Mark Bell's Power Project - Experts Say You're Breathing Wrong, Here's How To Fix It

Starting point is 00:00:00 To my knowledge, just almost universally, when you correct mouth breathing, you correct a lot of things. You correct cancer risk, you correct obesity. If you have a predisposition for disease and your cells are not protecting you, then you're going to get to have that disease earlier in life. I think that it's a very advanced concept that people jump to first. It's almost like high intensity interval training. Because people are like, oh, nasal breathing is the answer. And then they start

Starting point is 00:00:29 tanking their performance because they won't let themselves ever mouth breathe. They'll say, oh, even though I'm pushing hard, I've got to only nasally breathe. And then they're going to be so weak. Pat Project family, how's it going? Now on this podcast, we talk a lot about how you can increase your performance, sleep, et cetera. And all of that can actually be done through breathing, which is why in this episode, we talked to different professionals about how you can, through your breathing, increase your athletic performance, better your sleep quality drastically,

Starting point is 00:00:52 which again will help with your recovery and your athletic performance, and have better cardiovascular capacity. Now, if you're watching on YouTube, in our analytics, we see that 38% of you watch these videos and are not subscribed. So subscribe to the channel, like the video, and if you're listening on Spotify and Apple, it'd be amazing if you can leave us a five-star rating and review for all the content that we bring you guys.

Starting point is 00:01:10 Also, if you want to see the full-length episodes of all of these podcasts, it's in the description. Enjoy this episode. When you're running or when you're doing cardiovascular work, that's the thing you do. Trying to switch the way you breathe over time, it's just frustrating. It's like, why the fuck am I going to do this? I'm already performing fine, breathing through my mouth, doing these things. There's really no reason to take the time to do it. The thing I guess is, is kind of with it is because it's not super evidence-based, right? And obviously anecdotal

Starting point is 00:01:37 end of one, when I started making the change from like focusing on nasal breathing during high cardiovascular exercise for me, primarily jujitsu, my, it took me a while, but then after about maybe eight months, my gas tank went from here to here. It's like super chill during while doing sparring. Right. Um, I don't get gassed. And I noticed that when my opponents are, I'm like, I'm still breathing through my nose. I'm still chill. I got them, but it took a while to transition. And it's trying to convince somebody that you're breathing or you're nasal breathing. If you shift to that while you're doing something like jujitsu or cardio, you won't feel the benefits right now. But in the long term, you will.

Starting point is 00:02:16 It's the same thing I noticed with the feet. Like initially, I wasn't noticing much. And initially, I was making somewhat of a regression. But over time, it's like I walk differently. My feet are more active when I'm like not like usually. And I had flat feet, too. I actually had surgery on my foot for soccer when I was younger. But like initially, like my feet weren't really doing much when I'm just standing around or when I'm doing jujitsu.

Starting point is 00:02:41 It's like my toes weren't doing much. But now there's so much more awareness into what's happening there. The tendons are thicker. But it takes a while. And again, there's no evidence behind it. But for me, it's very interesting how much of a difference it's made for my performance. And I'm someone who already does a lot of athletics. And I'm someone who already does a lot of athletics that I'm just like, if individuals can just take a step into, you know, doing things more barefoot more often or using their feet in different ways, gen pop, I know research, but I really think it could make a massive difference for how they move, how they feel, et cetera.

Starting point is 00:03:26 So it's, it's a topic that like, I don't think it's sexy because it takes a long time. For some people, they'll be like, yeah, we fuck with vivos, right? But it's not just transitioning into some barefoot shoes that's going to be your thing. It's doing more things barefoot or with that. And it's painful for many. It was painful for me in the beginning. But if you can work your way through that transition period, it could pay very big dividends in the long run.

Starting point is 00:03:50 Yeah, I agree. I agree for sure. Like it's for a lot of people can be very beneficial. And it just comes down to, yeah, how we communicate that and how we let them know like the broad spectrum of it. And also like one thing, I guess, with the nasal breathing is like, I found it helpful as well for jujitsu. It helps you calm down. And there is actually some evidence where the more you nasally breathe,

Starting point is 00:04:09 it's used a lot by deep sea divers, like the free divers for apnea training to help improve their CO2 tolerance. So there's a lot of actual physiological mechanisms and reasons why it should be beneficial. People then take that to mean, okay, I should always be nasal breathing. They were going to say, well, hang on. If you're sparring in jiu-jitsu, you're doing a bit of drilling,

