Breathing

Breathing is the least understood and most unappreciated of all human activities.

We breathe an average of 20,000 times a day. Any problems we have in breathing are multiplied 20,000 times a day.

While we die from heart attacks, we are miserable from shallow breathing.

Constriction in breathing can cause poor skin tone, fatigue, anxiety, mild depression, poor posture, pain, premature senility, poor athletic performance, osteoporosis and heart attacks.

Vital Capacity

Vital capacity is the amount of air you can hold in your lungs when you take a deep breath. It is not a good measure of breathing, since we don't walk around taking maximum deep breaths. In fact, most people walk around holding or constricting their breath (we have even found athletes who do this while running, swimming and playing golf and tennis!).

Trunk Wall Flexibility

The flexibility of your trunk wall is a better measure of your breathing. You should be able to expand a minimum of 15% of your circumference at your stomach, diaphragm and chest. Anyone with a 40" chest should expand a minimum of 6". Most people are lucky if they expand 2". We have measured athletes who expanded 9", while we have measured other clients who expanded as little as 1/4". You can order an article from us that will show you how to measure these ranges, as well as show you how to stretch them.

Carbon Dioxide

When breathing is shallow and restricted, carbon dioxide builds up in your lungs. This carbon dioxide is then picked up by your bloodstream instead of oxygen, thereby making your blood more acidic. Your body then pulls calcium from your muscles and bones to rebuffer the blood stream.

This depletes the muscles and bones of calcium. The muscles tense up and can tend to cramp, while the bones can become thinner over time.

The calcium will then deposit on cholesterol in the coronary arteries, causing plaques and blockage, leading to heart attacks.

Exercise

Research and thousands of articles have extolled the virtues of exercise. None of them has mentioned the most important benefit of exercise: blowing off carbon dioxide. As carbon dioxide accumulates in our lungs, less oxygen gets to the brain. Since our brain runs on oxygen and sugar, a drop in either one leads to fatigue and fuzzy thinking. When we exercise we blow off the carbon dioxide. This is why we feel less fatigued after exercising.

Stress, Impact, Illness and Overuse

Breathing becomes restricted from stress, impact and illness. Under stress we hold our breath. With some impacts we get the breath knocked out of us. With bronchitis, asthma and illness our chest muscles tense up to reduce irritation to the lungs. Too many bench presses, pull downs, push-ups and sit-ups can tighten our shoulder muscles and also restrict our breathing.

Microfibers

This tension, whether we are aware of it or not, causes microfibers to form in the connective tissue between the muscles. These microfibers are a mild form of adhesion or scar tissue. They form to immobilize the area so it can heal.

Unfortunately, once the area has healed, the microfibers not only do not go away, they tend to accumulate over time. They cannot be released by stretching. Since they are very small, the only way to know if you have microfibers is to measure your trunk wall flexibility.

Microfiber and Tension Reduction

Microfiber Reduction is a proprietary form of connective tissue massage developed by Somax to improve flexibility far beyond what stretching alone can do. Tension Reduction is our special program to reduce tension in specific muscle groups. By releasing microfibers and tension in the trunk wall and shoulders, we have been able to improve breathing flexibility by as much as 300%.

Microfiber and Tension Reduction are available to our clients in our individual programs, national team programs and camps.

Clients

In the future you will be able to see profiles and photos of clients who have improved their breathing flexibility with Microfiber Reduction by going to Clients and Testimonials.

Schedule and Appointments

Please contact us to discuss our breathing programs and schedule appointments.

www.somaxsports.com