Flat breathing refers to the method that weightlifters hold their breath and close the glottis, while exerting pressure on the abdominal cavity with abdominal and chest muscles. If your car runs out of gas at the intersection, you have to push it to the side of the road first, or you will be killed by a car. You will open the car door, lean your shoulder against the door frame, take a deep breath, and then push the car. Unless you want to take another quick breath, you probably won't exhale until people and cars leave the road. To be clear, you wouldn't even think about it, because our ancestors spent millions of years pushing heavy objects and taught our central nervous system the correct way to breathe when pushing heavy objects. You may develop, and when you exert your strength, you will purr-a sound made by the obvious suppression of the airway at the glottis. This inhibition produces an air pressure rise similar to that of partial exhalation. This may be similar to "eyah" in martial arts-a way to concentrate strength and release amazing impact instantly.
When you inhale, your diaphragm contracts and the volume of your chest increases. As the air flows into the dilated lungs, the pressure inside and outside the chest reaches equilibrium. When you hold your breath hard and tighten your trunk muscles, you will create a pressure difference inside and outside your body. When the intensity of muscle contraction increases, the pressure will also increase significantly. Because there is only a diaphragm between the chest and abdomen, the pressure in the abdominal cavity will also increase. The spine is kept in the correct position under the action of the back muscles. Through the incompressible abdominal cavity, static pressure is transmitted to the spine, consolidating the correct position of the spine.
So the pressure in your abdominal cavity and chest cavity will be transmitted to your spine from the front and both sides. At this time, erector spinae will exert pressure on the spine from the back. When you hold your breath, the pressure in your chest increases, which is further enhanced by the tension of rectus abdominis and oblique abdominis. In this way, the support for the spine is established, and it surrounds the spine like a rigid pillar. Weightlifting belts enhance this effect. Its main function is to support the column from the front and side, not to exert pressure from the back.
Traditionally, it is believed that the pressure in the chest and abdomen will also act on the vascular system of the trunk, and this increase in pressure will be transmitted to the head through blood vessels, which may lead to cerebrovascular accidents, such as stroke or rupture of cerebral aneurysm. However, this assumption ignores several facts. Most importantly, if the pressure across a diaphragm will destroy it, there must be a pressure difference, that is, the pressure on both sides of the diaphragm is different. Otherwise, it is impossible to rupture the diaphragm. When we lift heavy objects and use the tile breathing method, the pressure of the whole system is synchronous, and there is no pressure difference at any boundary. The pressure that enters the cephalic artery upward along the cervical vessels is the same as the pressure that acts on cerebrospinal fluid in the spinal canal. This liquid passes through the subdural cavity in the skull from bottom to top, transmitting the pressure to the whole ventricular system and balancing the cardiovascular pressure at the blood-brain interface.
Traditional thinking also ignores that the skull is actually a pressure vessel, which can withstand high pressure. Imagine stuffing a balloon into a glass bottle and trying to blow it up and make it burst-this is obviously impossible unless you can make the bottle burst at the same time. The pressure vessel prevents the pressure difference between the balloon and the bottle. The transmembrane pressure in the skull is within the tolerance range of the bone container, which can control and prevent the pressure change. In cerebrovascular accident, the change of pressure is necessary to destroy the intima. Therefore, unless you inhale, all trans-structural pressures inside the skull will remain constant.
When carrying weight, the lung pressure increases and the abdominal muscles contract, which leads to the increase of abdominal pressure and the contraction of erector spinae, which together have a comprehensive effect of stabilizing the spine. The flat breathing method enhances the ability of weightlifters to produce this kind of pressure and stability. When using heavy objects, it is best to hold your breath when lifting them. When we are lifting weights or pushing hard, the support of chest and abdomen pressure on the spine is the reason why we naturally use flat breathing.
Most importantly, no one can squat with a 400-pound barbell without enough training. Just like other tissue systems in the body, the cardiovascular system will adapt to resistance training, and this adaptation will occur with the increase of strength. Anyone who can squat with a heavy load has adapted to this in all necessary ways. No weightlifter will exhale when pulling 800 pounds. For any trainer, including any athlete, following the advice of "Inhale when squatting and exhale when getting up" is actually more likely to lead to orthopedic injury than to prevent stroke.
In fact, you will try to take a deep breath and hold your breath before carrying out the maximum weight-bearing exercise-this is a good exercise. When using light weight training, you should develop correct breathing habits, so that when the load increases, this mode has been well established-it has become a habit of yours. Compared with the problems that may be caused by flat breathing, many problems are avoided.