Quote Originally Posted by Mike T View Post
If you breathe less, your CO2 will rise in both your blood and your lungs, and there will be less room for O2. Our breathing is driven by our CO2 level, and by our blood's acidity, not directly by O2 usage or O2 lack.

At altitude we become breathless as our blood becomes acidic because of anaerobic metabolism, so due to the low O2, but indirectly.

People who rebreathe air from which the CO2 is being removed, thus using up the O2, become muddled and confused before they become breathless.

If you think you breathe too much during exercise try this. Choose a slope you would normally power walk up, and walk up it. Let your breathing settle into its normal pattern. Once this has happened, keep the same pattern/rate of breathing, but breath much more shallowly - you will soon feel the need to breathe more, and you will feel more comfortable doing so. Then, having let your breathing return to its normal pattern for a bit, keep the same pattern/rate but breathe more deeply - you will almost certainly feel fine doing this, even though the deeper breathing is not needed.

Whilst we can breathe "too much", it is far better than breathing too little, or trying to. In general, unless we have diseased lungs, our breathing just does what it needs to do.
According to 'The Oxygen Advantage' program as outlined on the book, over breathing washes out CO2 which needs to be in, not out. He says haemoglobin requires CO2 in order to offload O2 to be used for energy production. If you overbreath you can find yourself with not enough CO2 to facilitate O2 usage; this is what he reckons.

I was surprised to find that my SPo2 can be up at 98 after a 2min flat out hill rep of Carr Bridge Drive. I don't think it should be that high, and i've always noticed that i breathe more than anyone else racing around me. Based on that i'm going to test the idea that i'm a racing over-breather and see what happens if i commit to the program in the book. I'm reluctant to cherrypick the bits that have no opposing research out there, i'm just going to commit to all of it and see what happens.

I'm a firm believer in experiencing things, even if they are ridiculed as snake oil by others. If i hadn't taken Chinese Acupuncture seriously i'd never have gotten over the fasciitis in my right hip. Something is wrong with my racing performance anyway, something hidden to me, i'm far too slow on climbs and far too fast downhill. There is a white crow in my performance.