Thread by @ErwanLeCorre

When a true BJJ & MMA legend such as Rickson Gracie talks about the importance of breathing, who wouldn't want to listen?

Yet, no disrespect to the legend but lots of what he says about breathing is false (and dangerous even).

An IMPORTANT thread.

Rickson starts with something absolutely true:

“The big change in my life was when I learned how to breathe I started to bring more spiritual possibilities, more mental possibilities.”

Learning to breathe properly can absolutely transform your life, that is a wonderful truth.

Then he talks about the interaction between the brain and mind, the heart, and then with the lungs and breathing. Also how regulating breath helps to regulate the heart, mindset, and emotions. That is all true and incredibly important.

“Five minutes without air, you’re dead.”

That may be long enough to make most people pass out or even die, but trained individuals can hold their breath for 5 minutes or more without losing consciousness or having any side effects.

“When you know how to hyperventilate it’s like you double your life, triple your lifetime.”

Well well...erm...NO. Not at all. Hyperventilation is one of the major health issues most people have in their life today without even knowing. It's also called overbreathing.

Not all hyperventilation is made of big, loud breaths. If you breathe 15-25 times per minute you are hyperventilation already even if the volume of each breath isn't large, but if your breathing rate is high you end up breathing a lot of air per minute, which IS hyperventilation.

When you breathe a lot you do inhale a lot of air and all the oxygen in it...but you aren't actually using all that oxygen at all. In fact, you will use LESS oxygen as a result of hyperventilating, because to use O2 we need proper levels of CO2 and when we breathe too much...

...we chronically LOWER the level of CO2 in our body which chronically reduces our ability to use oxygen EVEN if our body receives more oxygen than it actually needs through breathing. A chronic lack of oxygen supply to the cells is obviously causing MANY health issues.

So hyperventilating does NOT help oxygenate your body better, it is the OPPOSITE. It won't double or triple your lifetime, it might actually make you age and die faster than you should.

“if I want to go dive I need to hyperventilate (he demonstrates hyperventilation) because I increase the circulation of oxygen in my body and I increase the oxygen in the cells. So I do hyperventilation for a little while and I triple the amount of time I’m gonna be underwater.”

WOW. This part is flat wrong and DANGEROUS! Le me explain further. When you hyperventilate, you DO NOT increase the amount of O2 circulating in your blood, however, you lower the amount of CO2 in your body which causes your tissues to be LESS oxygenated.

So what's the reason why you can hold your breath longer? Not because you have more oxygen available in your body but because the urge to breathe, which arises when your CO2 levels go up, is delayed since you start your breath-hold with a DEFICIT in CO2.

The problem is that, if you go swim underwater after you do that you are very likely to PUSH your limits too far, not noticing early enough that you need to breathe since the urge to breathe has been artificially delayed by hyperventilation...

which can easily cause people to BLACK OUT (lose consciousness) and drown! And many have, including practitioners of the WHM who have never been informed about this danger.
NEVER hyperventilate before swimming underwater (and never swim underwater unless someone watches you).

The rest is right, in order to create a strong inhale one must first increase the exhale, and the control of the exhale is what makes inhaling easier and more efficient during physical efforts. However it's NOT the diaphragm as he implies, that is responsible for forced exhales.

But that's a detail. Most importantly:
-hyperventilation decreases oxygenation.
-hyperventilating chronically (over-breathing) lowers your energy and health.
-hyperventilating before swimming underwater is DANGEROUS.

I hope it helps!