question about breathing while exercising
this past summer, I started biking quite a bit and part of my route involves lots of hills and so forth. It was painful af the first few months, not gonna lie.
although, now, my legs muscles have grown quite a bit (didn't expect that) and I am quite happy with my muscular endurance, although there is still room for improvement obviously.
However, oddly as it sounds, my breathing is still off. As I bike up the hill, I feel heartbeat go up quite a bit and my breathing becomes quite laborious and I wind up taking quick breaths with my mouth aka panting. If I try to do it through my nose, I quickly feel like I am suffocating like I can't get enough air.
In the beginning, this made sense. I was out of shape and all that.
But summer is over, my legs have adapted but I feel like my breathing hasn't. when I am going up a hill, I still feel the need to pant and breathe through my mouth and take short breaths.
Is this normal? that I would have to pant even after 3-4 months of this kind of exercise everyday. I figured my lungs or whatever would get used to the biking route I am taking by this time.
I ran track in high school and was mildly successful and I never breathed through my nose when doing anything much harder than a mild jog. I was also on my bike 12 months a year for all occasions and would always breath through my mouth when doing anything but the lightest of riding (more than a handful of bugs met their fate in my lungs). Some people have an air passage through their noses big enough to breathe even during fairly strenuous exercise, but not everyone.
Short answer is: it's normal. You're still pushing hard and I'd guess the extra muscle you've gained means your climbing more quickly, which is additional effort on the whole body. One option is to slow your cadence. Slowing down will stress your body less and reduce the short of breath feeling. The other option is to lean into it and know that it's cardio conditioning.
I've found tempo matching can be really helpful here. Like, trying to match your breathing to music: pick a song or album with a good tempo - forever mine was the Treats album by Sleigh Bells and recently has become Pogo on repeat - you can use it to measure out your breathing. I usually start slower and will try to breath in every 4th down beat and then breath in on the next 4th downbeat. Once I ramp up exertion I might shorten it to every 3 or 2 down beats depending on how much oxygen my body is asking for.
Cardio health and strength are two very different things. It's completely possible that you just need to train your cardiovascular system to better manage air. You might have seen "running masks" out there which exist to restrict oxygen intake, with the idea being that a person will learn how to train themselves how to use less oxygen more efficiently. Maybe for now focus on running on flat terrain, a treadmill, elliptical, or rowing machine to improve your cardio health. It's going to be a long road, though.
It could also be more specific; that your body just hasn't yet learned how to breathe right under heavy exertion. It sounds weird, but it's a real thing. There are some breathing exercises you can look up, like the one @Prodiggles mentioned, but it's also one of those things that in theory you can just work through it for a while until your body naturally figures out something that works for you.
Another possibility is that you might have a health issue impacting your breathing. It could be asthma, for instance. If you're worried about that, you might want to send a message to your doctor to see how to test for those potential issues.
I have a decent amount of experience doing competitive running, and something worth noting is that your breathing may not be equal with your muscle endurance, and that is normal. Especially in the last couple hundred meters of a race, I would start pushing it harder, and normally my breathing would be the limitation. I would be in excellent shape, but struggling for air. For a majority of the race, my muscle endurance would be the limitation (although I was always careful of pacing myself), but that final sprint I would muster enough strength in my legs to push for 30 seconds, and my breathing would struggle. Another thing to consider is that now that your muscles are not struggling, you may have started subconsciously been pushing harder up this hill.
This may or may not help, but learning to breathe through both your nose and mouth (slightly closed) in measured timing can help with this somewhat.
It's something especially during my early karate days we'd spend time doing in order to get better control of our lungs. This helped with giving control to the sharpness at which you could pull in and expel your breaths.
Basically anytime you'd have either a quick movement (punch, kick) or long endurance holding a stance up to hour at a time you'd focus on your breath over what you were doing and eventually it'd become more natural.
While it's been a while since I did karate, I still use this technique for anything I'm doing whether agility or endurance running to help keep from getting out of breath. Hope it helps!
Something that helped me is singing while I did lighter exercise. If you can manage deep, regular breaths to sing with while you're maintaining even a quick walk, your lungs are in a good place to support you during more intense exertion. It's less of a workout for your legs, but more of one for your respiratory system.