A master class in Breathing from Graeme Obree
Posted November 23, 2011
Graeme Obree is a true legend of cycling. Twice holder of the world hour record and individual pursuit world champion in 1993 and 1994, the Flying Scotsman is renowned for his mould-breaking approach to cycling. He designed and built his famous bike “Old Faithful” for his first attempt on the hour record, but that was just one of his innovative ideas.
Exclusive preview of his eagerly anticipated book
Representing 45 years of Graeme’s experience in cycling and human athletic pursuit and 17 years in the writing, “The Obree Way” lifts the lid on the training methods that helped lift Graeme to the top of his sport. We at Daily Cycle are privileged to have been given a preview of this amazing training manual and can now share some of Graeme’s valuable insights with our readers.
The Obree Way will be on sale in shops in early December. I know what I want for Christmas! For now, enjoy this fantastic extract on the 3 phase Obree breathing pattern.
Breathing – an extract from The Obree Way
I compare the evolutionary in-built response (the need to breathe) to that of swimming. If a child or even cats and dogs fall into deep water they will survive by doing the doggy paddle. This is not trained – it is hard wired.
I make this comparison in order to show that an evolutionary response is not necessarily the most efficient solution to our needs in response to environmental conditions. Clearly, having used our intelligence and ability to analyse and invent, we have devised and trained ourselves to swim far better than instinct alone has provided us with. The same too is true of breathing.
In terms of bicycle riding, the environmental condition dictates the need for the maximum intake of oxygen and the instinctive response is breathing harder and more rapidly – gasping. I assert that neither breathing harder nor doggy-paddling harder will match an intelligent trained response to those environmental needs. Bearing in mind that oxygen intake is usually the limiting factor in how hard we can ride, then persevering with the breathing technique to follow is paramount to gaining between 3% and 8% instant advantage depending on how good your technique is according to tests carried out by myself and close friends.
A lot of athletes and cyclists have trained themselves to breathe in a way that maximises the efficiency of the lungs by not gasping and using the nasal passages to help maximise the efficient intake of air for example. These techniques are useful in stepping forward from instinct alone and are valuable and worth taking on.
I will guide you through them but the fact remains that breathing in and out rhythmically in a better way is still the equivalent of honing the doggy-paddle. The ultimate solution I have formulated after a lot of research and anecdotal testing and experimentation is the 3-phase Obree breathing pattern.
The method involves 3 whole breaths and is my equivalent to the front crawl. Having some of my peer group test this, yet keep it secret from my rivals and foreign federations, was difficult and until this publication only three other individuals knew of this. I will guide you through step by step.
Firstly you must learn the best technique in the field of instinctive breathing since these also help maximise the 3-phase pattern. Assuming no previous thought on breath control then it is likely you would take more frequent breaths through the mouth as the demand for oxygen rises. The best way to breathe is to have more controlled slightly deeper breaths where we exhale only from our mouths and back in through the mouth and nasal passages. Do not spend effort working out how deeply to breathe since we will move on from that to the 3-phase pattern. Concentrate on out through mouth and in through mouth and nose.
If you want to take this to the gold standard then there are two other things needing doing at the same time. Flaring your nostrils outwards during intake will aid air flow and the reason it is important to use the nasal passages to their maximum is because these are lined with blood vessels to heat the air on the way through.
This not only helps heat the air but also helps the body lose excess heat as well as exciting the oxygen molecules to move about faster increasing uptake in the lungs. The other thing you must do during intake is put the tip of your tongue on the roof of your mouth so that the air passes over the underside of your tongue, also helping to heat and moisturise the air. It has to be said that the tongue has to be put to its flat position during exhalation.
If it has not been complicated enough there is the question of how we set about the job of inhaling and exhaling all together. If no thought is given to it then we will instinctively use intercostals and (diaphragm) muscles as well as some in the neck and shoulders. The important thing to think about when trying to develop a better breathing technique is to try using the abdominal muscles to pull and push the bottom of the lungs in conjunction with raising and lowering the chest cavity.
The good news is that you can practice and perfect this away from the sporting arena. You can do this while watching the TV or during a quiet time at work. Here is a quick recap of the technique. It might be worthwhile engaging with this technique until it has become a force of habit when called on to be used – a bit like learning an instrument, learning this part properly before moving on to the next lesson.
