Evolving Performance

Episode 4: Respiratory Training to Improve Performance & Recovery with Andrew Hauser

• Kevin Neeld • Season 1 • Episode 4

Share episode

In this episode, Andrew Hauser discusses the significant impact respiratory training can have on both performance and recovery, including:

  • The science of breathing and how the relationship between carbon dioxide and oxygen can impact performance 
  • Specific breathing strategies to immediately impact short-term performance
  • Longer-term adaptations to respiratory training
  • Programming recommendations on how different breathing methods align with more traditional training practices
  • Where athletes should start with respiratory training and objective measures to monitor progress

Evolve with Andrew:

Supporting High Performance
Metabolic Elite's entire line is designed to specifically support the health, performance, and recovery of high performers. Each product is formulated using research-supported ingredients and dosages using the highest quality ingredients, so you can be confident that every product you take will deliver the maximal benefit and effect.

Check out why Metabolic Elite's Liposomal Tablet delivery system is a game-changer: LPT White Paper

Save 15% using the code 'neeld15' at checkout here: Metabolic Elite

My personal go-to's:

  • To improve focus, decision making, and coordination: Synapsin
  • To improve inflammation and recovery: Tetra Cur
  • To support the immune system and weight management: Viraxall
  • To improve digestive health: Max 12 Probiotic

Contact Kevin:

Thanks for listening!

Contact Kevin:

Thanks for listening!

Andrew Hauser (00:02)
That's how you start.

Kevin Neeld (00:04)
Yeah. Andrew, really excited to have you on. Thanks for doing this.

Andrew Hauser (00:08)
Yeah, no, thanks for having me, man. I feel like I need to talk semi -Canadian. Like, it's not even Canadian. It's like there's a hockey dialect. Everybody sounds Canadian, but they're not.

Kevin Neeld (00:21)
Yeah, I've been accused a lot of having a Canadian accent, having grown up in southeastern Pennsylvania. That's a, it's a little off base, but I guess you pick things up as you go. you know, I, I want to do a deep dive on, on breathing and respiratory training and the impact that that can have on performance, but just really to lay the foundation for that conversation. Let's start very high level. And can you take us through the physiology of respiration? So, you know, what happens when we breathe in and we breathe out?

Andrew Hauser (00:50)
Yeah. I'm going to touch on some pieces because there, this is, there's so many layers I feel like to it. It should be, you know, it should be simple, but there's like some mechanical things that are happening. And, I think that's a big one and we'll touch on some like postural positioning and whatnot and what's happening, you know, chest wall expansion or decompression.

dead anatomical dead space. Like these are all important things. I actually recently got put onto an interesting researcher. There's two people I would urge everyone to go out and see before I really dive into this. There's a guy named Barry Nenem. He is an Australian researcher. He's an older fellow did a lot on endothelial cells and essentially gas perfusion. And so there's a lot going on there that

I'm going to be honest, I don't fully comprehend at this point. I mean, we're taking in so much nitrogen from air in general. And then that's also getting dispersed in the body. Most of what's lining our arteries is oxygen and nitrogen. And then most of what's lining our veins is then carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is the big one that I think...

People are starting to grasp onto it a little more thanks to Patrick McCown and probably James Nestor's book, Breathe, but both are great resources if nobody's looked into them. I think Nestor's book especially just did a, it took a lot of information and did a good job of simplifying it. And I think in that book, you discuss like, they both discussed carbon dioxide a lot. And I think carbon dioxide for me has been,

the eye -opener for how I looked at things physiologically and just how truly important it is. And I know that's what Oxygen Advantage was built on. That's what Buktaiko was built on. And to me, that's what high -level sport is built on. It's really, I was having this conversation this morning with a friend and like, I'm starting to look at team sport. It's really just managing like where you're at on the oxygen disassociation curve.

and a big part of that is carbon dioxide, because it's going to like, you have high levels of that. It's going to shift you to the right on that curve. and our CO2 levels are pretty tightly regulated systemically. Cause that's what's happening. Like a guy goes out on a, has a hard shift on the ice or, is on the court. or you watch a major league baseball pitcher, like as they're struggling or as there's an emotionally tense moment, their breathing is.

a little more erratic or a little more intense looking. So carbon dioxide is really like, yes, it's a byproduct, but it's also a foundational chemical within our body. And I've been, I really started looking at that heavily a few years ago with a Capdometer. So I actually checked that nasally. Right versus left nostril. I always tell guys like,

It's just going to be the dumbest looking thing you do all day. I'm pretty confident of that because they have to stick this thing up their nose. but I, I originally started doing it because I want to get a systemic idea. And like I was comparing it to what I was finding in some boutique goes work with his control pause or with Patrick McCown's bolt score. That's the same thing really. which they do correlate quite highly, but what they don't do is check that asymmetry.

