Hi Ann,

You have to go back quite along way in the history of weightlifting for strength and fitness to understand where the breathing method comes from.

According to some of the ancient texts it would appear that athletes were encouraged to breathe in during exertion in order to stiffen the body some what as this was though to be an aid to both lifting and exertion and also the stiffening of the body meant that muscle were held in place and injury was less likely.

Other texts point out that the mere act of breathing consciously helped the athlete concentrate on the exercise that they were doing rather than be distracted by what's going on around them.

Fast forwarding to our present century many people exercise using machines which while they offer a much safer environment to work in they do significantly limit the benefit one can get by doing the same exercise with free weights.

From my experience focus-breathing is only really necessary when you are handling very large free weights as the extra support and the consciousness of breathing both help to make sure that the lift is carried out safely.

For those of us who lift just within our normal capacity the need for conscious breathing is obviously not as crucial although some might argue that it's helpful.

Personally when I'm exercising at normal speed I breathe with the exercise. However if I'm doing a very very slow repetition then I just breathe as I need to.

The bottom line of all of these is that the body requires a certain amount of oxygen in order to perform the exercise and not suffer oxygen depletion.

So the important thing is to breathe. How you breathe is very much up to you.

Hope that helps,

Mark