Starting point is 00:04:29 even if it's hard drilling, yeah, probably just try nasal breathe as much as you can. But if you're in a comp, you're going to fucking mouth breathe. If you're pushing maximally, you got to fucking mouth breathe. But again, this is where a little bit of information can be a dangerous thing

Starting point is 00:04:41 because people are like, oh, nasal breathing is the answer. And then they start tanking their performance because they won't let themselves ever mouth breathe. They'll say, oh, even though I'm pushing hard, I've got to only nasally breathe. And then they're going to be so weak. They're going to get to a point where their body physiologically can't perform because they're forcing themselves to shut down the instinct of having to mouth breathe eventually because you need to. If you're pushing maximally close to your max threshold, you must

Starting point is 00:05:03 mouth breathe. Even though like it's bad it's like well it's it's about the context of it it's not yeah exactly it's not bad there will come a point where you have to toggle it but what i've noticed is like you know even rolling or or in sparring with high level individuals i can i can stay calmer while nasal breathing when the pace picks up by the time they're already doing that by the time I have to open my mouth, it's like I'm already ahead. So now I'm like, but I'm still more relaxed than my opponent who's now gassed themselves out because once they started getting fatigue, their immediate thing was to go from, you know what I mean? So like, yeah, it's, it's, it's a problem because what we're talking about here is people that have the all or nothing mindset when it comes

Starting point is 00:05:48 to applying something. So I want to fix my feet. I'm going barefoot all the time. I'm fucking running barefoot. It's like, ah, like, yeah,

Starting point is 00:05:55 let's, let's, the thing is it's not sexy because it's not fast. The change that's going to happen is going to take you months, if not maybe a few years, if you've been mouth breathing for your whole life. There is some good information, too, on like that zone two cardio. Yeah, absolutely.

Starting point is 00:06:11 The mathetone method that's been around. That guy's been talking about it since like the 70s. But no one really ever listened to him until more recently. But that is kind of – he didn't research nasal breathing, but it was more like, can you have a conversation while you're doing exercise? And I think that just is a really interesting thing. Like I kind of, I've never really, you know, done this for excessive periods of time,

Starting point is 00:06:36 so I don't know how effective it would be. But if almost all of your training kind of was in that domain of being able to have kind of a conversation because we were talking about you know easing way back on your lifting yeah and so maybe it could be applied to lifting and maybe it would have a tremendous benefit or maybe it's just like a little maybe it's a little too extreme well honestly just like anything it's all about how far we take it like the zone 2 cardio it's so incredibly beneficial like let's say the goal was to improve your conditioning and your cardiovascular health and cardiovascular

Starting point is 00:07:07 performance, aerobic performance. Zone two cardio is going to make up a humongous part of that because you know the physiological benefits of that. But if you only did that, then you're missing out all the other anaerobic and the aerobic power benefits, the MAC threshold stuff. So we've got to say, okay, it's very beneficial. How can I sprinkle it in? How do I periodize periodize that in the plan that's all it is and it's just like all the mobility stuff from before it's about where's the gap how do we fill that gap how much do you really need and then how much can you afford to throw in before it starts taking away from other things that we're doing in terms like max power output or force output or whatever it is um yeah and that's where like nasal breathing i think it's

Starting point is 00:07:45 incredible because it helps relax you zone two cardio incredible if we go too extreme on it which i've done it's at the cost of your max power or your max exertion or your performance and then if we're really trying to drive adaptation in like jujitsu or in bodybuilding or powerlifting you need those max effort pushes where your mouth breathing sometimes as well and if we don't train that because we're obsessed about the zone two or obsessed about nasal Bodybuilding and powerlifting, you need those max effort pushes where you're mouth breathing sometimes as well. And if we don't train that because we're obsessed about the zone two or we're obsessed about nasal breathing, it becomes very, I shouldn't say dangerous, but it has a negative impact despite you doing the right thing.

Starting point is 00:08:16 And that's where a lot of people live. Unfortunately, they're doing what's right, but they don't have the complete picture around how to fit it into a plan intelligently or how to appropriate that for their context. And then they go too far on one extreme and they start regressing. And even if it's not for performance, just for general gen pop people, you don't want them to regress. You want them to be able to always be coming back in the gym or exercising in some way and getting some meaningful change out of that to live a healthy life.