That to me is like a fascinating thing in the football and the hockey world, especially, because I was finding massive asymmetries with athletes that were concussed. And the, we'll say the measure that was clearly off and it's usually 0 .3 of a percent or greater. Sometimes I've seen up to 4 % difference in like a really traumatic head injury. But when you see those.

Difference is the side again, that's more abnormal generally relates to the side of impact as well. So there's a metabolic process that's taking place here. There's when there's that massive of an asymmetry to me, you have a system that can't regulate oxygen throughout the body. Cause oxygen is really like, it's a huge fuel source. Yeah, there's, there's.

creatine phosphate, I think is another important chemical that's, I think is even more important than I ever thought. But it follows the oxygen curve within tissue. And like they've, they found that in research back in 1999, they found that. So again, it's, it's a deep process, not to like, just work around your question, but like,

Taking air in through your nose and taking air in through your mouth are two dramatically different processes as well. So I think as we go and talk about more mechanical things, I think it'll explain the picture a little better rather than, hey, we take air in, it goes down our trachea, our tongue's doing this, it's doing that. Our diaphragm is contracting.

our alveoli, that's what really allows the alveoli to take in air. And that's where the oxygen profusion is really starting to happen. Because what I'm seeing is that it's actually got almost like an ability to compartmentalize these different gases and then get oxygen into a red blood cell.

Kevin Neeld (06:55)
So you would you would mention this earlier on and I just want to highlight it for the listener that may not be as familiar with what you know oxygen dissociation curve looks like but can you just maybe go into a little bit more detail on the relationship between co2 and oxygen dissociation and what oxygen dissociation means and you know essentially you had mentioned when co2 goes up.

How does that impact your body's ability to utilize oxygen?

Andrew Hauser (07:28)
Yeah, no, absolutely. So again, the oxygen disassociation curve, think of it just being like a regular, like a X, Y axis. The curve is gradually going to go up. So if I move to the right of the curve, that is happening in higher CO2 environments. If I move more to the left of the curve, that's a lower CO2 environment. So...

When you're in lower CO2 environment, your system becomes more alkaline. Body temperature generally drops in those instances. So if you move to the right, it does the opposite. But I mean, you think if you do a hard workout, body temperature goes up, CO2 levels going up. So it's easier to conceptualize that way. Now you can drop off as you move to the right, you can drop off oxygen easier because you have more carbon dioxide.

Now the, and this is, I think, where confusion can happen. It's because when it's tightly regulated by our, by our bodies, our, our brains, our mitochondria, realistically, we'll, if we're not moving to the right, then we have to blow that CO2 off. Just because you can get more CO2 doesn't mean you need it. But if you do have that natural progression and shift to the right, so that's more of a chronic change that we're looking for.

Everyone talks about CO2 tolerance. So your CO2 tolerance really should start to shift where you're at on that curve to the right side of that graph. So yeah, you'll drop off oxygen easier. You should start like systemically. Again, we're an allostatic system. So you should see your just resting body temperature go up if you're truly making changes. The cool thing, like during COVID, I was seeing these things. I mean, we were...

measuring everybody's temperature every day. So it was, it was an easy testing ground. but it is the, where you're at on that curve, like when you get back off a shift, let's say, and you're on the bench, you're shifted to the right, but you don't own the right. So it's like your body's naturally, you're breathing heavier. you're breathing more frequently. Your body's trying to shift you back to the middle of that curve more or less.

So there's, I mean, there's different techniques where you can work to blow off carbon dioxide faster. Cause at that point it's, it's a performance advantage to get rid of it. Cause you don't have, you're not, you're not seven, 8 % CO2 systemically at that moment you are.

