breathing pattern

Hi,

I'm really confused by breathing pattern in exercises. General rule is that inhale when lowering weight and exhale when lifting weight. This seems natural in pushing movements such the presses (bench, military, etc.) but how does it work in pulling ones? As an example, for chin-ups, one would exhale when pulling his/her body up and inhale when lowering or vice versa? There seem to be a lot of conflicting instructions on this particular exercise. Also, would you exhale while lifting and inhale while lowering when doing bicep curls? Thanks.

Generally you exhale while the muscle is contracting and inhale while it's lengthening, generally.

I'm sure the regulars will tell us whether it makes a whit's difference, but it comes most naturally for me to exhale on exertion. That is, if you call wheezing grunts which sound like 'Wuuuuhn... twoooo... threeeee... fouuuuur...' exhaling.

A person can do anything he wants on high-rep dumbell curls, I suppose, but I'd be hard-pressed to figure out how to build abdominal pressure with the diaphragm while inhaling and grunting at the same time.

If I'm all wrong on this, well... never mind.

BTW, has anyone ever heard of a gym which didn't allow men to grunt during lifts because it offended female patrons? I knew of a college in the northwest with this policy 10-15 years ago. Every male who wasn't skinny and 'PC' thought it was a huge joke... I don't think many females I asked were offended either.

There are a few times when you delay exhalation briefly. Exhaling significantly at the bottom of a heavy squat will fold you like an accordion, so you want to hold the breath for a second or two, then begin exhaling once the ascent is well on its way. Some folks will hold it all the way up, but that's a bit much for me.

Folks with high blood pressure, and/or older folks, need to be a bit more careful about breath holding under load. But that's a small matter which is easily monitored.

I used to work out at a gym years ago where one of the female patrons was the biggest offender, gruntwise. She would make these screaming yelps that sounded as if she was into hour 31 of unmedicated first-child-labour. But hey, she was squatting, so that's cool.

I'd rather see a 'no shitty music' policy. That offends my ears more.

I need to learn to control my breathing better when squatting. I know I tend to hold my breath for control and then let it out while the ascent is underway and closer to the top - but - I've got very low blood pressure and find that doing this causes me to get light headed easily.

Its just so hard to learn to breath right when you have to think about it.

There's alot of things to be thinking about during lifting.......and here I always thought it was a mindless activity! Keeping correct form is enough of a challenge right now, without thinking about breathing. My PT is always reminding me to breath........I hold my breath alot too. You wouldn't think you'd have to be reminded to breath.

determined