You are just breathing wrong dummy. (Um, maybe not. It is a little more complicated than that.)

There is a paradoxical idea that the fitter someone is, the more likely they will experience respiratory limitations.  This referenced article today suggests that every endurance athlete "has their own limit in endurance training", and that once exceeded it will produce all the possible respiratory disorders discussed in the article.

This article suggests there is a debate in the scientific community as to whether the lung can be defined “overbuilt” or “underbuilt” for facing strenuous exercise. In the ideal scenario,  your athlete will have a respiratory system perfectly tailored to meet their body’s metabolic demands under normal conditions.  However, it is when challenged by demand, whether that be intensity of exertion, environmental challenges or underlying physical pathology where limitations can impact the athletes demand and performance, thus, a pathological response can occur in a seemingly healthy athlete.  
Breathing, how to do it right, how you are doing it wrong. It is all over the internet these days and there are so many "experts" teaching it now. Some are also teaching it and diaphragm "activation" as the answer to every ailment you have, including why you received a "B minus" grade on your 6th grade spelling test. 
Make no mistake, how to breath properly is important. But, like much of the work Ivo and I do, and much of the preaching we do here on The Gait Guys is about getting to the root of the problem. Converting someone to diaphragmatic breathing from a thoracic cage breathing pattern (use whatever nomenclature you wish, we are trying to keep it simple here) is important, but not as important as finding out why someone is doing it. So are you looking deep enough? Are you asking the right questions before you just assume they forgot how to abdominally breathe ?  All to often we have our clients and athletes come in with their newest epiphany from their latest alternative "guru". Lately is it is, "my yoga/pilates/trainer/coach/bodyworker/massage therapist etc showed me how to belly breathe and use my diaphragm properly ! All is going to be ok now ! Everything will now be right in the world !"  However, all to often they fail to realize that all of the things this article delves into, not including the obvious things such as posture, thoracic spine mobility and stability, prehension patterns, workout habits, soft tissue tension/shortness/tightness, muscle weakness, motor pattern aberrancies, etc these are all just a piece of the potential "causes" of the breathing choice and problems. Fixing the problem helps to allow the natural breathing pattern to occur, with some helpful correction and re-education of course. 

There is a paradoxical idea that the fitter someone is, the more likely they will experience respiratory limitations. One's respiratory abilities as an athlete must be built up, just like any other component of their training. The lungs must be trained to satisfy the metabolic demands of the system, however, often their are parameters existing that are outside of the athletes training efforts. Ask any athlete who jumps into altitude training and this becomes painfully apparent. Endurance athletes do die, thankfully not very often, but they do die and it is not always directly from sudden cardiac failure. There is often a reason the endurance athlete dies shortly after the event, not during, when the physical exertion was actually occurring. Think about it. Exercise-induced respiratory disorders do exist in athletes and they are often the limiting factor in excelling physically. Ask any runner who has done a cold weather run, they will often be able to describe the thermal stress of cold air inhalation and dehydration. This is airway cooling followed by rewarming cycle. The coldness triggers a parasympatheic driven brochoconstiction and a vasoconstriction of the brochial venules. Subsequent rewarming follows and the opposite happens, followed by mucosal edema. 

This article proposes: "the question is precisely to understand if there is a limit in terms of intensity and/or in terms of duration in years to endurance training, before respiratory disorders can appear, and if we can apply any preventive strategies. To be an endurance champion, this inevitably means accepting all the labors of strong training but also enduring all possible health problems caused by the same."

There are many factors to consider, asthma, exercise induced asthma, temperature intolerance to cold or warm weather, a sensitive bronchial tree, long time smoker, prior smoker, medications, bronchospasms, reduced ventilation abilities, pulmonary edema, allergies . . .  the list goes on an on, read the article.

One must consider all of those cardio-respiratory limiting pathologies, but, do not forget posture, faulty breathing technique, tight scalenes and pectorals, weak abdominals, poor thoracic rotation and extension, faulty arm swing, protracted shoulders and the list goes on. And, even more so, think of all the things we do when we started getting "winded" as an athlete, we move into more chest wall breathing, tap into the accessory respiratory muscles and all the pathologic patterns that go with it. We begin to struggle, first subtly, then more profoundly until we must stop. Now, do that several times a week and see what happens to your breathing habits. Respiration in the sedentary and in the athlete is a real issue, but it is multifactorial and complex.  It is more than, "Mr. Jones, please lie down. I am now going to teach you to abdominal breath and use your diaphragm correctly (because I just went to a seminar) and all of the stars will align and your next born child will become the next Michael Jordan."  Don't be that guy/gal. 

Breath deep my friends.

Have a read of the referenced article , it should open up your world as to how complex this machine truly is.

-Dr. Shawn Allen, the other gait guy


Reference:
Respiratory disorders in endurance athletes – how much do they really have to endure?