Kevin Neeld (10:15)
So, you know, that example kind of serves as a nice segue to, you know, I wanted to talk to you about some of the strategies that you can use and, you know, the impact that that can have both as far as the short -term responses and then more longer -term adaptations to some of the respiratory training strategies that you've used. And, you know, I think typically we hear breathing strategies being used to, you know,

down regulate sympathetic tone, and really, especially over the last 15 years or so to, you know, using some of these positional breathing strategies to help improve joint position or open up range of motion, both of which are really important. But, you know, you and I have had several conversations about what I think of as more performance based breathing strategies. So, you know, you just gave the example of blowing off.

know, potentially excess CO2 after a shift. What are some short -term breathing strategies that somebody may use, you know, during a competition to help facilitate a, you know, short -term shift either in their recovery or in their performance?

Andrew Hauser (11:28)
Yeah, there's a good question. There's two things I like to use specifically. It depends on the sport, depends on the situation, certainly. But for the athletes, like in your instance, like you have a first line guy, like he's going to have to get back on their eyes pretty quick, especially if you had a power play coming up or something. So, and I learned this from a gentleman named Brian Kozak. I mean, he really mentored me in this space. But.

It's a short, quick inhale through the nose and then a powerful, like all your air out, exhale. Doing three to five of those. If I had a Moxie on somebody, a Moxie monitor for, it's just a muscle oxygen monitor for the people that haven't seen one or I know Knox is the new device. But if you have one on, you will see that shift happen within a couple of seconds. And so it just helps you get rid of more CO2 at a quicker pace.

and it doesn't take too many, it's going to start to slow your breath back down. and that's the other skill I'll usually teach people for, you do it with baseball players a lot, especially pre at bat where, they'll, they'll do it all nasally. They'll, they'll start to slow down their breath. Nasally. They'll do a two second inhale, two second exhale, and then they'll hold. I have them.

hold, I don't want to do a max hold, but at least 10 seconds, ideal world we're working at like anywhere up to a minute, but then they need to be able to go right back into and repeat that cycle. So long term, I use that with a lot of people before bed as well, especially individuals that have had anxiety issues or if they snore or just like.

Again, if they're going through an injury process, it's super easy. I start them two in, two out, 10 second hold, but you have to repeat that for 15 minutes if you're doing it at home, at least 15. And you will see some pretty crazy things as far as.

hemoglobin going up and as well as picking up more oxygen. So it really, it looks like they're doing an active recovery work on a bike. Actually, if you had a Moxie monitor again on someone, you'll see CO2 levels substantially rise as well, which I think it's, it's worth noting like athletes or general people that have like, if they have anxiety symptoms, I mean, they're under 5%.

pretty much a lock in my experience. Usually they're in the low to mid fours. Sometimes you'll see people in the 3 % range, CO2 levels systemically. Most professional athletes live between about five and five and a half percent. And to me, the higher you are, the better like idea I have of how you can recover because carbon dioxide is a basodilator and a natural anti -inflammatory.

So usually the higher I like the more.

They usually have like robust aerobic systems, the individuals that can do that. And like they have a, where they've done some breath training.

Kevin Neeld (14:56)
So you had mentioned two seconds in, two seconds out, both through your nose, then holding your breath, starting with 10 second holds and correct me if I'm wrong, I thought you mentioned with holds up to a minute and then repeating that for up to 15 minutes at a clip. And that would be a strategy to improve the body's CO2 tolerance.

Andrew Hauser (15:09)
Yeah, not very many people can do that, but.

So it's going to drive carbon dioxide up and it's also going to slow their breath down. That's probably the most important thing. So that's why I use it with people in sport. They're obviously not going to do it for 15 minutes during a game, but it's going to slow their breathing down because as, as our carbon dioxide goes up, generally, like if we can't control that, our respiration rate has to pick up. And most of us are over -breathers.

Anyways, like we're breathing way more than we should be. Something I've seen exponentially with a number of athletes actually in a variety of sports. So many guys wear aura or whoop now. It's nice like, cause you can get this information. But I mean, respiration rate, we all know it picks up like right before you get sick. But I've been seeing the same thing over the last few years with right before a non -contact injury occurs as well.

so our body knows it's in a state of stress. so it's becoming more and more, it's less of a, now it's just starting to blow off the CO2 we do need. And so it's shifting you now. Talked about that curve. It's shifting you to the left side of that curve. Now I've seen this a lot with injuries, with dehydration, with longer flights, autoimmune issues, where.