- Breathing in – flare nostrils and put tip of tongue on roof of mouth, use mouth and nose, use abdominal muscles
- Breathing out – put tongue flat and mouth only exhaling, use some abdominal muscles to pump the lungs like bellows.
I think it is important to explain the science as I explain the 3-phase technique, because the more you believe in it, the more you will invest in it. Just as I explained about breathing being instinctive and not necessarily the best way, let me explain the science behind what intuitively may seem wrong in terms of getting more oxygen uptake yet not taking each breath as hard as possible.
We think first of inhaling as our primal motive in getting oxygen into our lungs. A drowning person rarely thinks of exhaling as a prime priority and it is common for drowning people to keep trying to breathe more air into already full lungs. My point is that we have to start by changing our mindset that is dictated by primal need and think of breathing as a process of exhaling followed by inhaling. Getting rid of oxygen depleted air is the most important part of the respiration cycle.
Clearly if we allow ourselves as thinking mammals to move away from rhythmic breathing then we can formulate a breathing pattern that optimises the best part of the respiration cycle. The best way to optimise oxygen exchange is to maximise the amount of time that the lung has good air at near full inflation against the time that it is nearly deflated with bad air. Here is how it works.
If you could start from reasonably full lungs then exhale strongly and much further than you would normally exhale then inhale to a slightly greater depth than normal then this is the first breath of the 3-breath pattern. At this point you have as much oxygenated air as possible in as inflated as possible lungs. Clearly repeating this in a rhythmic pattern would be unsustainable and inefficient. I have to make clear that this is not a breath out and in to the absolute limit of the lungs but rather a good breath out and a good breath in.
The second breath is a half breath or less. It requires you to partially exhale and then inhale almost to where you were or just a little short of it. You should still have more inflated lungs than during your instinctive breathing pattern. This allows some exchange of air whilst keeping the lungs mainly inflated.
The third breath should be a little breath. It requires you to exhale perhaps a quarter breath or so and then inhale a little before beginning the sequence again. At this point the air will have been deoxygenated to the point where a maximum refill of fresh air is required. This is the most important part of the entire phase and how well you concentrate exhaling the bad air dictates the amount of oxygen in the fully inflated lungs. This is why I made the point earlier that you must have the expulsion of bad air your priority.
So here is the pattern in full:
- Full breath out (the most important part), full breath in
- Half breath out, mostly breath back in
- Quarter breath out, breath back in a little
Bear it in mind that you also must maintain the nostril and tongue technique at the same time. If previous to reading this chapter you had only used the gasping system then doing all this simultaneously may seem daunting but when you consider the effort of learning the front crawl from the doggy-paddle then the same input would give you this system. If that was your starting point then the advantage would be as significant.
Another point to make about this Obree technique is that it masks the feeling of being out of breath to some degree because most of the bad air is replaced by good air in one go so the body’s own feedback system is duped a little into thinking the carbon dioxide level in the body is less than it is. This means not only that we can have more oxygen delivered to our bloodstream but that we can push ourselves further before our body tells us we cannot work any harder.
In extreme efforts it is important to keep concentrating on the breathing rhythm, the speed, pace and feel of the breathing cycle. You may be tempted to resort to gasping for breath in extreme situations for instance a hill climb but this will be counter intuitive. I go back to the effort to exert your thinking upon the athletic demands and ensure all of the training cycle comes to bear in the most extreme situations.
Clearly there will come a point where athletic improvement is impossible due to the inability of your athletic system to supply or convert sufficient oxygen. We seldom push our bodies to this level but if your effort is that intense bear in mind the breathing technique will make more oxygen available to your aerobic system and therefore enable improved athletic response to that situation.
This may allow people who adopt this methodology to exercise harder than ever before and it is important that this be taken into consideration in terms of health before embarking upon it. There is much to gain from this so please do persevere – at your own risk!
Further Information
- Photo courtesy of Charlie Milarvie from Maximise Sport.
- The Obree Way is due to be released in December and is published by Maximise Sport.
- Check out Graeme’s website for more: www.obree.com
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