Controlling Your Breathing

An article I wrote upon request back in 2013.  It still applies:

For a lot of new shooters, controlling their breathing is a completely foreign concept.  Your breathing cycle affects everything that you do. During times of stress or exertion, when we are huffing and puffing, it's hard to focus on anything let alone the fine motor skills needed during shooting. But since you can't ask the bad guy to hold on a moment, you will be better prepared if you know how to regulate your breathing. We will quickly review the breathing cycle then give some suggestions on what you can do to improve your control.

As you breath, the expansion and contraction of the chest and diaphragm cause movement in the rest of the body. This movement will change your sight picture. If you are getting a lot of hits in an up and down line on your target, it is because of your uncontrolled breathing. That is why you should hold your breath as you shoot. There are two natural pauses between inhaling and exhaling. The one after we exhale is the longest. As you begin to learn how to shoot, this is the natural pause in our respiration that you should use to take the shot.

An adult has around 12 respiratory cycles in one minute. That's about 5 seconds per cycle. Only 2 seconds of which are actually breathing, the other 3 seconds are a pause. Again, this pause is natural, but we can stretch it out for around 10 more seconds before our body starts to react to a lack of oxygen. The oxygen depletion will cause your heart rate to increase and involuntary movement of your diaphragm. Your vision will begin to get blurry, making it difficult to concentrate on your target and on your sights. The key is to hold your breath just long enough for the shot, then resume your normal breathing cycle.

It is important for you to build that muscle memory and skill when you begin shooting. Of course, in the real world you will not have the time to slow your breathing down and wait for that natural pause. In a fight you take the best shot you can when you can. So, after your body has learned how to stretch out that natural pause, it's time to move to the next level. I do mean your body. It is one thing to understand something intellectually, but that will not help you. Your body must know how to do it. The only way for it to know is through putting in the time and training.

For rapid or mutable shots, or when you are out of breath you must break from your normal breathing cycle. You must make pauses, hold your breath for an instant and take the shot. You can do this anywhere along your cycle. There really is no trick to doing this, just pause and take the shot. You already know what right is, now just shoot anytime during your breathing cycle.

There are, however, things that you can do to aid you in mastering your breath control. A book that helped me out and where I first learned some breathing drills is 'Let Every Breath' by Vladimir Vasiliev. He is the chief instructor of Systema, or Russian martial art in Toronto. His book helped me understand how to control and master my breathing cycle (I’m still working on it). In it are many ways to help train your body and control your breathing - even under stress.

I will give you an example of a drill I learned from the book. Pick an exercise. I will use the push-up. First, just breath. In through your nose and out your mouth. Do this in a slow but natural rhythm. Then begin doing slow push-ups. It doesn't matter how many push-ups you can do, what we are focusing on is breathing. The push-up is just a stress to the body. Your main concentration should be on your breathing. In through your nose, out your mouth. As you are doing the push-ups, you start a pyramid of your breathing cycle. Breath in for a 2 count, hold your breath for a 2 count, exhale for a 2 count, hold it for a 2 count. Then move up to a 3 count: hold 3 count, out 3 count, hold 3 count. Just keep going until it gets too hard, then work your way back down.

With this type of drill your body learns how to control your breath. You can use any type of stress or exercise. Your physical condition really doesn't matter. You can even do it as you walk. Of course, the better shape you're in, the better your body will be at dealing with stress.

If your gun range will allow it, and in a safe manner, stress your body by running or doing some push-ups. Then go through different shooting drills. As an example, have your buddy or coach call out something on your target for you to ID and shoot. They can record your speed and performance. Then holster your weapon. Now sprint as fast as you can to some point and back or do a series of exercises. Whatever you can, just get your heart rate up. Now go and do the same drill, but your buddy will call out different discretionary targets for you to ID and shoot. Now compare the results. Evaluate your performance and do better next time.

If you spend the time to control your breathing during training, your body will naturally follow this in a real-world time of stress.

Thanks for reading,

Jared