Nose Breathing Hot Take (Part 1) - Winter Sucks
Of all the posts that I’ve posted this far, my nose breathing articles have been my most popular. I’m not particularly surprised by this, since there’s not a lot written about using breathing for regulating running pace. Most articles that I’ve read address proper breathing techniques, the negative affects nose breathing has on overall performance, or why breathing through your nose can be healthy for your body. When it comes to pacing, there’s not a whole lot out there. I inadvertently stumbled upon nose breathing as a method to slow my pace down and have found it super helpful. If you haven’t read the articles I’ve written, I’d encourage you to do so:
Since this is all new to me, and maybe you too, I wanted to take a step back and evaluate my experience with nose breathing over the past few months. Originally, I was going to do a single post, but then realized I had a lot more to say, so this is part 1 of a 4 part series!
Winter Sucks
When I first started nose breathing, the weather was warm, I could breathe through my nose with the greatest of ease, but gradually the seasons started changing. Summer turned into Fall, Fall turned into Winter and eventually the air got bitterly cold. While my lungs gradually got used to the colder air and my nose adapted for the most part, at some point, the air became too cold. Winter ruins lots of things and this is yet one more line item in the growing list of things. On top of all of this, even if the cold wasn’t a nuisance, it’s very difficult to breathe through your nose when a constant stream of snot is dripping out like a leaky faucet. In light of all these inconveniences I decided to switch to practicing half nose + half mouth breathing.
The benefits of half nose + half mouth is that you still maintain some of the benefits of nose breathing, without a lot of the downsides of the sucky cold winter weather. One major advantage is that breathing in through your nose makes sure that the snot retains an inward, versus outward, direction 😜. Breathing out through your mouth helps to quickly get rid of the de-oxygenated air, while also giving your nose a break from the cold. Using both nose and mouth together is also a great way to getting used to solely using your nose.