Starting point is 00:08:39 Like beyond our extreme goals because we are kind of an anomaly as lifters. People forget that. It's like we're an anomaly and most people who actually need this kind of an anomaly as lifters. People forget that. It's like we're an anomaly and most people who actually need this kind of stuff, they're getting too confused by all these extremes and by our niche. We have enough research on the fact that if you are not breathing well and you're not resting well, you're not recovering well, you will have side effects that can be, you know, you will have side effects that can be, you know,

Starting point is 00:09:08 they can go anywhere from just being tired to being, you know, having your cells being under stress. And stress is a cause of so many diseases, especially what we call Western diseases, you know. So if you have, you know, a predisposition for disease and your cells are not protecting you, then you're going to get to have that disease earlier in life. And we can't really say if you don't have a good jaw, you will develop Alzheimer's.

Starting point is 00:09:35 That's not a result that can be… It's not scientific, yeah. Yeah, but we know that there's the resting mode and then there's the active mode. We have the sympathetic and the parasympathetic. And we've done work in Stanford with Dr. Sapolsky, who's an expert in stress. And he basically knows that the more stress, the more you're going to break down your cells. So we want to be in parasympathetic, which is the rest and repair mode, as opposed to in the sympathetic, which is the fight and flight. Fight and flight is useful, but it should be very short and we should get out of it.

Starting point is 00:10:19 But as humans, we're carrying on this stress because we're always thinking we're being in danger. That's what stress is. So our cells are vulnerable. If we are in parasympathetic mode, our cells are not vulnerable. So we want to be as long as possible in this parasympathetic rest and repair, digest. These are the longer times. So when we're asleep, we want to be only in parasympathetic. If our mouth is open and we're struggling to breathe or if we have sleep apnea, we are going to be the same as if a tiger was attacking us in the middle of the night.

Starting point is 00:10:58 So we're going to put all our energy into fighting that stress and we're going to leave ourselves vulnerable to disease. So these are all theories that we're looking into, but definitely having good sleep, good rest, good breathing will make us healthier. And the other thing is we look better. The health, this is something that's in JAWS, in our appearance chapter. If you look better, you're probably going to be healthier because we are designed to be attracted to the mates that are going to have the best possibility to have healthier offsprings. So a nice jaw will look good because it's a healthy jaw, not because we just want to, you know, we think it's an opinion that we look better. We're going to be healthier if we have wider jaws with the possibility to breathe better. Power Project family, shut your f***ing mouth. We've been

Starting point is 00:11:56 talking about breathing through your nose and nasal breathing during your sleep for the past five years. That's why we've partnered with Hostage Tape. It's the best tape on the market, sticks to your face even if you have a beard. So head to hostage tape.com slash power project, and you'll be able to get a year supply of tape for 55 cents a day. That shit saves you $150. It's a no brainer links in the description and the podcast show notes. Enjoy the show. I was just going to add to that. Um,, there's such huge problems with people's sleep. And when it comes to nutrition, when it comes to exercise, people can overdo their food. They can underdo their exercise. People can overdo their exercise, right?

Starting point is 00:12:35 You can kind of have this wide variety of things. And what I usually say is as long as it doesn't negatively impact your sleep, as far as you, maybe somebody is trying to diet for a bodybuilding show. But once they get down to those last couple of weeks, that better just be a temporary position that you're in because it's going to be very difficult to sleep as you get leaner and more calorie deprived. On the other end of it, you have people that are eating probably too much food before they go to bed. Maybe they traditionally overeat and they're heavy and they're having a hard time going to sleep simply because they may have like sleep apnea, which I would imagine would be related to your body weight. But maybe it's more related to some of the airways. But that's one of the main reasons why we're talking to you today is because so much of this has to do with the way that we breathe. And for people to, you know, sometimes people hear these kind of rabbit holes

Starting point is 00:13:25 that we go down and they think it's outrageous or crazy, but I don't think it's crazy or outrageous for us to try to examine how can we breathe better. You know, breathing is definitely the one action that is most important. Of everything that we do, breathing is most important. And there's something my ENT was talking about it when we were writing the new book, Nose. He says, breathing is the only function that has two organs that we can use for the same. Like we have organs that we have two organs doing one thing, like two eyes, two ears. But we only have one function that has two organs. So you can breathe through your nose and your mouth because breathing is so important.