Like you put a Moxi monitor on somebody and it's like, wow, like 90 % oxygen, 80 % oxygen, like right away. But their hemoglobin level, or if you use a Capnometer, their CO2 level will be super low. So it's like, they have a full gas tank, but they have a Fiat gas tank rather than like a professional athlete. Like you need at least a F -150. Well, now we'll, we'll pick a sportier car, but you need a big gas.

Kevin Neeld (17:17)
Need a bigger engine.

Andrew Hauser (17:19)
You need a

Kevin Neeld (17:19)
Yeah.

Andrew Hauser (17:20)
big tank. You don't want a small one. That's what tends to happen though in athletes, especially as the season goes on or guys are getting injured, their tanks plummeting, emotional issues. You see the same thing. So it's like you have all these monitoring options that are all telling pieces of the same story. And I think the breadth for me is what connects all these pieces.

Kevin Neeld (17:49)
So I want to circle back to that two and two out hold as a longer term training adaptation strategy in a second here. But from a short term standpoint, you know, you had mentioned a guy steps off the mound. You may have them use that. I imagine as a short term calm down, a little bit of a reset, you know, even mentally it gives you an opportunity to step away, go through a routine to reset a little bit. So.

You know, I think within that similar context, there are other strategies that have been recommended, whether it's, you know, the physiological side that's gotten a lot of press recently, or, you know, even some just controlled, almost box breathing type strategies. I'm hoping that you can kind of highlight what maybe some of the similarities are in these approaches and, or, you know, why should somebody listening, if they're an athlete and...

you know, if they're a hockey player, they're coming off a hard shift or, you know, if they're a football player and, you know, they're in a hurry up offense and they have minimal time and need to maximize their recovery and the short breaks that they have, you know, what would be the most effective strategy in those situations?

Andrew Hauser (19:03)
The one thing they all have in common, and this is what I really appreciate about what Wim Hof has done, it brings attention to their breath. So box breathing, I know there's been probably more research done on that technique than just about any technique out there, especially in the special operator space, but it is, it's slowing their breath down at the end of the day. There's some interesting research on physiological coordination.

and the breath and like a lot of Boutekos work kind of goes back to that. A lot of like yogic practices, a lot of religious practices all end up falling within the same realm, which I found really fascinating. By no means am I making this a spiritual or yoga directed breath talk. Because I think that's what that also loses a lot of people to be quite honest.

But I do think like bringing focus to the breath is what they all do well, because it is a skill. Like, yeah, we all have the innate ability to do these things, not think about them. That's the cerebellum of our brain is really good at that. But like any skill, like we're all born and we can all run, we can all walk. But it's there are still skills you work on. So that's where I think for me, the short inhale.

Quick exhale, just as an example, is the fastest route to like, hey, I need to get this out and I need to be out back ready to go. You can do the same thing like right before a shift. Co2 is gonna go up as soon as you take off and do like a powerful movement. Like you hop over the boards and you go, like Co2 is gonna start driving up. So you're giving yourself almost a head start when you're doing that.

Other techniques aren't really focused on that. I mean, box breathing will have a benefit, again, of slowing your breath. I think the nasal portion and finishing on the exhale does a better job of calming the nervous system than box breathing, in my experience, because that's really what, when you can get that full exhale, and it's not forced, but that's when your intercostals relax.

That's when your neck relaxes. Like that's when we're talking about now more biomechanical or mechanical things that are aiding in that autonomic recovery. They get, they go tell it picks up.

Kevin Neeld (21:40)
So that would be instead

of box breathing, which is in, hold, out, hold, in, hold, out, hold, you're describing in, out, hold. Should be, you could call that triangle breathing. There's a whole new market for it.

Andrew Hauser (21:52)
Correct. Correct.

triangle that's right.

The Egyptians had something figured out.

Kevin Neeld (22:03)
so, you know, maybe let's just quickly look at the other side of the spectrum. You have guys, you know, I, I certainly at the professional level, but increasingly so at youth levels, even where, you know, you're starting to see more professional sport like schedules at youth levels, obviously, you know, you're, especially the high school years, the kids are wired to sleep in later and they're not afforded that opportunity. They still have to wake up early for school. So.

You know, if you have athletes that are feeling a little sluggish, energies down, you know, maybe mentally they don't feel as alert as they'd like to, and they have a practice or they're getting ready for a game, are there any strategies that you've used that in the short term can help, you know, re -energize the system for lack of a better phrase?

