HOW TO PROPERLY BREATH WITH A LIFTING BELT

Today I'm going to explain about something a little more basic, but very important. I´m going to take you through basic anatomy and mechanics of a proper breath with a belt. When we aren't thinking about it, we normally take breaths properly. If you're like going to dive underwater or something, you're going to get a big belly breath. You're going to expand your diaphragm and get as much air in you as possible. But anytime you tell someone to take a big breath, they normally do it incorrectly. They take a big chest breath. They kind of suck their belly in and take a big shallow breath and they get their chest real big. That's not what we want to do when we are doing a Valsalva maneuver to lift heavy weights.

I'm going to explain real briefly about the anatomy of the way we need to be taking a deep breath.

In the posterior view on our spine, we've got our two big lumbar muscles that go down.
In the lateral view, you´ve got your obliques that connect right there.
In the anterior view you have your abdominals, which can start up and connect down into the pubis.

We need to hold our spine in proper lumbar extension. The thing is there's nothing to support the inside of the spine. So we have to find a way to support that, and our bodies are designed to do that through the Vasalva maneuver. We do it subconsciously. We don't think about it. If you told your grandmother to pick up a box off the ground, she would do this naturally. But now that we're people think about it, they do this wrong all the time.

The way we want to do this is we want to take a big deep belly breath, so our diaphragm expands down (that's whenever the belly kind of bulges from the breath), and then we squeeze our abs. That compacts everything down and puts pressure against the inside of the spine, which supports the inside of the spine. So now we have the circular support from the abs and then internal pressure supporting the inside of the spine, and that's how we can hold our spine straight.

When we are using a belt, we want the belt to go above the hip bone and below the ribs. Rusty, coach at the Wichita Falls Athletic Club, has seen a lot of silly stuff online where people are wearing the belt way up. That defeats the entire purpose of the belt. The belt is designed so whenever we take our breath and expand our stomachs, our stomachs have something to push off of, which means we can squeeze harder. That's the whole purpose of a belt. You don't want it so tight because you can't get the breath. You don't want it so loose, where you can actually move the belt around. It needs to be very snug. So, when we take that big belly breath, it pushes against the belt and it gives us more support.

Now, I'm going to explain differences in belt tightness and the difference between a chest breath and a belly breath.

If you´ve got the belt one hole too big than you normally wear it and you take your big breath like you're going to Valsalva, you can put your hand in there. You can move your hand around. That's too loose. That's not doing you any favors.
If you get the belt one or two holes too tight than you normally wear it, this is going to be uncomfortable. You're probably not going to be able to get a full breath, so, that's pretty tight. You can't even barely get your fingers in there. If you take your breath, you cannot even get a full breath. So, that's incorrect.
Now I'm going to show you what a chest breath looks like. Put the belt on your normal hole, that is to say, the normal tightness that you wear, and put your hands in there, so you can get your fingers in there. Now, take a big breath actually. If you can still move your fingers around, you're taking a chest breath. Because all the air is up there, your diaphragm hasn't expanded down to make your belly bigger. So, that's not going to do you any good. We want the belly to expand with your breath.
If you put your fingers in there and take your normal breath squeezing, now that's tight. It's hard for you to get your fingers out of there. That's supporting you. That´s a belly breath.

Those are a lot of things to consider whenever you're starting to use a belt. There's a proper way to use a belt, and then, there's a lot of ways to mess it up. The belt's job is to help you. It's to help support your spine. It allows you to get a good breath and then tighten harder so your low back is supported. You don't want the belt too tight. You don't want it too loose. You want it just right. Use a 3-in belt. A 3-in belt will be perfect for the space between your hip bone and your ribs. So, there's a lot of things to consider. Use a belt. It's a tool to help you lift more weight, and that is the whole reason why we are in the gym.