Today’s podcast features performance coach and breathing specialist, Leo Ryan. Leo is the founder of Innate-Strength.com. He has studied athletic training, health and breathing since he healed himself of asthma in 2004.
Leo has achieved a prolific amount of education in human performance and breathwork. He has attained multiple diplomas and certificates from many elite personal training, physical therapy and breathing schools including Dip. Buteyko Method, Wim Hof Instructor, Oxygen Advantage Master Instructor, Fascial Stretch Therapist, Strength and Conditioning Specialist and Pilates teacher. Leo’s love and experience for health and physical performance has seen him research more than 70 breathing techniques, mentor with coaches to Olympians, UFC Fighters and World Champions.
Breathing is truly on the top of the totem pole when it comes to our day to day health and well-being (we take around 20,000 breaths per day). It has a massive impact on our mental state, as well as the physiology of the body, in addition to its implications for athletic performance. We can run longer, recover faster, and gain enhanced mind-body states through simple breathing drills, as well as becoming more educated on the topic.
Today’s show was longer than average, largely because the concept of performance breathing is so expansive, and we as a coaching community, generally don’t approach it in much depth. Often times we are just told to belly breathe, or nose breathe, and leave it at that. In this show, Leo covers all aspects of our breath, including nose breathing versus mouth breathing for performance, breathing as a readiness assessment, performance versus recovery breathing, diaphragm release techniques, and much more (including his experience in running a marathon, and recovering from it extremely well, despite ZERO run training). This is yet another “staple” episode, as it truly covers this intersection of health, well-being, and athlete performance in the topic of the breath.
Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster, supplier of high-end athletic development tools, such as the Freelap timing system, kBox, Sprint 1080, and more.
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Timestamps and Main Points
5:30 Leo’s story of running a marathon on zero run training through optimal breath work and breathing techniques
16:30 Training repeat versus short sprint ability with nose versus mouth breathing
19:30 The importance of an aerobic base for the majority of athletes, and how breathing plays into this base
24:30 Why breathing and breath training is so under-appreciated by many coaches and individuals in training
29:30 How Leo uses breathing as a readiness assessment as opposed to HRV
43:15 Leo’s battle with asthma, and how that led him to studying breathing and breath for athletic performance enhancement
53:10 What people should be able to do with their breath, and “hardware” issues that could hold back the ability to breathe well
1:00:20 Breath training in context of a typical gym session with Leo
1:05:00 The link between breathing, adrenaline, and recovery times in training
1:15:00 Tensioning the body through breathing for improved power application
1:23:30 Methods to restore the function of the diaphragm
“If I really wanted to perform in marathon, and hit a PB, and I trained for it fully, I wouldn’t mouth-tape (nose breathe)”
“We know that pure mouth breathing will burn more sugar than nasal breathing”
“Unless you are a pure power sport like Olympic weightlifting, a powerlifting type sport, you do want a decent aerobic base to you”
“The benefits of breath training is all about recovery; for me, it is the main recovery modality, it’s where it all starts”
“You don’t want oxygen just in the blood, you want it in the cell”
“There are psychological aspects to breathing as well”
“I only use HRV now with people who are not tuned into their breath”
“There is a huge role for CO2 to play in anxiety, performance anxiety, and panic and fear”
“You should have patterned in nose-breathing at rest; that should be your daily breathing pattern. If that’s not happening, then you’ll have a higher sympathetic drive, and that’ll have the knock-on effects of a high sympathetic tone versus a higher parasympathetic tone”
“(Belly breathing only) is a weak technique, in my opinion… it can work, but it can take a long time to acquire only a diaphragmatic breath by just saying “belly breathe” or placing blocks on the stomach”
“For the respiratory warmup, I will bring breath-holding into the general warmup phase. I will bring in 4-6 strong breath holds. Holding the breath through the nose has a lot of strong effects”
“If it was pre-competition, I would have them hyperventilate; I call it supraventilation, which means, breathe more than normally. Maybe 5-10,15 breaths to dump CO2 out of their system so now they are more fresh and ready to go from the first whistle”
“What people don’t realize is that breathing plays a critical role in emotional balance, and processing emotions as well”
“If your diaphragm is retracted and not moving well, then your ability to contract and move the pelvic floor is reduced as well”
“A very simple technique is 4-6 breathing, inhale for 4 seconds, exhale for 6 seconds, and repeat that for 2 minutes; it’s been shown to set you more into a parasympathetic state, and also open up the frontal lobe of the brain so that you can think more clearly”
“4-6 I’ll use in recovery, box breathing I’ll use as a nice cam-way to get someone focused. 4-6 I’ll use to help them to sleep better, whereas box breathing (a symmetrical rotation of breathing in, holding, and breathing out; 4 seconds on each, for example) I’ll use in the morning time to get them more settled for the day”
About Leo Ryan
Leo Daniel Ryan is a Performance Coach and Breathing Specialist. He is the founder of Innate-Strength.com. He has studied athletic training, health and breathing since he healed himself of asthma in 2004.
After graduating with a MSc from University College Dublin, he continued to educate himself prolifically throughout his professional career in Ireland and internationally. He has attained multiple diplomas and certificates from many elite personal training, physical therapy and breathing schools including Dip. Buteyko Method, Wim Hof Instructor, Oxygen Advantage Master Instructor, Fascial Stretch Therapist, Strength and Conditioning Specialist and Pilates teacher.
Leo Daniel’s love and experience for health and physical performance has seen him research more than 70 breathing techniques, mentor with coaches to Olympians, UFC Fighters and World Champions and he undertook several internships with the world-renowned Dr. Eric Serrano.
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