Starting point is 00:14:11 And we have to make sure that we optimize the breathing based on whatever we want to achieve. So breathing is not, okay, breathe through your nose all the time. No. As humans, we can breathe through our mouth, and that has helped us be the dominant animal in the planet. We can cool ourselves off. We can breathe through our mouth.

Starting point is 00:14:34 If we have an accident with our nose, we can compensate and breathe through our mouth, and we can have that extra air when we need to get away from danger. So breathing through our mouth is not bad. But we have to determine what are we breathing for. And when you're in athletics, and that's not necessarily my field, nutrition and bodybuilding and lifting weights and all that. and bodybuilding and lifting weights and all that, but I am involved in trying to get every sport has different demands of oxygen. You're not going to breathe the same if you're a swimmer than if you're a boxer.

Starting point is 00:15:18 A boxer has a device in their mouth, so they cannot mouth breathe when they're doing their sport. And then they stop, and they have to recover really fast, and they have to get back into the sport, where a swimmer will swim, and then they're doing their sport. And then they stop and they have to recover really fast and they have to get back into the sport. Whereas a swimmer will swim and then they're done. And they mouth breathe. So it's adequate for a swimmer to mouth breathe. And it's fantastic that we can do it because we can go into the pool and swim.

Starting point is 00:15:38 A lot of animals cannot. They cannot put their head in the water or whatever. So we have to decide what the function is, and then we actually have different types of breathing. We have mixed breathing, we have nasal breathing, we have mouth breathing, we have different positions that we can keep our jaw depending on what we're trying to do. And in that sense, you want to guide people to breathe the most efficient way for what they're doing

Starting point is 00:16:07 and then try to get as fast as possible into your recovery breathing. Recovery breathing, we call it oblock breathing because that's the breathing where you have a little bubble of space, not air, but space in the roof of the mouth. of space, not air, but space in the roof of the mouth. And that bubble actually holds the tongue away from the airway. So that we call it uplock, like a plane that's flying. The uplock is the wheels that go up, but they stay up without active energy.

Starting point is 00:16:40 So you want your athlete or the person to go back into that mode as soon as possible because that's when we regenerate better. And we should spend more time in that position. And that's when we are looking in athletes and we're trying to do studies to see if their pulse goes back faster to the resting pulse when they're in this position. If the lactic acid is being used more efficiently when they're in this position. So we got to bring the athlete back into recovery because that's the key. And I know you guys are, you know, you get neurologists and you show too, and we talk about recovery and you want to regenerate cells, and you want to have protection from disease. So going to that mode of recovery faster is better.

Starting point is 00:17:36 And I like to talk about the extremes because that gives us a clear picture of where we're at. And if we look at the extreme in life, when people are dying, they usually have a mouth open. If you go to a hospice situation, you will see that people are struggling to get air, and they open their mouth to get more volume because the respiration in the cell is inefficient. The wall is not allowing the oxygen to go in, so we want more volume. That's why we open the mouth. In the other extreme, newborns should only breathe through their nose.

Starting point is 00:18:16 They can't even breathe through their mouth. A baby cannot breathe through their mouth, a newborn. So those are the two extremes. We know the baby, everything's new, right? Like you get a new car, everything functions well, everything is great. And that's the baby. Parts are new. So we're breathing through our nose. When everything is falling apart, we're breathing through our mouth. So what do we want in the middle? To try to stay in the nasal recovery breathing as much as possible, because that's when we are going to

Starting point is 00:18:47 have things work better. And if our cell is efficient and the respiration inside the cell is happening properly, then we don't need a lot of volume. When we need that volume is when we're not getting what we need. Our mitochondria are not getting the energy that they need to function inside the cell because the lungs might not be getting enough air. And that can be because our nose is inefficient or because our jaw is too small. And we have things that are in the path of that air. And we have to get more volume because we're not getting that efficiency. So in that sense, you know, for athletes that are working on different programs that you advise, you need

Starting point is 00:19:33 to figure out what they're doing and then make sure the recovery is the best possible recovery. Sleep, obviously, is important. If they're doing something short term, it's fine. But for the long term health maintenance, you want them to have good sleep. And without good breathing, there's no possibility of good recovery and good sleep. Is it possible, because we've had a few people that have come onto the show, and we've asked them about snoring, and some of them have said, snoring is not a big deal. But is it possible to be able to breathe through your mouth at night and not have it be a problem for your health? Or is that a problem that you need to figure out?

