When you spend your days learning how to powerfully flip, leap, and swing, it's easy to take for granted the importance of something as ordinary as breathing. Well, take in a deep breath, fully exhale, and find out how the simple act of deep breathing can improve your gymnastics - and your health!

Deep, expansive inhales and complete exhales can -

1. Decrease feelings of stress and anxiety by slowing down breath which keeps the brain in a relaxed state of mind

2. Decrease back pain by encouraging spinal mobility with every rib cage moving breath

3. Increase flexibility by improving circulation of oxygen to your muscles and by decreasing muscle tension

4. Ensuring readiness for the next practice by promoting muscle and mental recovery

5. Increase Mental Focus by giving you a chance to reconnect to your body

Tips for Breaths that Rejuvenate, Refresh, and Recover

Take full inhales that expand your chest and belly outward and sideways (avoid raising your shoulders)
Fully exhale. In fact, exhale longer than you inhale.
Try imagining that you are inhaling feelings of positivity and exhaling feelings of negativity
Inhale through your nose and exhale through your mouth

Take a few minutes to do these breathing exercises right before practice, before any challenging task, and while you’re processing your coach’s feedback.

Want to learn more? Send us an email and we'd be happy to elaborate!

To move, to breathe, to fly, to float,

To gain all while you give,

To roam the roads of lands remote,

To travel is to live.

-Hans Christian Anderson

By Alyssa Herrera-Set, Doctor of Physical Therapy, Certified Pilates Teacher, and owner of On the Move Physical Therapy in Belmont, California