HOW TO BREATHE WHEN DOING ALL VERSIONS OF ROWS, PULLDOWNS AND CHIN-UPS/PULL-UPS

HOW TO BREATHE WHEN DOING ALL VERSIONS OF ROWS, PULLDOWNS AND CHIN-UPS/PULL-UPS

Breathing during back training is, to be honest, completely misunderstood by most trainers...if you have trouble feeling your back while training your back, it's generally your breathing pattern that is messing you up.

You have to breathe BACKWARDS when training back or your lats will never be in a proper biomechanical position to fully engage. I'll explain...

Generally speaking, you're told to exhale on the exertion and inhale on the lowering phase of an exercise.

But here's the thing and where people get confused...in back training, the exertion LOOKS like the lowering phase of the exercise so THAT is when people tend to exhale! Instead, you actually want to INHALE as you perform the exertion. I'll use the pulldown as an example.

When you perform a pulldown, you want to puff your chest to meet the bar and have an arch in your lower back to fully activate the lats. You don't want a flat chest and a vertical torso position.

So when you pull the bar down, that's the exertion. If you exhale (which you normally would do) this actually caves in the chest and straightens out your lower back. The moment this happens, it reduces lat involvement and puts more stress onto other muscles.

Switch things up and INHALE as you're pulling down.

Now as you pull down, your chest is expanding and rising up to meet the bar, which instantly puts the lats in their best possible position to activate.

The difference is instantaneous and HUGE. If you've always had trouble feeling your back work, this will be a big eye-opener for you.

As you let the bar come back on the negative, THAT is when you exhale. It's a bit of a mind-bender the first time you do it...I can promise you it'll make a big difference in your back training.

You'll now just apply that same principle to the rest of your back exercises (except the deadlift, which is a whole different animal...more akin to the squat in terms of breathing). When you row, inhale as you pull the handles or bar into your abdomen. When you chin, inhale as you pull yourself up.