Maurizio Bussotti, Silvia Di Marco, and Giovanni Marchese
Open Access J Sports Med. 2014; 5: 47–63.
Published online 2014 Apr 2. doi:  10.2147/OAJSM.S57828
 

Pronating around internal hip rotation loss.

This is a remedial principle, but it is always nice to capture it on video like this. Watch this clients left foot. On initial impressions you might just say too much foot pronation, and you would be right. Some of you might say abductor-adductor twist of the foot. These are all correct. But, if we told you that this was a hip complaint client, and lack of internal hip rotation this foot action should be a simple 60Watt “light bulb moment” (translation: “epiphany”), certainly not a 100Watt moment (but for some it might be).  

This client cannot internally rotate through the hip adequately, so they have found the opposite end of the limb to internally rotate through.  They collapse through the arch/tripod, which essentially in the crudest of analogies “internally screws the limb” into the ground.  They are finding internal femur rotation through foot pronation.  Internal hip rotation is being achieved from a bottom up process if you will. Pronation through the foot complex is adduction, medial rotation and plantarflexion of the talus which will carry the tibia (and thus the femur) with it into internal rotation.  There is a problem in many clients who find that extra little bit of rotation at the hip via a foot/ankle cheat.  That problem is one of corruption of the pelvis antiphasic motion of the pelvis, they will most often dump the same hip laterally and thus drift into the frontal plane instead of achieving the antiphasic motion of the pelvis.  This will decouple the rotation of the torso in the opposite rotation of the pelvis, and thus begin the corruption of arm swing.  Want to take it another level deeper ? Ok, eat this for lunch……. asymmetrical thoracic rotation from side to side will set up. This will mean more work through scapulothoracic stabilization and cervical rotation on the side of the thoracic rotation deficit.  Still not deep enough ? Ok, evaluate their respiration symmetry.   Too many are doing respiratory work before hip rotation is clean and symmetrical, especially during gait that necessitates 1000′s of engraining steps a day.  If the hips are not clean, gait is not clean, and that means repetitive arm swing-thoracic-respiratory mechanics are not clean.

If you want to truly fix someones rooted problems, you have to be willing and able to go down the rabbit hole. 

Shawn Allen, one of the gait guys

Hip Biomechanics: Part 6 of 6, The Conclusion (for now)

A Piece of the Functional Puzzle: Hip Rotation

As we have already mentioned, stabilization of the hip is complicated in its own right, but when we ask it to participate in balanced single limb movement and stability in the frontal/coronal, sagittal and axial planes all at once, the delicate balancing act of of these components is sheer genius.

Through our collective clinical experiences it has become apparent over time that vertical and horizontal gravity dependent postural examination can open insight into a deeper functional disturbance in patients.  For example, an externally rotated right lower limb as evidenced by an accentuated external foot flare should initiate the thought process that there is either an anatomically short right limb (external rotation increases leg length), tight right posterior hip capsule, short gluteals or other posterior hip musculature (piriformis, obterators, gemelli), weak internal hip rotators, weak stabilizers of this internal hip rotation, or possibly an over-pronating right foot which shortens the limb and hence the need for the externally rotated and lengthened right limb (ie. failed compensattion).  What we mean by this last component is that there are really two basic types of presentations, those that are compensations to an underlying problem and those that are failed compensations. In consideration of all scenarios, our traditional thinking has directed us to believe we are dealing with a limb posture that has occurred to lengthen the limb in question.  However, perhaps the compensation is deeper in its root cause.  For example, the traditional thinking in alignment restoration of this postural deviation is to stretch the piriformis, glutes and iliopsoas and perform deep soft tissue work such as myofascial release methods, stripping, post-isometric release and mobilization or manipulation to the affected tissues and associated joints to ensure normal function.  These efforts are meant to restore the limbs rotational anomaly and hopefully the cause of the leg length compensation. However, many clinicians will attest to the fact that these methods are frequently unsuccessful or at least limited in their short or long term effectiveness towards complete symptom and postural deficit resolution.  Frequently our patients enter into the cyclical office visits several times a year to address symptoms associated with the root cause.  Thus, we must delve deeper into the source of the problem, perhaps those above methods are focused at resolving the neuroprotective compensation and not the lack of strength or stability of internal hip rotation.  This approach will require the therapist to investigate the open and closed kinetic chain functions of these external and internal hip rotators and look further and more deeply for the source.

