The Navy Seal Breathing Technique To Calm Down

Today’s article will be discussing box breathing. This technique has been around for thousands of years in yoga practice but hasn’t had as much publicity as it maybe should have. That has began to change in recent years with advocates such as Wim Hoff and the Navy Seals singing its praises. It has become even more popular recently after being called the “navy seal breathing technique to calm down”.

WHAT IS BOX BREATHING? Navy Seal Breathing Technique to Calm Down

Box breathing is a method of conscious deep breathing that is used to calm the mind and body. Whilst being able to boost sporting and athletic performance it can be a huge stress reliever as well due to the meditative nature of the practice.

It is named box breathing due to the way in which one is supposed to envision each breath. More on this a little bit later.

MAIN USES

Box breathing can be used for a variety of things. Its main uses include but are not limited to;

• Calming the sympathetic nervous system.

• Improving PTSD.

• Reduce blood pressure

• Decreasing anxiety and panic attack prevalence - improving mental health, reducing stress and anxiety

• Aiding in the induction and quality of sleep through this well known relaxation technique

• Improving pain management.

How do I do it? Navy Seal Breathing Technique To Calm Down

As mentioned before, you must envision your breathes in a box format. There are four steps to this process – each step forming one side of the box. Now we have that oh-so complicated visual exercise out of the way I’ll give you the steps.

1. Whilst sitting up straight, inhale for four seconds, filling your lungs with as much air as possible.

2. Hold the air in your lungs for 4 seconds - holding your breath is a key part

3. Slowly exhale for four seconds, completely emptying your lungs of any air.

4. Hold this emptiness for four seconds.

Repeat this process for as long as you want until you either fall asleep or are de-stressed beyond belief.

Remember, it is normal to feel slightly dizzy if it’s your first few times doing this so don’t worry about that. Just take a rest, sit in a chair and make sure you’re not standing up when you're practicing box breathing.

WHY BOX BREATHING TECHNIQUE?

If you’re looking to improve your stress levels then this can be a massively useful tool as it brings you into the present moment and stops your mind from dwelling on unnecessary details of your life. Lowering your stress and keeping yourself in a relaxed state can be one of the most important factors to focus on when trying to decrease cortisol in the long term, which can aid in increasing testosterone so give box breathing some serious thought.

The other impressive benefit of box breathing I listed above was that it can actually help you to get to sleep whilst also improving the quality of that sleep too. I know so many people who struggle with sleep and it affects them the next day in a seemingly never-ending cycle.

Most of the time, people struggle to get enough sleep because their minds are constantly doing overtime worrying about every little thing in their lives.

By focusing solely on breathing it prevents your mind from thinking about anything else, allowing you to drift into a much deeper, uninterrupted sleep. As we all know, quality sleep is key to maintaining high testosterone levels so anything that can help with this is absolutely invaluable.

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Dead hangs: Exercise guide & Benefits

Dead hangs – doesn’t sound very exciting does it?

The benefits of this exercise certainly are though. Hanging on a bar is one of the easiest things you can do and the risk to reward ratio is better than any other exercise out there, hands down.

DEAD HANGS? WHAT’S IN IT FOR ME?

There’s quite a lot in it for you actually. I have listed some of the top benefits here but the improvements that dead hangs will offer you in the long run are far more detailed than these five points.

Spinal Decompression

The biggest draw when it comes to dead hangs is their proficiency at decompressing the spine. Hanging for just a few minutes per week can help to undo all the compression you put your spine under day in, day out from things like squatting in the gym, sitting all day and carrying heavy backpacks. This is great for spinal strength and can vastly improve your posture.

Grip strength

Another fantastic benefit that dead hangs offer is that they can turbocharge your grip strength. Having to hold onto the bar for far longer than you usually would forces your forearms to work overtime keeping you and the bar acquainted.

Over time as you build up your hang time and eventually add weight to the exercise, you will gain a vice-like grip that will carry over to your big lifts such as deadlifts, chin ups and rows.

Build huge forearms

An often overlooked benefit of dead hangs is that along with building mammoth grip strength, they also blow up your forearms. You’ll realise once you give these a go – doing 4 sets of dead hangs per week will blast your forearms 10x as hard as 10 sets of mindless forearm curls with 15kg barbells.

It’s a much more natural way to build mass and vascularity whilst adding transferable grip strength to your arsenal.

Rotator cuff strength

The rotator cuff is to a lifter what the metatarsal is to a footballer. These puppies are the main culprits when it comes to injuries in their respective practices. The rotator cuff is one of the most vulnerable muscles and is often injured due to an overload of pressing movements.

Because it isn’t a show muscle people tend to overlook it’s importance in favour of 5 extra sets of bench press. By doing a few sets of dead hangs you can stimulate the rotator cuff and proof them against strain and injury in the future – all whilst working a variety of other areas simultaneously.

Un-tightens lats

The final benefit that dead hangs posses is that they can stretch out and un-tighten the lats. The lats are crucial in pulling AND pushing movements so keeping them loose and healthy is key to skyrocketing your pressing exercises like bench press (where your lats do a large portion of the work) and overhead press.

It goes without saying that this will also carry over into your chins, dead lifts and rows. For the sake of a few minutes a week it looks like you’re getting some serious bang for your buck here doesn’t it?

HOW?

So, how exactly do you complete a dead hang?

Grab a pull up bar, totally disengage every muscle in your body and just hang onto the bar for as long as you can.

For your first go, record your max hang time.

After finding this, work out 70% of your max and use this as your ‘working weight’ to stop fatigue setting in and interfering with your other exercises. So you would do 2 sets of 70% of this time a few times a week after a workout.

Try to then add 5 seconds on to that time every month, retesting your max every 12 weeks.

Make sense?

CONCLUSION

Dead hangs are the easiest and most efficient exercise you’re not doing. Add them to the end of your workouts three times a week to decompress that spine, blast your forearms and super-strength your rotator cuffs. Try it for 12 weeks and see how much your performance and wellbeing come on.

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Be sure to follow me on socials to keep up with the daily goings on of The Man Blueprint. You can also sign up for my inner circle using the newsletter form above. Just drop your email in there and it’s job done. Completely free and completely brilliant. Whilst you’re here, have a little browse of some other article you might like below too. You won’t regret it.

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