Andrew Hauser (22:50)
Yeah,

well, I think one, I would cold plunge. The cold plunge one's interesting because it's definitely going to wake you up. It's a matter of not allowing yourself to hyperventilate when you do do that, which is obviously a challenge. Sunlight is a whole other thing. I know this isn't going to become a light conversation. We've had a number of talks around red light, but those. Yeah, yeah. The thing about.

Kevin Neeld (23:16)
We'll save that for the next podcast.

Andrew Hauser (23:20)
Sunlight though is it's going to drive up nitric, nitric oxide and it's going to drive up hemoglobin. So those are important. Both things actually will have an effect on systemic CO2 levels for the better as well. So they're aiding into your breath already. So if you're going to do either, like I would start with that two in, two out hold. so that's just, again, that's kind of setting the base. And then when I'm talking about a performance,

piece at that point. That's when I start to use, I use a breathe way better. Some people, if you still have access to a spiral tiger, great, great. They don't make them anymore. Unfortunately. But I'll do something called speed breathing. And really it's, it's just in and out as fast as you can. So it's, there's different yoga practices like that too, that they'll do nasally. But that is the fastest, some of.

Wim Hof's work actually does a good job with that because it is going to be a fast, it's going to spike your nervous system. So once you've kind of laid the foundation, you got to ramp up the system.

Kevin Neeld (24:33)
So can you, obviously we don't have the breathing bags in front of us, but can you just, quick example of, you know, how would you speed breathe and how long would you do it? You know, what are, what's kind of like a set rep recommendation?

Andrew Hauser (24:48)
So I start with a smaller bag size, just cause I want to go, I want to go in and out as fast as I can. and this is all through the mouth. Now you again, you can do this through the nose. I recommend just starting at like sets of seven to 10 seconds. almost think, go back to like Vrko Shansky. I'm sure you have a lot of strength coaches listening like Vrko Shansky's, anti glycolytic work. Like it was.

eight seconds long, and then it's a full recovery. So think about it similar to that, because it's going to be, it's going to be fast. And then you need a full recovery. And what it's doing is working on that fast tensioning and that fast relaxation. Relaxation is really what makes an elite athlete an elite athlete, especially a healthy one. So the ability of a fast relaxation. So when you can get the diaphragm to do that,

you're having a massive systemic effect on the body.

Yeah, so in and out, like let's say doing it with a two liter, one and a half, two liter bag. So it's not, not large. Like breatheway betters come with like a six liter bag, five to six liters. Most people can't fill that very well in my experience anyways, but the smaller it gets with speed breathing, the more challenging actually, because you do, you have to relax it so quick.

Kevin Neeld (26:22)
And then, you know, transitioning into more longer term strategies that you might integrate into the training process with the hope of, you know, not just stimulating some short -term change, but looking more over the course of several weeks to months, what are some of the more impactful respiratory training strategies you've used in? You know, if, if, you know, as you're kind of describing some of those, what are the benefits either that the athlete reports or.

You know, some of the measurables that you're taking to document that an athlete is actually making progress in the intended direction.

Andrew Hauser (26:58)
Yeah. So I do spirometric tests on every athlete that walks through the door. so we, we have a baseline and that gives me a good idea. So like, I'm looking at four things particularly, but two, I'm looking at like, okay, like this is what we, we need to focus on as far as change goes. It's forced vital capacity, which in an untrained respiratory system is usually about 80 % of your lung capacity. and then, FPV one.

So it's essentially how much air you can blow out in one second. As someone's coordination gets better or their ability to relax their diaphragm gets better, that typically gets quite a bit better. So both are a good resource between just general wellness around those numbers. But it's, you see some surprising numbers. I always tell guys like you look at.

force bottle capacity, like think of that, again, that's your, we'll say your max strength. The FEB1 is more, hey, that's how well do you coordinate things? And then there's something called peak expiratory flow. That's like your velocity. So what's your peak velocity that you can attain? So I try to break those down now into, like we're talking about programming. I'm gonna use, a lot of times I'll use those in.

part of like super sets with something that's feeding the same, the same intent really. So let's say I'm squatting. Okay. If I'm squatting, I'm going to, I'm either going to speed breathe realistically, depending on again, depending on my intent, or I'm going to do more max strength, volume work. I really like to use the volume work as well, to work on asymmetries.

from more of a performance lens, like because you can do multi -directional things, you can rotate, you can go into different movement planes. But again, you're driving the ability to get in a different position and then maximally contract. So get more motor units firing.

