this isn't the Bohr effect again. Both groups had that working for them. The difference came down to how much oxygen they could reach into and use. VO2 max tells you how high you can

37:38 go, but it doesn't tell you how long you can stay there >> [music] >> or how fast you can recover when you come back down. Everyone's focusing on VO2 max, but it isn't the whole [music] picture. What determines whether you hold up or fall apart isn't just your ceiling. And your floor gets built in the place most people refuse to spend the time. There's a researcher named Stephen Seiler [music] who spent the last three decades studying how the best endurance athletes in the world actually train. Think Marit Bjørgen, eight-time Olympic gold medals in cross-country skiing, the [music] most decorated winter Olympian in history. Tour de France cyclists, Kenyan distance runners, the actual elite [music] of endurance sports. He found the same pattern across all of them. Roughly 80% of their training is what he calls [music] the green zone, low intensity, easy enough that the breathing isn't a constraint, yet easy to recover from. You can do it again

38:24 tomorrow. About 15 to 20% of their training is in the red zone, genuinely hard intervals, high intensity work. And almost none of [music] it is in the yellow zone, the middle. Why? Because that yellow zone is the worst of both worlds. Too hard to actually recover from, [music] and not hard enough to push the adaptation you're after. You're paying the recovery cost of intense training and getting almost none of the benefit. Sailor [music] has a name for it, the black hole. That's the part that hit me the hardest. Because that yellow zone, the black hole, was [music] exactly where I'd been living. Mouth open, working hard, but not hard enough to actually trigger the adaptation I was after. Just hard enough to wreck my recovery. >> Wait. You're telling me the best athletes in the world spend most of [music] their time doing the easy stuff? Most of the best coaches I've talked to tell me the opposite. That's the thing, Scott. >> A lot of coaches are still coaching

39:10 purely for intensity. Sailor's data says intensity [music] is important, but lower intensities may have a bigger effect than most people want to believe. Both play a role. >> So, how do you actually train this within your own breathing? Well, I had a conversation with Rob Wilson and Brian Mackenzie about this topic. They built a ventilation framework that [music] you can split into five gears. Each one defined by what your breath's doing. This will give you better control of what your breath is [music] doing for any intensity you're working at. I'm going to let my inner otaku out for a second. For the OG DBZ fans, you remember when Goku worked making Super Saiyan his base state during the Cell saga? He walked around in it, made the transformation his default. It's kind of like that. Can we increase our power output while breathing calm? Can we >> [music] >> broaden our base? That's what Sailor's data is showing. The athletes at the top

39:55 of the world spend 80% of their time making their [music] base stronger. Let's break the breathing gears down. These aren't hard lines. Where one gear ends and the next begins is a feel, not a number. You blend between them all the time. Gear one, all [music] nasal. In through the nose, out through the nose. Quiet, almost invisible. This is walking, light movement, recovery work. [music] Gear two, still nasal in and out, but the inhale and exhale get more powerful, a bit faster, a bit more forceful. This is power nasal. This is where a lot of your conditioning happens. You're pushing, but the system stays regulated. Heart rate is elevated, but you're not panicking. You could hold a conversation, but you wouldn't want to. Gears one and two, both fully nasal, are Sailor's green zone. That's the 80%. [music] Gear three, the transitional gear, nasal inhale, mouth exhale. This is the bridge between staying nasal and opening your

40:41 mouth. You shift up through it on the way to [music] harder work or shift back down as you recover. Gear four, the mouth opens, but you're not redlining yet. The comfortable hard zone, easy mouth breathing. In your sport, you might be spending a lot of [music] time here, and that's fine. The game demands it. The trap isn't the gear, it's making it where all of your training [music] lives. This is Sailor's yellow zone, the black hole, where a lot of people grind out all their conditioning. It feels productive, but as [music] a default, it's too hard to build your engine efficiently and too easy to sharpen your top end efficiently. Gear five, mouth in, mouth out, you're redlining. Maximum effort, Sailor's red zone, the 15 to 20%. It's useful to have gear five. You need to know you can go there when a fight or a competition demands it, but you shouldn't live there. And if you're thinking, "Wait, doesn't Wim Hof breathe

41:26 fast and heavy all the time?" You're right. Before a competition, a hard round, deliberate fast breathing like Wim Hof or Tummo shifts you towards a more sympathetic side, the fight or flight [music] side. Your adrenaline climbs, you can feel sharp and ready. It's a great tool, but you already have that side. Most of us are running on the sympathetic side all day long, wired more than we need to be. So, the direction you're probably missing >> [music] >> is the calm one. You might be looking at gears one and two thinking that's painfully boring. I thought the same thing, but knowing the gears isn't why I changed how I train. What changed everything was what the lower gears did between rounds. [music] And this is one of the first things you'll notice changing as you start to practice this. Most people measure aerobic fitness by how hard they can push, but an even more important idea is how fast can you recover? How quickly does your breathing

