Connecting to my breath

I am confident that most people have some appreciation of the importance of breathing especially as it pertains to cycling and working out. Breathing when cycling as become a focus of mine of late. From the article in Mountain Flyer, I have been trying to make a conscious effort towards connecting my breath with the workload that I am producing on my bike.

With that said, this morning on a trail ride I had two revelations. First, if I concentrate when breathing I can bring in about 10-15% more oxygen ( an estimation) into my lungs. During the climbing portion of the ride, when I am between 90-95% of my max heart rate, that extra oxygen really made huge difference both with in my ability to maintain overall power and my ability to recover. I know this may seem like obvious stuff and that most people may know and understand his important connection. However, this was a big step for me today for improving my efficiency in climbing hills on my bike.

So the connection has been drawn between concentrated breathing and improvement in efficiency. But as usual I continue to ponder, and as a result, I come to my second revelation. That posture on a bicycle can have a dramatic effect on your breathing. And that by improving my posture on my bike I was able to improve my breathing and therefore improve my efficiency on the bike. I found it truly amazing how much more freely the air was able to move through my lungs.

So today I found a couple of connections between breathing and cycling. Even though I may have found some ways of improving efficiency, simply connecting my breath to cycling and participating in the present moment proved the most rewarding.

SC