Starting point is 00:20:13 Look, we have a tendency to compensate. Everything, not only humans, every being in the planet can compensate. And the question is who can compensate better and when do you get to the breakdown? If you are snoring a little bit but you are getting good sleep, your stress is low, you have good body mass index, and there's other things that are good, then snoring might not be a huge problem. If you start gaining weight and you have a very stressful life and you live in a polluted place and you add more things, then you won't be able to compensate.

Starting point is 00:20:56 So every individual is different, but the need for oxygen and for nose breathing is the same for everyone. But some of us can compensate better than others. And we can try to thrive. I love the wellness community because the wellness community is not necessarily a sick community. It's actually healthy, but they want to make sure they continue to be healthy. It's actually healthy, but they want to make sure they continue to be healthy. And some comedians say they're greedy because they're already healthy, but they want more. And yeah, we are greedy.

Starting point is 00:21:36 I consider myself healthy, but I don't want to be sick. My ex-husband always says if Sandra is in pain, the whole world is in pain. So we have to make sure that she's not suffering. So I don't like to be in pain. I don't like to suffer. I like to be healthy. I don't want to have things that don't work well in my body. That's why I do the work it takes.

Starting point is 00:22:00 And in any case, we want to be well. We want to make sure we focus on the things that can help anybody be better. And the nose is one of them because, as my ENT that's writing with me now says, the nose doesn't have a disease. Nobody goes and says, oh, I have a disease of my nose. It's very rare. We do have ear infections. We have an infection in your eye or your throat. But nobody's sick of the nose. It's very rare. We do have ear infections. We have an infection in your eye or your throat, but nobody's sick of the nose. So as doctors, they go to medical school and they are taught how to, okay, you have this disease, you cure it this way. You have this disease, you cure it this way. And

Starting point is 00:22:38 that's what you learn in medical school. You don't learn to maintain health, to foster health. And I don't talk about prevention. This I got from Dr. Fuster, Valentin Fuster, head of cardiology in New York. He said, don't talk about prevention because prevention is also focusing on, I don't want this one bad thing to happen. So prevention is already talking about disease. Talk about fostering health. How can we foster all the activities that will make us healthier? And that's what the wellness community does. And this is what we're trying to teach anybody that comes into the Forward Onyx universe is, okay, all these things will make you better. I don't know if they're going to prevent a bad problem from happening,

Starting point is 00:23:26 but we know from experience that all these things can help you improve your situation. What about breathing helps the production of ATP? And something I've noticed for myself, and I mentioned this to Mark this morning, I typically try to use mouth tape every night. And on the nights I forget, I typically, I don't use an alarm, but I sleep longer. On the nights that I use Malt-Tap, every single time I sleep like 45 minutes less, I wake up energized. I'm just like, I can hop out of bed. Always I need less sleep. What might be going on? Have you measured your deep sleep one versus the other and your heart rate variability one versus the other? My HRV is usually a little bit better when I have Malt-Tap on. Deep sleep can

Starting point is 00:24:04 vary depending on the time that I go to bed on certain nights some nights i go to bed at 12 30 some nights i go to bed at like 11 yeah so it ranges there but always i sleep less and wake up feeling more energized when i use mouth tape on the prime like and it's not like when i when i don't use mouth tape it's like i wake up with a dry mouth but my mouth sometimes is probably falling open a little bit here and there throughout the night when I don't use mouth tape versus when I do. So I'm just curious about that. Yeah. Well, I know some of the research in that talks about that you're, you're, especially when you talk to like some of the dentists that are really on the forefront of that, um, which you find a lot, some of the people that know the most about that are dentists that are

Starting point is 00:24:39 really into this, um, the oxygenate, you oxygenate the brain better. So that's one component of it. I think another piece, just generally speaking, is that in order to make ATP, your primary fuel source is not food, it's oxygen. So you pull oxygen into oxfos, and that's how you're making all that ATP. So you have kind of a linear equation with respect to oxygen and ATP production.

