Me plank? You have to be kidding. Learning daphragmatic breathing.

I have known about diaphragmatic breathing for a long time. It is breathing in through your belly. It is an essential tool to learn in meditation and for breathing. This video tells you more, and you can google diaphragmatic breathing to find out more information. 

Learning to get a deeper breath in any way that I can is important. It goes to say that the diagram is a muscle.  As  I began to exercise I wondered, could I strengthen this muscle? Of course, singers know about diaphragmatic breathing, and I wish I could find a pulmonologist therapist that worked with the voice as I know this would help me a great deal, and I would find it more fun that breathing into a tube.

Instead, I opted for trying to strengthen my diaphragm. That means increasing my core strength. I have joked for a long time that I am coreless. I had no desire to get a core, and I knew I didn’t have one. But strengthening my core now was a life-saving technique. If I could do that, I would raise my chest, strengthen my diaphragm and perhaps get more breath.

Here is an excellent article showing your diaphragm 

I also began to use a weight on my diaphragm as I was practicing my breathing as in this video.  However I don’t use books I have a medicine ball. 

Because I was wanting to strengthen my entire core I also added some other basic exercises to my routine. Here is the list.

Planking- I never thought I would be planking at 57. But planking uses many muscles.
Bicycle Crunches– yep I’m doing crunches on the floor.
Ankle touches– These seemed quite easy to do and made me feel more accomplished than crunches.
Seated medicine ball crunches– I purchased a 10 lb ball years ago and decided to use it. These are easy and fun.

I have a Lifeline 30lb resistance cable that I purchased for $9.00 and I love it. I do many things with it and it is fun. A core exercise is the Wood chop.

What has happened with all of this? My waist has become smaller. Just a few weeks ago I ha my hans on my waist and thought, this can’t be me. I could not believe there was so much room under my ribs. It must be working. I’m standing up straighter and I would like to think it is helping my breathing. It also helps that I am losing weight which is less for my heart and lungs to have to deal with. So, In general I’m excited with the outcome.

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