The DISCOMFORT of heavy breathing
The DISCOMFORT of heavy breathing
When we are not accustomed to the discomfort of heavy breathing or higher heart rates, we often associate with “panic”. It makes us want to stop, slow down, relax, rest.
The internal conversations start to creep in, finding ways to stop and get out of the discomfort. Examples could be:
My water is out
Wheres my towel
My shoelace needs to be re-tied
My hair is in my face
Pain is an emotion we often steer away from. It’s impossible to ignore. We are wired to think it will cause injury, fatigue, destruction.
Often times though the perception of this discomfort is much more mental than physical.
So if we are looking at improving our fitness, finding that healthy discomfort is essential.
This means the more often we can “embrace” the discomfort, the quicker it normalises. You are pushing yourself past your current level of comfort. If you continue to find a new level of discomfort, you’ve improved and progressed. You can now handle a bit more, push a bit longer, add a bit more weight. It’s a continuous effort of improving that is being added up in small increments.
Distraction can be the best tool you can use to make sure we focus more on the goal, rather than the current emotional state of discomfort. Your mind can only focus on so much at one time.
Distractions may include: count your reps, focus on the coaching points, remind yourself of your WHY, focus on a muscle that may not be in pain, count your breaths, give yourself a countdown goal, distract your brain from the pain to pleasure and most importantly remind yourself this is important for progression.
Our conditioning classes have two goals:
High Heart Rate (Cardiovascular System)
Heavy Breathing (Respiratory System)
In an Ignither Class (Thursday and Saturday) we add resistance, typically through weight, to stress our muscular system, which then makes both systems above work even harder.
STRESS —> RESPONSE —> ADAPT
Great work to everyone who pushed past their level of discomfort in Ignither class; it was a tough one but is exactly what we want from each of you.