Starting point is 00:25:02 So the less oxygen, the less ATP you make. And I'm trying to think of the research I've seen on mouth breathers. I think, to my knowledge, just almost universally, when you correct mouth breathing, you correct a lot of things. You correct cancer risk. You correct obesity. So what you see, this is really interesting, when you look at childhood obesity rates,

Starting point is 00:25:27 first of all, this isn't any one thing. It's a bunch of things that are tied together. But when you look at childhood obesity rates, the absence of chewing hard foods and a lot of, okay, and this is a radical opinion within dentistry, but a guy you should have on the podcast is

Starting point is 00:25:43 Dr. Gregory Cliven. Man, this guy is the nicest guy you're ever going to meet in your life. Super nice guy and really knowledgeable. And he can really speak to this stuff. But just to paraphrase some stuff, he might tell you. What you see is some of the older orthodontic techniques,

Starting point is 00:25:58 they were based on removing things from the jaw. And so what happens is the jaw and the facial structure never properly develops. You know, there's a whole bunch of epigenetics going on here. It's a whole bunch of gene stimulation from the ability to chew and chew hard foods. And so what you see with childhood obesity rates is there's these high correlations with chewing soft foods, with improper airway flow. And so some of the net things that you see from that are kind of this thing. You'll see kind of this kind of posture leaning forward.

Starting point is 00:26:31 And the reason you see that is because you unconsciously need to get more air. So you see kind of this humpback kind of posture. And you can test it. You can just, okay, well, stand really straight and breathe. I'm not getting as much air. Put your head forward. Oh, yeah, I get more air. But a lot of that is coming from the lack of development of the palate and the mouth. And there's a book I'm reading right now called Epigenetic Orthodontics. And it's incredible, the pictures that you see in this book of the facial facial correction. That goes on when people undergo. The expansion of the palate. I know that sometimes people start to hear this stuff. And they think that we're crazy.

Starting point is 00:27:13 Because we've been talking about this for quite some time. But my understanding is that there's some stem cell production. Chewing on hard things. And that's what helps kind of recorrect. And we're not really saying that. That mouth breathing. is causing people to be heavier because we know what the root cause but as joel pointed out it it can be a potential another issue uh that compounds a already complicated issue and so people's decision making skills you can you can start to just think about on days when you're really, really tired. Think

Starting point is 00:27:46 about your decision making skills and how poor they are. And so now think about if you started to feel that way every single day because you had sleep apnea or some sort of obstructed breathing, not just during sleep, but even throughout the entire day. Now you're really screwed and it's going to be very difficult to make changes or want to investigate what's going on with your diet. It's going to be that much harder for you to be able to kind of... I have seen from coaching clients, I've seen things like, I have seen, you know, whole body resonance imaging of like the airway, okay? And you can literally see these tiny airways, tiny airways that are restricting airflow.

Starting point is 00:28:26 Okay. And these are things that if you just run the math on what your probabilistic outcomes are, you need oxygen to make ATP. In my book, I talk a lot about the hypoxia protein, HIF1. So our body has a backup system when you don't have food. That's called body fat. It body has a backup system when you don't have food. That's called body fat. It also has a backup system when you don't have air. Okay, that's called HIF-1.

Starting point is 00:28:52 And basically each cell controls its own sort of need for oxygen tension. Oxygen tension is kind of like a little lever, a little meter that says, we don't have any oxygen. Let's go to the backup system. What you see, hand in hand, with lots of different types of cancers, is when you have sustained hypoxia as a whole and within cells,

Starting point is 00:29:17 you see this high, high correlation to cancer. And it's because you're not getting enough oxygen. Because your cells start running on glycolysis. And then you see sort of these inflammatory mediators and you see these inflammatory cascades within immune cells that, and the way to understand it is in my book, I talk about the macrophage as kind of like the SWAT team like the SWAT team of the body you know they patrol and you know they see something that's out of whack and they go kill it okay but they're also the body's doctors and so they kind of have dual roles and there's a time when you need sometimes you need a SWAT team sometimes you need a doctor but what you see with macrophages is generally when you have issues with hypoxia they show up because there's a problem. And the metabolism of the SWAT team macrophages is very inflammatory by its nature. And that's necessary. You need it to kill things. But when there's too much of that, the whole system gets wonky and you get

Starting point is 00:30:15 these inflammatory cascades that are very oncogenic in nature. So when you look at restricted airflow, you see these very high correlations to cancer and obesity, and it starts in childhood. So just simple things like in childhood, correcting airflow and reintroducing back a number of different small things. I don't think there's any one cure, but introducing back hard chewing and a number of other things, I think over the long term can pay huge dividends. And in saying that, you know, I understand there's a lot of orthodontists out there in dentists that would be violently opposed to that idea. That's just BS. It's, you know, it's like ridiculous. There's a small contingent of dental professionals that are sort of really looking at this and seeing pretty