In the open kinetic chain (swing phase of gait) the primary and secondary external rotators turn the lower limb outwards in relation to a fixed pelvis established by a sound core; this is late swing phase. This external rotation is, at this point, largely assistive in driving foot supination to gain a rigid foot lever to toe off from.  In the closed kinetic chain scenario, with the foot engaged with the ground, the activation of these same muscles will cause the same movement at the hip-pelvis interface but in this case the pelvis/torso will rotate.  For example, in observance of a closed chain right lower limb, upon activation of the glutes, piriformis and accessory external hip rotators the client’s pelvis and thus torso will rotate to the left (counterclockwise rotation) along the vertical body axis about the fixed right limb.  With this functional thinking we must now embrace the fact that our traditional perspectives of body function assessment in the frontal and sagittal planes must be largely discarded.  It is a rare occurrence that we move in a single plane of motion without any component of rotation.  This being accepted, we must return to our client’s left pelvis rotation and understand that torso rotation must occur in the opposite direction if gait is to be normal with proper arm swing and propulsion.  This rotation can occur from activation of not only component muscles at the hip-pelvis interval but also from the abdominal obliques, thoracic spine and rib cage.  Therefore, one could hypothesize that a client’s external rotation of the right lower limb in stance or gait might not be a primary problem with the piriformis, glutes or accessory muscles rather it could be a compensation for either a one sided over-active or  weak abdominal oblique system/sling/chain or abnormal thoracic rotation, or a combination of both.  Assessment of a patient’s passive and active torso and thoracic/rib rotation might open a window into one of a range-driven deficit or weakness/inhibition. Shoulder mobility assessment is going to be necessary as well because it can and will effect torso/rib cage mobility, arm swing is a huge predictor and indicator in faulty gait assessment and it is one frequently overlooked (type in “arm swing” into our blog SEARCH box and you will be excited to read the research on arm swing in gait). The practitioner must always embrace the thought that the client’s core might not only present as weak but to a higher level that of imbalanced, which is a combination of weakness, stretch weakness, strength, over-activation, inhibition and impaired movement patterns (including breathing).  This imbalance can come from such parameters as pain, handed dominance activities, lower limb dominance issues, occupational demands or others as discussed below.

What we continue to find as our clinical experiences expand is that many deficits in the body are driven by a functional core weakness/imbalance or forces not dampened across a weak core and from impaired gait biomechanics.  In this case, the absence of balanced core abdominal strength and torso rotation renders a weaker or inhibited core rotation/lateral bend on one side and it is this deficit that is often compensated in the pelvis as a tight hip/pelvis soft tissues unilaterally (expressed perhaps as the unilateral externally rotated limb). This will often alter function, strength and mobility in single leg stance during the gait cycle and enable a compensatory cheat into one or several of the cardinal planes of motion. This is of course but just one scenario. Taking the example above, a right externally rotated lower limb with associated tight and/or painful right piriformis muscle, we frequently (but yes, not always) see a loss of rotation range or strength into left torso rotation.  This can be seen on supine rolling patterns looking for upper or lower limb driver deficits. This scenario might be showing little to no progress with therapy but may do so with focused work on supine rolling patterns.  Therapeutically facilitating oblique abdominal strength to improve range and strength into left thoracic/rib cage rotation over time may reflexively reduce the piriformis spasm and rotational deficit in the right lower limb without even applying much direct therapy to this area.  In other words, our experience shows that improving the thoracic rotation into the side of limitation can have some neurologic response of inhibition/relaxation on the tight posterior hip compartment.  We would be remiss if we were to neglect that this oblique abdominal weakness could coincide with a slight anterior pelvic tilt in the sagittal plane on that side (which promotes weakness of the internal hip rotators since the lower abdominals help anchor them).  We would see a slight bellowing of the left abdominal group and a slight increased anterior pelvic tilt on the same side.  This asymmetrical pelvis posture would load the superior aspect of the right piriformis and force it into spasm due to the sustained pelvic obliquity and slight drop in the anterior direction.  This spasm can inhibit the gluteal group and further complicate the problem.  Keep in mind that a weak left oblique abdominal system would facilitate a tendency towards a sway back position, stretch weak left iliopsoas, and the anterior femoral glide syndrome of the hip (not to mention weak internal hip rotators).  As previously touched upon, activities of daily living such as sleep, stance and sit positions, driving style, handedness, respiration,  functional and anatomical leg length differences, unidirectional floor transfers and simply imbalances in the hip rotators can all cause this imbalance and thus piriformis dysfunction.  In summary, the key to the body in the above scenario is in its ability to create and control rotation.  The ribs, thoracic spine, foot and hips are the most important rotators of the body and their relationship is well established.  Even something as simple as respiration mechanics can be dysfunctional as a result of excessive computer use, reading, driving, sedentary lifestyle and sporting history (one sided dominant sports).  For these reasons, most individuals will be unable to rotate effectively and without compensation patterns so the rotational deficits frequently are expressed either upwards into the thoracic spine, ribs and shoulders (one way to see these problems is to look at shoulder posture and arm swing during gait) or they are expressed caudally into the pelvis at the hips. 

We are sure there is more in us on hip biomechanics but for now this 6 part series will have to suffice. We are putting it aside for now and will move back to some other issues on gait and  human movement so we do not get stale.  We hope you enjoyed our 6 part series.

Shawn and Ivo  (not just your average gait analysis doctors)