Jane scrunched up her face in a tight scowl, pursed her lips, clenched her jaw and held her breath as she started the new exercise I had just given her. I asked her if she was in pain. She replied no. Yet her face was telling me a different story. Jane said it was just “her concentration face”.
To me, Jane’s concentration face looked tense and rigid. She didn’t realize she was holding her breath.
Besides keeping you alive, an even flow of breath can help you better manage your work outs. Exhaling and inhaling at specific points during exercise can assist you and even make the movement feel easier.
Here’s an example: picking a box off the floor. The harder part is lifting the box, the easier part is lowering your body to then lift the box up. Inhale and lower your body, exhale and lift the box off the floor.
Exhaling as you lift actually does help you pick up the weight.
Try it and see what you think.
The breathing for this movement is: inhale down/exhale up. Not every exercise follows this breathing pattern but it’s a good place to start.
Clients will often report they’re breathing the opposite to what I’m cueing.
As long as they’re breathing, not being in synch with my cues is ok at the beginning. Holding your breath, like Jane, is far worse than opposite breathing. Most clients eventually recognize their breathing tendencies. Then they can explore a different breath pattern.
Jane’s “concentration face” is not a helpful strategy during exercise. Facial muscles do not assist with most (all?) exercises. Tightening your face wastes your energy and pulls on other muscles, potentially causing a negative chain reaction of tight muscles throughout your body.
Exercise requires some degree of effort and tension in specific muscles. However, you want the right muscles exerting the right amount of effort and tension. After our discussion of Jane’s “concentration face”, Jane reported tightening her face and holding her breath were actually long term habits, an unconscious reaction to her exerting effort be that during exercise or other activities in her life.
What’s the answer?
In Jane’s case, getting her to breathe was our first step. Once she stopped holding her breath and was breathing well, I asked her to become more aware of space between her top teeth and bottom teeth to prevent her jaw clenching. When she showed good awareness of that, I asked her to think “happy thoughts” during exercise. That suggestion was not well received and we settled on her working towards having a more “neutral” face.
Over time, Jane’s breathing became automatic during exercising, she was able to release most of the tension from her face and she learned where in her body to apply the right amount of effort and right degree of tension.
Do any of you have “concentration face”?
If you don’t know, ask a friend, family member or co-worker.
If you do, whether you’re exercising or not, you may want to consider some changes.
