If you’ve ever said this you actually had plenty of air! In fact you needed to breathe OUT even more.
Okay, maybe you haven’t said that, but surely you heard someone else say they can’t ”catch their breath” or “they need more air.” But both of these phrases hide what’s going on. They don’t really describe what you need to do or what you were feeling. In fact the majority the time we have no issue getting enough oxygen into our system. If you did a test right now you would likely see that your blood is ~98-99% saturated with oxygen.
Even during exercise we have all the oxygen we could ever want.
The real question is are we using it?
When we feel out of breath what we really are feeling is the build up of carbon dioxide in our bodies. We generate more CO2 as we exercise, so as it increases we need to exhale more and more of it. If we are not very tolerant to Carbon Dioxide and the amount escalates we can feel a lot of stress and maybe even FREAK out! Many of us get this feeling much earlier than we should.
The good news is that we can become more tolerant to carbon dioxide.
Just doing more running or rowing or a long workouts isn’t going to make you feel less out of breath, but working on this type tolerance will. The good news is that’s what we strive to do here at Trinity strength.
If you want more specific guidance on not feeling “out of breath” reach out to us about breathing here.