Kevin Neeld (29:13)
And you had mentioned that, that forced expiratory volume going up as your diaphragm relaxation improves. And you know, is that, is that because there's more resting tension in your diaphragm? It doesn't have the capacity to dome as much. So there's not as much of an excursion to then push air out in that first second.

Andrew Hauser (29:37)
So it's interesting. Yeah, you're taking the...

you're taking the tension out of other musculature so you can actually get more dome in, that it'll actually dome even more. And that's one of the things like I'm big on feel when I'm teaching a lot of, from a rehab perspective, but also from a breath perspective, because I think when you feel something, then you can recreate it. You're tag teaming what the brain can send, you're tag teaming your senses with a mechanical thing.

but I always want to make sure they get enough air out to where they'll feel their lower abdomen contract. and that's in any of the breath work I do with them. It doesn't, again, depending on what breath, modality we're choosing, like that doesn't mean it's a very forceful breath, but when you feel that contraction, that's the pelvic diaphragm really pulling on that transverse abdominus. So.

you know you're getting doming of the diaphragm at that moment. Because that pelvic diaphragm has to tension up so the thoracic diaphragm can dome over it. Because that creates kind of like that piston or that 360 degree like Pavel Kolash would talk about. But it is, that's when that happens. So early on I'm gonna start them and I'll get them in very specific positions.

to start to understand at least the feeling before we can mix it into a lift or I'll use it as part of their warmup. Some things I just wanna use in their warmup longterm anyways, because whatever picture we're trying to create or system that we're trying to influence for performance or to warm up for performance, we can create that picture with our breath. And I don't think I even said, so there's four main.

breathing strategies that I'm going to use with like a breathing bag. And now there can be derivatives of all of these, but I'm going to do title volume work. So again, that's, I think just max strength. I'll use, I'll use my arms in different ways. Again, I'll do different, I'll see different movement planes. Usually like from a mobility perspective, you'll feel just nice after it.

Kevin Neeld (32:03)
And

then can you explain, can you explain what that would look like? So, you know, when you're saying title volume work for somebody that's not familiar with any of this, like what, what are you actually doing to facilitate?

Andrew Hauser (32:11)
Yep. So if

I have a breathing bag, like I'm not letting my ribs necessarily rise up with it, but my arms think almost like face pole are coming up. And then as I blow out maximally, getting my forearms together. So I'm using my lats. I'm using, I mean, I, I'm not going to get into, I guess all the musculature of it, but I'm using a lot of fascial tension to.

expand and then contract and get all that air out. So you're essentially giving it just an extra push. I can do that one side at a time. I can do that rotational. I can do that on the ground. I, you know, I can do that however, however I want. I can do that with lower body movements. again, number of different ways, but a great way to warm up, but a great way to start feeling things. And it ends up being a little less technique specific.

So it's an easy way just to start with the bag. Coordination group.

Kevin Neeld (33:13)
And then how long

would you do, you know, is that a, you would do three sets for 20 to 30 seconds or 30 to 60. What are kind of your general starting point recommendations there?

Andrew Hauser (33:25)
So with that, I keep volume down. I keep it, I think almost like Prelepon's chart, like from a rep perspective. Like I'm probably gonna keep it between 20 and 25 reps total to start with. Where like, let's say five sets of five, a lot of times I'll just say, hey, go off. Like you're gonna feel your velocity drop. Or like where you can't get as much air out. It's fine, the set's over. So like that's where I start.

so is that four sets of five? Is that five sets of five? Is that 10 sets of two? It's going to differ, pending the athlete and how much time we have to, speed breathing. I'm going, so I'm going to team that up with, more high velocity work. That's going to be either a court more coordination work for me, or, we have like, we've got some velocity to get like, whether that's sprint velocity, whether that's.

shooting, whether that's throwing, you just know their nervous system has to be primed a little more. Coordination breathing is actually where I start most athletes. It's more technique specific, but they need to feel the ability to relax. And then I always equate it to like, we've all run like baselines in like basketball or, you know, on the ice.

Same concept, like anything like stop and go. You don't stop and keep going. You've got to touch the line, touch the cone, you go. And that's starting to teach that relaxation. It needs to be slow enough where they can control it, but fast enough where it does push them as well. It doesn't take long for that. That I do more for time. I usually start people at two to three minutes at a time.

then pending the sport will depend on kind of how long I push that. Like major league pitchers, I build a lot of their off season. I'm trying to build them up eight to 10 minutes of doing that because, hey, I can start to build physiological load when their arms aren't there yet. Because that's ultimately injuries occur under fatigue, unless it's like a gnarly contact injury.

