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Have you ever felt that your lungs were being used more than your legs during a strenuous workout? Though we rarely consider it during training, breathing can have a profound impact on how well you perform.

During activity, you use your muscles, especially the diaphragm, to draw in and expel air with each breath. This effect is little when you're at rest, but when you're exerting yourself, just breathing becomes an exercise in and of itself. Breathing can provide about 10% of your entire energy output during exercise at peak effort.

The simple process of breathing requires a significant quantity of energy, which is taken away from your upper or lower body.

If you have a respiratory illness, this could increase to 35–40%. Lungs are restricted by the amount of air they can breathe rather than the quality of blood flow to their muscles and organs, thus even little activity can be exhausting for them. However, even in healthy individuals, breathing has an oxygen cost, and when this demand is too high, you might not be able to work out for as long or as hard.

Why is this so important? Oxygen, blood flow, and similar substances are necessary for those two sets of muscles, the ones we use to inhale and the ones we use to forcefully exhale. During intense activity, your diaphragm and other breathing muscles may require up to 20% of your heart's entire output. That's blood that might be circulating in other parts of your working arms or legs. In essence, your body must decide whether to nourish the limbs or the lungs. To maintain oxygen flow to the lungs, your breathing muscles may automatically squeeze down on blood vessels in the body when they are fatigued.

The good news is that you can optimise your breathing and achieve measurable benefits if you can bottleneck it.
Respiratory muscle training (RMT) has been developed using this idea. These workouts, which usually involve resistance-based breathing equipment that make it harder to breathe in, develop the muscles involved in breathing. 

Eventually, just as if you were lifting weights to boost the strength of your biceps, RMT can make your respiratory (diaphragm and chest) muscles stronger and more fatigue resistant. They also reported feeling less breathless than when they pushed hard without exercise after the training, and that during long-haul endurance tasks could travel further.

But strength isn’t the only consideration when it comes to breathing.
Our breathing pattern is also a big factor in how well we use oxygen. Fast, shallow breathing, especially from the chest region, wastes energy and can reduce how much oxygen gets to the bloodstream. Slower breathing with the diaphragm, on the other hand, increases oxygen supply and saves energy. This is often referred to as “belly breathing,” and it’s the principle required for many of the breathing exercises found in yoga, meditation and even athletic training.

The concept behind many breathing techniques used in yoga, meditation, and even sports training is known as "belly breathing."
What does this imply for the kinds of exercises you perform daily? Consider going for a run. You will quickly become exhausted if you find yourself panting and taking short, frantic breaths during a difficult time. However, your body can function more effectively if you can maintain composure, regulate your breathing, and make the most of both inhalations and organised exhalations. For less effort, you're getting more oxygen. And that trade-off is crucial when energy is limited.