The Importance of Btreathing During Your Workouts

You know how important it is to breathe correctly during your weight-training workouts—inhale on the negative stroke, exhale on the positive. But how you breathe during cardio is also important—and a sign of what fuel you’re using. If you can carry on a conversation during cardio, you’re more apt to be tapping into bodyfat for fuel. If you’re breathing hard—sucking air—and your pulse rate is very high, you’re past the lactate threshold and tapping into muscle glycogen. Interval cardio, such as sprinting the straightaways and walking the curves on a track, burns both fat and glycogen, with even more fat used postworkout during muscle repair, but it’s very similar to a weight workout for your legs. If you use interval cardio sessions, be sure to cut back on your lower-body resistance workouts.