I don't know if you saw Mbappe get hit the other day in his nose break open in France's game. But yeah, that no amount of breathing is going to stop that. But like, again, these are when most injuries are occurring in every sport that you and I have worked in or with. That's when the majority of these injuries and you can't, in my experience, you hit.

Again, you hit an inflection point, you can't out condition certain things. And this can get to a, again, more of a deep conditioning topic as well. But your breath, the ability to control your breath and get it back to baseline quicker is only going to allow you to do more work, or it's going to give you a step on the ice, a step on the court, a step on the field, more clarity of mind, because your, your body is not in.

hyper panic mode because you feel like you need to breathe.

Kevin Neeld (36:52)
How are you doing on time here?

Andrew Hauser (36:54)
He just texted me and said there's a lot of traffic so I have like five minutes my guess

Kevin Neeld (36:58)
Okay.

Okay. So we can keep rolling. And then if you hit a point where like you have to go, we'll just shut it down and we can pick up whenever. Cool.

Yeah, you, you brought up a couple of interesting concepts. I mean, I think first integrating some of these strategies into a warmup not only allows the athlete to take advantage of some of the short -term benefits that we had mentioned earlier, you know, during every single training session, but building it into a routine also allows the athlete to accumulate some volume of this work, you know, over the course of weeks, months, and probably years. So, you know, I think that, that's probably a good strategy that.

people listening can start to play around with. And then the other idea of just periodizing the breathing. So, you know, understanding what the theme is for that day from a training standpoint in particular, and then trying to link up the respiratory training strategies that best align with that, I think is something that I, you know, obviously you and I have talked about that in the past before, but I haven't heard that idea from anywhere else. So I think that's pretty interesting. I want to, you know, I think this is,

this idea, you know, as people are hearing, there's probably some novel strategies. There's some assessment techniques that you're using that aren't as, as commonplace among the athlete spaces. I think some of these probably have a richer history in the clinical space, but, you know, I'm, I'm curious, how would an athlete know if their respiration is a primary limiting factor to their performance? So, you know, if, if I'm an athlete listening to this and it's like, right. I,

Andrew Hauser (38:39)
Yeah.

Kevin Neeld (38:42)
I've been told I need to get bigger, stronger, faster, better condition, you name it. How would they be able to identify that this is something that should also be capturing their attention at a high level?

Andrew Hauser (38:57)
Yeah. Well, number one, honestly, very few athletes have trained it. And like we train our systems all the time, but then we have this huge, like impactful, like system that we don't pay a lot of attention to. So to me, every athlete will see benefits. Now, to answer your question more head on,

I think an easy way for athletes to find out if they're just looking at their own, like let's say you go through a hard shift or do something hard on the court, time how long it takes for your breath to return to like what's actually normal. Not still like taking big breaths in, but just like back to normal, relaxed breathing. In an ideal world, an elite, elite athlete should be about 45 seconds. That's like.

That's a first line guy that's healthy in the NHL. In my experience, most professional athletes that have stayed relatively healthy are around 60 seconds. But if you can't do that over time, again, then it becomes even more of an issue. So if that, let's say you go two shifts from the hockey world, you come back and now it's like, it's 120 or it's, you know, two minutes. It's...

Minute and a half, whatever, it's three minutes, even longer. You've got low hanging fruit on the respiratory side. Now I think some more like that takes zero work. Someone with a narrow face, like I've got a more narrow face, like you're going to have, you're going to be more prone to tongue ties, higher pallets from a mechanical perspective. That puts you at more of a mechanical disadvantage.

where you need more respiratory work. When you have a high power, your tongue will tension a lot. Your tongue is huge. If you snore, same thing. Most of these individuals do snore. But when you tension that tongue, that's pulling right on the trachea. And for those hunters out there that have ever gutted an animal, or if you've done an anatomy lab at all, the trachea is like a Chinese finger trap.

Like when you start yanking on it, so whether that's tongue tension or whether that's more anatomical dead space, which you could probably argue these are two like you're it's feeding the same same thing. You breed more, you tension more the trachea more. Anyways, that'll yank on the diaphragm upwards that'll extend you more. So now it's it's easier to get air in, but now it's harder to mechanically get air out.

