THE OG: A Note on Breathing

Proper breathing was an essential part of being able to complete one of Vince Gironda's gruelling 8x8 workouts. Let's see what the man himself had to say on the subject

Welcome back, my friends, to the OG, my series on all things Vince Gironda. I sat down over Christmas and really had a good think about everything I could say with regard to the great Iron Guru. Turns out, there’s a lot.

We’ve already had Vince’s biography and two instalments laying out the principles behind his approach to bodybuilding, in both practical and more theoretical terms. Last week we looked at Vince’s 8x8 workout, otherwise known as the “Honest Workout.” As part of that piece I was going to talk about the importance of proper breathing technique, but I decided the subject deserved a discussion all of its own. Here is that discussion.

Once again, all quotations, unless otherwise stated, are from Vince’s 1984 book, The Wild Physique, with page numbers.

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Man can exist several days without food, but about as many minutes without the action of his lungs… Rest assured that the great secret to life is the breathing principle. -George Catlin

Breathing — proper breathing — is an aspect not just of working out but of life in general that is severely neglected. This is surprising, given how fundamental breathing is to our ongoing existence. But then, breathing takes place, for the most part, behind our consciousness, and so it’s only with conscious effort that we can take control of our lungs and fix whatever issues we may have developed, or harness the power of our breath towards goals of physical, mental and even spiritual growth.

I started to take breathing seriously in my early twenties when I began practising chi gung and the Chinese “internal” martial arts of xing yi quan and ba gua zhang. Although I pretty quickly realised that the martial arts were likely to be utterly useless to me in any real-world situation where push came to shove, the standing and moving meditation exercises were a different matter. They convinced me that proper attention to the mechanics and tempo of breathing can have tremendous effects on physical performance, mental clarity and even one’s mood. I would sometimes do standing chi gung — holding a single pose and focusing on my breathing and other bodily sensations that would normally escape my notice, like the flow of blood or even my digestion — for upwards of an hour, sometimes two, when I woke each morning. These exercises brought on a feeling of deep calm and bodily integration, and set me up for the day very nicely indeed. Cortisol levels are highest upon waking, so a bout of meditation early in the day can bring your stress levels right down.

I also experienced something similar when I used to perform a wrestler’s bridge for long periods of time holding my breath. The combination of being upside down, on my forehead, with my lungs either full of air or empty, was really quite a feeling. I used to describe it as the ultimate headrush.

Anyway, I’m no expert on breathing exercises, but you don’t have to be to benefit from taking the way you breathe a little more seriously. For one thing, if you’re working out, you can make your workouts much more fruitful by paying attention to how and when you breathe in and breathe out. Vince Gironda certainly did.

In his book The Wild Physique, Gironda was clear that there are better and worse ways to breathe when you’re lifting weights. Once again, it’s worth noting that Vince’s advice about breathing, like his advice about exercise selection or dieting or anything else, is specific. If there’s a way to breathe that suits most exercises, there are some exercises that will demand a different technique.

How you breathe during an exercise is important. There's no golden rule, though. For the most part, a bodybuilder should breathe in prior to the start of a rep and breathe out just as the hardest part is reached… There are some exercises where it is best to breath only every two or three reps and others that lend themselves to double breathing. (WP, p.48)