Does what?
I think you’re on to something with that sort of stoic internal in-the-moment approach to super hard intervals.
to OP: I like where your head is at. My entire life is spent asking “how can I make this better” in sport. (PhD in sport phys)
Short answer: you cannot stockpile oxygenation in your tissues, lungs, or blood, beyond exacting current demand. The only changes you might cause are respiratory alkalosis which if not offset by the tradeoffs of increase respiratory rate might confer a transient acid-buffering benefit for the higher-intensity efforts. However, the action of intentionally altering breathing rate or strategy costs oxygen at the lung muscle level and probably reduces mechanical efficiency in the legs and negates any transient buffering advantage, if it exists at all.
I often send the following text to clients. Hope it’s useful!
The primary purpose of breathing is to transport air into and out of the lungs. This transports carbon dioxide out and oxygen in. Maximizing that exchange is accomplished by maximizing how much air goes in and comes out of the lungs. If you over-breathe, your body will just stop you from doing that by slowing your breathing rate naturally. If you feel like you need to breathe more, you’ll benefit from breathing more and your body will do that naturally.
This all happens, both at rest, and during exercise, because chemoreceptors monitor the level of oxygen in your blood and fine tune your breathing rate to match your needs. These chemoreceptors act just like a thermostat in your house but instead of regulating temperature, they regulate oxygen and CO2 concentrations in your blood.
If you pre-select a breathing rate you’re mentally overriding your chemoreceptors which are highly adept at fine-tuning air exchange to match your muscles exact needs. Your exercise performance will be worse because of it.
The best arguments for breathing rhythm focus during exercise are:
- Intentionally restricting pace of exercise to what can be accomplished with restricted breathing as a way to limit overall exertion level. You still should not intentionally alter your breathing rate, but just pay attention to it, and if you notice it shifts to a faster rhythm than allowed for in your training programming, slow your pace very subtly until your breathing rate naturally falls back down to the prescribed rate without intentional breathing modification.
- Mindfulness, which is an essential skill for both pace-monitoring, and for assessing how much more you have left to give.
- Orthopedic rhythm. That is, it’s often more comfortable for a person to have an inhale or an exhale to fall in rhythm with their stride or pedal stroke.
Common misconceptions:
- “If I’m breathing fast, I’m doing something wrong.” No, you’re probably just pushing yourself, and if fitness is the goal, that’s great. If you always burn out quickly in your training sessions, then sure, go ahead and slow down for at least half your running sessions. But sometimes you should be breathing fast and heavy.
- “In through your nose, out through your mouth.” No, your nostrils are tiny air passageways compared to your mouth. The goal of breathing is to inhale and exhale air. Doing so through your nose causes unnecessary resistance to inhalation and will hurt exercise performance, without a doubt. It can be a great calming practice when not exercising, but has no place in running.
My recommendations for breathing during running:
- Breathe however you like, through both your nose and mouth.
- Be mindful of your breathing rate if you like, but don’t change it artificially.
- Settle into a breathing rhythm that feels good and natural with your strides or pedal strokes.