Heavy Breathing for Injury Prevention?

Most people don’t get hurt from a lack of core strength. They do get hurt from a lack of core coordination.

What is core coordination, you ask? 

Core coordination is when muscles fire in the right patterns with the right timing so as to stabilize the torso and spine. This is because MUSCLES NEVER WORK IN ISOLATION.  Muscles always work together in integrated systems. When systems fail, the dysfunction creates pain through overuse of certain muscles. But these patterns also need to coordinate with your breathing.

Why, you ask?

Well, breathing is kinda necessary.  And just about ALL of the core muscles ARE ALSO muscles involved with active breathing.  That is to say breathing when NOT at rest.  Look up "accessory muscles of respiration", and you will see what I mean.

According to Physiopedia, "The accessory expiratory muscles are the abdominal muscles: rectus abdominis, external oblique, internal oblique, and transversus abdominis."

So forcefully breathing out turns out to be a great way to activate all of the major core muscles.

Also, the accessory muscles to inspiration (aka inhalation) are:

sternocledomastoid, scalenes,  serratus anterior, pectoralis major and pectoralis minor, trapezius, latissimus dorsi, erector spinae, iliocostalis, quadratus lumborum, serratus posterior superior, serratus posterior inferior, levatores costarum, transversus thoracis, and subclavius.

So are all of these muscles "core"?

That really depends on your definition of core. Various sources will cite many different muscles as being part of the core.  There is much grey area here. My opinion is that a core muscle is any muscle that takes part in stabilizing the spine in one of the six major planes of motion. To be clear, there are two planes of motion for each of the planes seen here:

The case can be made that just about all of the accessory muscles of inspiration are also core muscles.

So how does one incorporate heavy breathing into their exercise routine?  The best way to do that is to exercise to exhaustion.  Not to the point of collapse, of course, but until you are "out of breath".  Just about any cardio exercise will do.  Any movement that elevates your breath rate and volume.

This would go a long way in explaining why distance runners seem to always benefit from a weekly "sprint" workout.  Core activation improves running efficiency and reduces injuries. But you don't have to be a runner to do this.  You could challenge yourself to do a "sprint" on the elliptical, or stationary bicycle, or rowing machine.  Doing this weekly is best.

Start with a mild warmup for 5-10 minutes.  Then go as fast as you can for 1 min.  Then recover and catch your breath. This may take 1-3 minutes.  Then repeat two more times.  You can start with 3 one minute "sprints" and work your way up to as many as you want.  Just keep in mind that if can do this for more than 8 sprints you are probably not going as fast as you can. Keeping up that intensity for many repetitions is just not possible.

Whereas this is certainly an intense workout, it does not take very long.  I recommend incorporating stretches to be done afterward.  The increased intensity may otherwise create soreness in muscles that you never knew you had.