why weight lifting belt?
You’ve undoubtedly heard your trainers advise you to use proper breath control during heavy lifts that it is the reason to why weight lifting belt safely.But what is “breath control” and how does it work? Well, I’m glad you asked! Let’s examine the details of why you should breathe properly during strength training and how to successfully implement it in your weightlifting workout. The overall purpose of breath control is to stabilize your core and lumbar spine for both safety and efficiency.
Safety
It’s tough to hold a neutral spine while pulling a heavy deadlift. But if we don’t then we will eventually let our lumbar spine fold into flexion under load and shoot an intervertebral disc out of our lower back and into the whiteboard. Breath control helps keep our spine safely extended.
Efficiency
Part of our training at CrossFit Impulse involves moving the heaviest loads possible. The spine transmits a lot of force throughout the body, so it’s advantageous to keep it as rigid as possible. Would it be easier to lift something with a rigid metal rod or a wet noodle? Breath control helps us make our spine closer to the rigid metal rod. But it’s also about your core—all the muscles that make up your abdomen and attach to your pelvis. Keeping our core rigid through breath control gives heavy loads less chance to break us over. Is it easier to support a load on an inflated air mattress or a deflated one? The inflated air mattress is a core using breath control.
Execution
Breath control means that before you perform a lift you take in the largest breath possible by primarily expanding your abdomen–not your chest. Sure, the chest will rise a little too, but we’re looking for the primary motion to be in your gut. At the same time you will contract your abs and try to push outward against them. Hold your breath and continue to hold this outward pressure on your abs. The feeling should be similar to bracing for a punch or trying to keep from crapping your pants. Hold this throughout the squat, press, deadlift, etc and then you can release.