42:12 settle after a burst? How few minutes before you're ready to go again? When I started building my gear one and two capacity, the first thing I noticed wasn't that my output went up. It was that my recovery between rounds on the mats got dramatically faster. [music] I'd go hard, then I'd be back to nasal breathing while the other person was still trying to get theirs under control. It's just another bonus of building the lower gear. There's also a simple tool for accelerating that recovery between [music] rounds, the physiological sigh. Two quick inhales through the nose, then a long exhale through the mouth. Andrew Huberman's Stanford lab found that this pattern was the most effective breathwork tool for acute stress reduction. I'll use this during rounds or in between. It helps keep me calm and helps pull the heart rate down. The double inhale fills your lungs completely, and the longer exhale is where your nervous system shifts down. Those are tools for the moment, but what really changed for me happened

42:59 over months of staying in the lower gear. And once you understand why, it's hard to train any other way. Your aerobic system's built primarily in moderate zones, [music] not at max effort. When you're in gear one and two, your heart rate's learning to pump more blood per beat. Your muscle cells are building more energy producing machinery, or mitochondrial density if you want the science term. [music] More of these little engines mean your body uses more oxygen more efficiently. When you're in gear five, you're training your anaerobic system. Useful, >> [music] >> but limited. It runs on fuel that burns out fast, and the recovery cost is super high. That's why the bigger [music] aerobic base makes the gear five more powerful, and it'll be available when you need to call on it. If your aerobic capacity is deep, it takes a lot more effort for an opponent or workout to push you into that redline state. While you're sustaining gear one and two

43:44 output, your opponent might [music] already be in gear five. So, the goal is to expand gears one and two so dramatically that the higher gears become a choice rather than your default. Once I understood this, I flipped my training. Instead of redlining every session, I started doing most [music] of my conditioning in gear two, nasal breathing only. If my mouth opened, I slowed down. My tools of choice are the jump rope, assault bike, [music] sled, some road work, but you can use anything. The rower, skier, whatever floats your boat. Anything where you can track your output. At first, the output felt embarrassingly low. >> [music] >> I look at the wattage on the assault bike, which was usually around 250, and I thought that couldn't be doing anything. So, the numbers are lower, but you're claiming it's working better? How do I know I'm not just getting lazy

44:30 and calling it training? Fair. That is one way you could think about it. And that's why most people quit. So, I had to ask myself, >> [music] >> am I getting weaker, or am I building something underneath that hasn't shown up yet? And I stayed with it. I kept showing up and kept my mouth closed. Now, over time, the numbers climbed without my mouth ever opening. Work that would have had me gasping [music] a few years ago became something I could sustain while breathing through my nose. [music] These days, when I need gear five, when I'm competing or in a hard gear five training session, I have a bigger engine underneath it. I'm able to recover faster from it. And to train it, I'll hit gear five maybe once or twice a week. [music] That's it. The rest is the base. If you want to go deeper on this, Stephen Seiler's TED Talk [music] on polarized training is one of the most

45:16 useful 15 minutes you'll spend. I'll link it in the description. I ran an experiment. 20 weeks nasal only zone two on the bike. Tracked everything. Heart rate, watts, how hard it felt. The numbers were fine, but that's not what got me. It was I just felt different. Calmer. Not just during the session, but after. For hours. Now, I don't have a citation for that. I still don't know if it's the breathing itself or the consistency of showing up for 12 weeks straight. That really bugs me. But either way, something's definitely changed.

46:01 >> Yeah. That's the part the spreadsheet can't capture. But, the body knows how it feels. Listen, at the end of the day, I'm a meathead. The gears we just covered do train your breathing muscles. Every nasal cardio session is helping you breathe [music] deeper and hit your diaphragm. But, this wouldn't be a complete video if I didn't show you how to bring resistance training to those [music] muscles directly. Your breathing muscles burn oxygen, too. Every system in your body is competing for that invaluable resource. Your legs want it, your arms [music] your brain wants it, and your breathing muscles are taking their cut whether you think about them or not. At peak effort, they use about 10 to 15% of your total oxygen budget. That's currency being spent [music] just moving air instead of powering the muscles doing the work. That's why this next part is so important. [music] The

46:47 more efficiently you breathe, the less your breathing muscles tax the system. There are two halves to this, and they do completely different jobs. There is the pump, the muscles that move the air, and there is the passage. The pump is your diaphragm and your intercostals, the muscles that drive every breath. That's the machinery you strengthen [music] with resistance. Passage is the airway itself. Your tongue, your soft palate, and the muscles around your throat. These don't move air. They just hold it open so the air can travel through. When they get weak, the airway collapses on you. Well, that's where snoring and sleep apnea come from. You want to train [music] both. For the pump, I use the Boss Revolution 2 trainer. You breathe through it, and it restricts air flow. >> Oh. Ah. Why can't I get any air in? This is

47:32 super hard. >> That's cuz you're not ready for level one, Scott. You should probably start at level seven or eight. >> The caps go from [music] level 14 down to level one. The smaller the holes, the less air gets through, and the harder your inspiratory muscles have to work to pull each breath in. >> [music] >> Level one is barely any air at all. Resistance training for your diaphragm and your intercostals, the muscles between your ribs that expand the cage so that you can take a deeper breath. The first time I use this thing, seriously, my ribs and my breathing muscles were sore the next day. Not my legs, [music] not my back, the muscles around my ribs. That's when I realized I've been training for years and never directly strengthen the muscles that let me breathe. Right now, I can hold around 12 minutes at about level 1 and 1/2, which [music] forces you down to roughly two breaths per minute. 5 minutes a day

