Breathing Programme — Two Tracks That Must Not Be Mixed
Six breaths a minute is a population midpoint, not your value. A programme with calibration — and two tracks that stay apart.
Contents
What this programme is for
The article Breathing Methods Compared shows that two jobs run under the words “breathing technique”, and that at any given moment they exclude one another: pressure stiffens the trunk and needs a closed glottis and a very short exhalation; regulation lowers arousal and needs an open glottis and a very long one.
The structure of this programme follows from that: two tracks that never enter the same set.
As with the breakfall programme: a programme is a recommendation, not a finding. Where a figure below comes from a study, it is named; everything else is reasoned choice and says so.
Why this calibrates instead of prescribing “six a minute”
The standard advice is to breathe six times a minute. It is not wrong, but it is incomplete, for a measurable reason.
Slow breathing acts on the baroreflex, the loop that adjusts blood pressure from heartbeat to heartbeat. That loop has a resonance frequency at about 0.1 Hz — around six breaths per minute. But the value lies individually between 4.5 and 7.0, and research shows it can shift within the same person over time.
Six, then, is a population midpoint, not your value. Hence this programme begins with calibration — and says straight away what is possible in it and what is not.
Track A · Regulation
A0 · Calibration, and what is honestly possible
Resonance frequency is measured, not felt: two minutes at each of several paces (4.5 · 5 · 5.5 · 6 · 6.5 · 7 per minute), keeping the one at which the swing in heart rate becomes largest. That needs beat-to-beat resolution — a chest strap with an HRV-capable app will do; optical measurement at the wrist generally will not.
Without that, do not calibrate: use six. Better than inventing a value. What explicitly does not work is searching by feel: comfortable is not the same as resonant, and there is no indication that one can sense one’s own value.
If you can measure, repeat about every six months — because the value drifts.
A1 · Base exercise, daily
| Pace | your calibrated value, otherwise 6 per minute |
| Ratio | 4 seconds in, 6 seconds out |
| Glottis | open — no sound should be produced |
| Duration | weeks 1–2: 5 minutes · from week 3: 10 minutes |
| Position | seated or lying |
The ratio is the documented part: an exhalation longer than the inhalation further increases the effect. That is the adjustable variable — not the depth.
- Criterion: the exhalation ends without straining.
- Commonest fault: inhaling too deeply. That produces air hunger, the exercise turns unpleasant and gets abandoned. Inhale less, hold the pace.
A2 · Between rounds (from week 3)
Straight after a sparring round: back to a long exhalation as fast as possible. Not to the target pace — unreachable after a hard round — but to the ratio: exhalation longer than inhalation, mouth open, no holding.
This is the only part that transfers to fighting. The comparison article is unambiguous: six breaths a minute presupposes that nobody interferes — and in sparring the opponent sets the frequency. What remains is the habit of lengthening again immediately in the break.
- Criterion: breathing is audibly quieter at the end of the break than at the start.
A3 · After the session, permanently
Five minutes at the calibrated pace at the end of every session. The part most likely to stick, because it fits an existing habit.
Track B · Pressure
This track is small, deliberately. It is not an endurance quality but an event. It is therefore not built up over weeks but coupled to the load at which it occurs anyway — above roughly 80 per cent of maximum effort it happens involuntarily.
| Occasion | Prescription |
|---|---|
| Heavy compound lifts | inhale before the repetition, hold against the closed glottis, exhale after. Do not hold across several repetitions. |
| Impact work on equipment | a short, sharp expulsion at the moment of contact — a fraction of a second |
| Sanchin and relatives | keep the volume small, observe the exclusions |
- Criterion for the striking expulsion: it is short. If it remains audible beyond the impact, it is no longer a pressure manoeuvre but straining.
- What is not trained here: prolonged holding against a closed glottis as an exercise in its own right. There is no reason for it and a clear drawback — blood pressure rises markedly.
On the glottis in ibuki, the comparison article records that the schools themselves disagree, and that a throat held too tightly closed is a recognised hazard in Sanchin practice. This programme takes the conservative side: pressure from the abdomen, passage as open as possible. That is a choice, not a finding — the drawback of too open a passage is smaller (less trunk stiffness) than that of one too closed (a blood-pressure spike).
The rule that holds both tracks together
| Point in the session | Track |
|---|---|
| before training | A, briefly |
| warm-up | neither — breathe normally |
| strength and impact work | B, coupled to the load |
| breaks in sparring | A2 |
| end of the session | A3 |
Never in the same set. Telling someone to breathe “calmly and deeply” between repetitions of a heavy series is telling them to be open and closed at once.
Exclusions and seeing a doctor
Track B is not for everyone. Clear it with a doctor first in the case of hypertension (treated or not), known cardiovascular disease, arrhythmia, aneurysm, retinal disease or glaucoma, in pregnancy, and after surgery to the abdomen, chest or eyes.
This is not boilerplate: exhaling against a closed glottis raises blood pressure markedly, and that is the measured mechanism itself, not a side issue.
End the session on dizziness, blacking out, ringing in the ears, headache during or after straining, pressure in the chest.
Track A is harmless, with one exception: dizziness during slow breathing means the inhalation is too deep. Inhale less, hold the pace.
What here is choice and not finding
- All durations and week counts. No study sets practice durations for slow breathing against one another in a martial arts context.
- The 4:6 ratio. Only the longer exhalation is documented. 4:6 gives exactly six breaths at ten seconds per cycle and is therefore convenient — not measurably superior.
- Coupling track B to particular exercises is plausible but not surveyed.
- And the programme is untested. Both mechanisms are well documented, but none of the studies was carried out on martial artists. For ibuki and Sanchin no physiological measurement series exists at all — neither of intra-abdominal pressure nor of blood pressure during the kata.
A fuller version with the calibration protocol, fault patterns and the full reasoning behind each prescription is in preparation as a companion.
Related Articles
- Breathing Methods Compared
- Breakfall Programme
- Gōjū-ryū
- Kyūdō
- Systema
- Taijiquan
- Kicking Programme — the third programme in the series, built to the same rule
- Punching Structure Programme — the first programme in the training-doctrine category, with no measurement basis
- Qigong — where the slow breathing used by track A comes from