So that's going to start limiting things for rotational athletes. That's going to start limiting thoracic rotation. Pretty important throwing athletes or in anything that needs to sprint or run. A lot of athletes in my experience have some acid reflux issues. Like they all take like Tums or something before game or something to try to combat that. There's a physiological reason that's happening. Again, it's.

And I think we're seeing it more, this is a different conversation as well, but as more, as people spend more time on their phones, their cervical spine start to straighten out more from a visual thing. I've seen that over and over just in imaging. So it's not just me throwing something random out there. As that straightens out more, it's going to have that same effect.

Kevin Neeld (42:46)
So, you had mentioned strategies to improve CO2 tolerance. You talked about the benefits of breathing coordination, about diaphragmatic relaxation. Is there a differential diagnosis process that you'll go at to identify if an athlete needs to really focus on one specific aspect of respiratory training or?

you know, at least for most people, is it just that, you know, it's almost like somebody that's new to a training program in general. It's like, you can afford to do some sprint work, some strength work, some conditioning work, and they're going to make improvements in all of those areas just because their window for adaptation is so large across the board. You know, what's your approach in that regard as far as respiratory training?

Andrew Hauser (43:38)
So everyone can benefit from that two in, two out hold. And that's straight from Boteco's work. Again, as that 10 seconds gets easier on the hold, we'll push it. You keep pushing it. I prefer, most people are around two in, two out with a 20 second hold, to be honest. I mean, that's three breaths per minute by the time you're done.

Kevin Neeld (44:02)
And just because

that's come up a couple of times, is that, are you in those two seconds, is it full inhale air all the way out exhale or is it more middling? So you're not completely full and not completely empty.

Andrew Hauser (44:14)
Yeah,

I think normal breath, but it's always veered onto the exhalation side of that continuum. But very normal breath, nothing about its force because you, again, when you have to repeat.

that much for that long, you can't hold for too long. Again, it'll change as you're going. You might start at 10 seconds, you might be at 14 seconds by the time you finish. But again, you have to be able to go right back into that same cycle constantly. So again, that's something that you don't need any equipment for. Now, if you're going to get a breathing bag, I would start with coordination breathing because you can build up.

so much time and you're just building up efficiency. That's what true coordination is in every sport. Like we always admire the athletes that make things look easy. That's physiological coordination and we would see that in real time if we had certain devices on them. So again, that's what you're going for ultimately is making it look pretty.

Kevin Neeld (45:23)
Cool. Well, I know there's a lot of other things that we wanted to talk about as far as preparing for flying and altitude and some of the strategies before, during, and after those situations, but we'll have to save that for a follow -up episode two here. So Andrew, I really appreciate your time.

Andrew Hauser (45:44)
Just

recovery in general is another conversation because it can get, there's breathing strategies, but then there's other strategies that again, multiple roads lead to Rome. So I never want people to think like, Hey, like, okay, I don't have a breathing bag. Well, Hey, here's an option without a breathing bag. That's a breath. Here's an exercise way to do that. Here's.

passive modality of some sort that'll attain that. And they're just kind of all on varying levels, but they're all pushing the same intent.

Kevin Neeld (46:24)
No, that's a great point. So right, right now we have a light episode teed up for you in the future and we have a, in altitude flying and recovery episode teed up for you. So, do us a favor and clear out your schedule for the next month and we'll, we'll do this again. But, in the meantime, where can listeners, find more information about you and, and your company and what you have going on.

Andrew Hauser (46:48)
Yeah, so a company is Continuum High Performance in Scottsdale, Arizona. And then let's see, just look for me on, I don't even know what my Instagram handle is, but like for me, I'll probably have to send you that. You can put it in the show notes. Email me at andrew at continuumhp .com. There's two U's in Continuum. I found a lot of people don't realize that.

But email is a good starting point or yeah, just DM me on Instagram. We'll figure it out.

Kevin Neeld (47:28)
at the at the handle that we don't know yet. We'll have to find that in the show notes, but.

Andrew Hauser (47:30)
that the handle we don't know. I'm good about checking

it. I'm not good about posting things on there. So.

Kevin Neeld (47:38)
We'll get, we'll get that squared away, but thanks again. Appreciate you doing this.

Andrew Hauser (47:41)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Have a good one.