Hey Reader,

I was procrasta-scrolling through some of my old instagram content last week and came across this old video.

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I gave him no context for what I was doing and why. Hence his confused look the whole time. Essentially, I made my husband a guinea pig in our kitchen on Friday night to show what happens to your oxygen levels after a long breath hold.

Spoiler, they didn’t change at all.

If his oxygen levels didn’t change, then why did he feel such a strong need to breathe (other than the fact that his “lungs felt like they were going to explode” as he put it)?

In my email and podcast episode two weeks ago, I talked a bit about this from a recovery perspective but want to expand on its connection to the physical body and movement here. Specifically, I want to look at how feelings of stress and anxiety can be related to hip pain, neck pain, and back pain.

CO2 Tolerance: Breathing, Anxiety, Recovery and Performance:

[A little review first] Breathing is initiated by the brain, not to get more oxygen in, but to get rid of carbon dioxide! Exhalation drives the breathing process. What does this mean for your performance, recovery, and overall stress resilience? Most understand the basic idea that you breathe in oxygen and breathe out carbon dioxide (CO2). But did you know that CO2 is oxygen’s super helper?

We need CO2 around to actually use the oxygen we breathe in.

This system is tightly controlled by CO2 sensors in the brain stem. Periods of stress or over-breathing (either chronic or acute) can make this system hypersensitive to CO2. This means your body will initiate increased res paration BEFORE it’s really necessary.

Sped-up respiration speeds up respiration.When this feedback loop goes unchecked, we are breathing in more oxygen without actually being able to use it. This is the opposite of what we want when we are talking about improving our performance and metrics like VO2 max.

When this feedback loop goes unchecked, our body interprets this as a stress response - anxiety. As we talked about recently, a state of increased stress response, the body will struggle to recover from the work you are putting in with your workouts.​

When this feedback loop goes unchecked, the body (and humans in the body) will likely become hypersensitive to all the things. " For me my first signal is noise, every little noise my kids make drives me up the wall."

That’s why CO2 tolerance is a skill we build in my Women’s Running Academy!

Improved CO2 tolerance means developing the tools you need to get out of that hyper-sensitive, over-breathing feedback loop. It means being able to take a minute to step back into your body and understand what it’s telling you.

Improved CO2 tolerance means more oxygen efficiency (improved performance). CO2 also plays a large role in our autonomic nervous system function. Improved CO2 tolerance means improved nervous system and stress resiliency (improved recovery).

But the breath connection doesn't stop there…

Stress and Your Hip Pain (or neck, or back...):

Also, from a biomechanics perspective, often when CO2 tolerance is low it’s difficult to get a full exhale (that alarm goes off too early). This can make it difficult to find that stack I’m always talking about and connect with your deep abs.

And that stack affects more than just your abs.

Do any of these sound familiar?

• Your low back is tight and sore after your run.
• Your calves, hip flexors and/hamstrings are always tight no matter how much you stretch them.
• You have neck tension that builds throughout a run and constantly feel like you need a massage.

What if I told you this could ALL tie back to your breathing?

As shown in the image above, all of these are connected:

• Shallow breathing
• Flared front lower ribs
• Anterior pelvic tilt
• Compression in the back ribs
• Compression in the low back

When we look at how this plays into what you are feeling in your body we see:

• Shallow breathing leaves you stuck in the sympathetic (fight or flight) state.
• Hip flexors in a chronically shortened position feeling tight and maybe pinchy.
• Center of mass out in front so calves are tight from always working super hard to keep you from falling on your face.​
• Compression in the back ribs restricts neck range of motion.
• Compression in the low back leading to tension and soreness.

This body needs:

1 - Learn to exhale fully and to breathe through the nose as often as possible. Here are some tips for improving your CO2 tolerance overall to make this possible.

2 - Learn to orient the pelvis using the proximal hamstrings, not by just squeezing the glutes and tucking under.

3 - Shift the center of mass back by creating an expansion in the ribcage on the back*. Think “stretch from the inside” with your breath.

*Many people (like me 2 years ago in that picture), will create compression on their front ribs too. Essentially crunching down to exhale from the outside instead of using the diaphragm on the inside. This person will need some "stretching from the inside" on the front and back ribs.

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So many runners skip these steps and go right for the symptom… constantly feeling the need to stretch or get massages all while running more to deal with rising levels of anxiety.

So many runners get stuck in the endless loop of injury and burnout. They continuously fall short of their goals because they are so focused on just doing the thing to move forward instead of taking the time to slow down and address the fundamentals.

I know what it feels like to spend years spinning my wheels, where every time I started to train harder or build mileage, I would have issues creep up that would make me have to cut back or take time off. Cutting back, slowing down, or time off helped me avoid true injury, but it’s stopped me from making progress and reaching my potential.

If that feels familiar to you, you are definitely not alone. I’ve worked with so many runners who’ve felt the same way!

In my experience, after years of digging deep in the world of human physiology and running biomechanics and coaching hundreds of runners, the main thing that is stopping most runners from reaching their potential is treating the human body as just the sum of its parts.

We are one body, it works together. We need to understand how all the parts are connected.

When you don’t look at your body as a whole, you end up chasing one injury only to create another, you make progress, but then plateau, feel like you are always managing something.

When you look at your body as a whole and begin to truly understand how all the pieces start to come together, you can move more freely and efficiently overall, you can get out of your head and back into your joy with running, you can fully tap into your potential.

That’s exactly what we do in the Women’s Running Academy Intensive.

Round 7 will begin on September 29th. Join the waitlist now for priority access and the following exclusive bonuses:

• $100 off enrollment
• A completely custom running plan specific to your schedule, your current training base, and your goals (the Intensive itself comes with a thorough set of plans for a variety of goals and levels but taking into account your schedule, specific training history, and goals can make a huge difference. ($254 value)

Your Coach,
Alison

Alison Marie Helms, PhD Certified Personal Trainer and Running Coach Unlock your full running potential through physics and physiology. ​Work with me.​