48:17 is enough to start. Keep your shoulders down, breathe into the diaphragm, and if you're pulling from your chest or neck, you're compensating. Think of it like training [music] with a weighted vest. You train against resistance and the muscles adapt. Then, when you take it off, breathing normally feels effortless. But, only works if you actually use it. Most people buy and let it sit on a shelf. So, don't be that person. Now, the other half, the passage, the airway itself. This is the half most people have never thought about training. But, remember that study from 2006 I mentioned earlier? They had people learn to play the didgeridoo. 4 months, about 25 minutes a day, 5 days a week. The result was a measurable reduction in sleep apnea events. Less daytime sleepiness, less snoring as reported by their partners. And how did this happen? It comes down to circular breathing. That's the skill that lets the player hold one unbroken note for

49:04 minutes at a time. If you just blow into the thing, your tongue barely moves. But, to keep the sound going while you sneak in your next [music] breath, you press your tongue up to the roof of your mouth to seal off the back of your throat, push the last bit of stored air in your cheeks to hold the note, and take a quick nasal inhale at the same time. That seal, the tongue [music] to the soft palate, is the exact muscle action that keeps your airway from collapsing while you're asleep. Each cycle of circular breathing trains it. I really enjoy this instrument. So, I've invested some money into getting some nice ones. Here's a $37 didgeridoo from Guitar Center. And shoot, you go to Home Depot and grab yourself some PVC. That'll do the job. The instrument is truly amazing in more ways than I have time to talk about in this video. But, the main benefit for us right now is [music] the breathing pattern it forces on you.

49:51 I think I felt something on that one. You're enjoying this, aren't you? Uh, a little. I'd say this is the most complete tool on the list, but it's not just the didgeridoo. A 2020 review pointed to double reed instrument players. Think about the oboe [music] and the bassoon. They had the lowest sleep apnea risk of any musician group. The whole family of wind instruments [music] trains those muscles. Personally, I do play the saxophone. The tongue strikes the reed for every articulation. The lips seal against the mouthpiece [music] and you're exhaling against resistance. The research puts the saxophone in the middle of the hierarchy. Less direct [music] than the didgeridoo, but it works. Even though I wish you would, most of you aren't going to pick up a didgeridoo [music] or learn to play an

50:37 instrument. So, what else can you actually do? Here are a few options working from what you can do right now for [music] free. We get some tongue action. And you can do this stuff anywhere. Even right now. Tip of your tongue against your teeth. Circle slowly around the inside of your mouth. A minute [music] in one direction, then a minute in the other. A lot of people in the Stronger Human community are doing this. So, feel free to do it anywhere, even working at your desk. Two, tongue to palate. Press the entire tongue up against the roof of your mouth >> [music] >> and hold. Or slide the tip of your tongue from your front teeth slowly backwards to the soft palate. This was from a 2009 sleep apnea study. Patients doing tongue and throat exercises for 3 [music] months cut their sleep apnea events by almost 40%. Without an instrument and without a device. Before you think this is a joke, when you do

51:23 it, your tongue and surrounding muscles are going to get sore, like a workout. Think about that. You don't usually work these tissues that much and they're weak. Fixing that will make a difference. Three, humming. Easy, free. There's a study showing humming increases nitric oxide by 15 times compared to quiet breathing. That's the same nitric oxide we talked about earlier. Bronchodilator, antimicrobial, the stuff your nose is supposed to be making. Humming forces the soft palate to engage and wraps up nitric oxide production. A way to stack what we just shared, do these movements while humming. Boom. Time saved. I think I like this one the most.

52:08 Of course it is, Scott. [music] Four, balloons. A Hixson Gracie teaching tool. He uses it in his seminars to show people what diaphragmatic breathing actually looks like. [music] When you blow it up with a shallow chest breath and then you blow another one up with a deeper diaphragmatic breath, the difference is telling. The bigger the balloon, the better the breath. But, >> [music] >> there's a second use for it. Repeatedly inflating a balloon with a deep diaphragmatic breath was actually [music] part of a 2009 study that showed that it trains the soft palate, the lips, and the expiratory muscles all at once. A dollar a day gets you a bag of 50. And that O2 trainer I just showed you, there's a setting that adds resistance to your exhale, not just your inhale. Most people don't know that. It trains your expiratory muscles and the muscles around your throat that stabilize your airway. The good news is

52:54 that you don't have to pick [music] one. Use the full menu. The O2 trainer for the pump and then tongue exercises, balloon work, and the didgeridoo for the passage. This [music] covers both. I'll put all of this in a structured breath training course inside of the stronger human community. Full progressions, what to do when, and how to combine the tools, how to play a didgeridoo, slow and fast breathing protocols, how to do the abdominal waves. If you want the protocol versions, they're all in there. But, today I'm asking you to do just one thing. Keep your mouth shut when your nose can do the job.

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