Starting point is 00:30:57 amazing results. Neotropics. Every single biohacker and their mother talks about the benefits of Lion's Mane or Alpha-GPC alpha gpc blah blah blah we have this mix of supplement but no one really tells you how to analyze what you actually should be trying to take or what problems you may have that's why andy triana has made the nootropics ebook now on our website at powerproject.live now we've had andy on our podcast multiple times and he's educated us on so many different things along with nootropics. But in this ebook, he goes in depth on how to analyze what your problems may be specifically and how to utilize nootropics to help fix those issues or to help progress in certain areas. Like if you're wanting to speak better, think faster, communicate better. There's so many

Starting point is 00:31:40 things he goes in depth on in this ebook and you can get it now on our website at PowerProject.Live. The link's in the description along with the podcast show notes. Having worked with thousands of athletes at this point, I want to know your insight into the way that athletes breathe when doing aerobic work. We talk about this a lot whenever we have people that focus on cardio or coaches that work with martial artists come onto the podcast. Because we had Patrick Heungn on Dave Nestor. Um, uh, we started focusing on nasal breathing a few years ago. I started focusing within jujitsu and it's made a night and day difference in terms of just my ability to keep the battery running and not getting fatigued.

Starting point is 00:32:15 Um, so what do you notice with people and breathing and what is the difference when it comes to learning how to do nasal breathing? Do you, do you think it has as much of an impact as I think it has? I do. I think it has a huge impact. I think that it's a very advanced concept that people jump to first. It's almost like high intensity interval training. It has a lot of buzz. It's got, you know, everybody is talking about it. And so people want to jump right in. The problem is, is that they're bypassing the basics first. For example, one of the things that we were talking about is the rhythm of the breath. Do you have a reliable and predictable rhythm to your breathing?

Starting point is 00:32:56 And swimmers, if you think about it, have the best rhythm of the breath. Like your wife, you were talking about it. She comes from a swimming background. Guaranteed, she understands what I'm talking about. And if I took her out of the pool and she ran, she would maintain that same cadence. And this is important because remember, the oxygen is your aerobic system, that oxidative pathway. It's the energy that ultimately fuels those slow twitch fibers and those intermediate fibers. And so part of it is, is imagine if the brain doesn't know when the next dose of energy is coming in. If it's random, it is always going to set aside motor units because it doesn't know you're going to go into a one minute breath hold. But if it's a reliable and predictable pattern, the rhythm establishes, the brain builds up confidence that, you know what, I'm going to free up more motor units because I know there's another dose

Starting point is 00:33:45 of energy coming in the same cadence. So you want to establish that rhythm as number one. And then number two is that you want to establish when you're in control of your intensity and when you're out of control of your intensity. And so in the movement of running, one of the things that you can do really easily is you want to count the number of footsteps you take per cycle of breath. So your exhale begins when your foot hits the ground. That's always what happens with all of us is the cycle will start your exhale on a foot strike, whether it's your left side or your right side. your right side. If you are in control of your breathing, meaning you are giving your muscles that are moving enough oxygen, you may be suffering, but they're getting enough oxygen. You're going to be breathing by taking four steps for every cycle of a breath. So it's an exhale, one, two, three, exhale, one, two, three, exhale. Now that's what we call a four count cadence. Anything a four or higher, you're okay. If you cross over into a three, now what you're doing is you're going to dip into what we call a non-sustainable pace above lactate threshold. So think of it like climbing into the death zone on Everest. You could go above it and summit, but you will die. And in the movement of running, you're just going to stop and hunch over and put your hands on your knees. So knowing that, it's knowledge that by intention, you may be by going into a three count because you've got to go up a hill or you're pushing to the finish line.

Starting point is 00:35:15 After three count, you would go to a two count. A two count, for most people, they could keep the muscles firing for about 20 seconds. Think about your closing sprint. And then the accumulation of lactic acid builds up where the muscles start shutting down. So you can stay on a two count for a long amount of time, but what's your velocity doing? So what we want to do is teach those basics first. Here's an example. Anybody wants to just watch.

Starting point is 00:35:39 Watch what, watch Conor McGregor. Here he arguably has the most expensive training staff in the world. And watch Conor McGregor do a five-minute match. He's five minutes and now he gets a minute of rest. What does Conor McGregor do during the one minute? Because remember, you want to maximize your ability to recover during that one minute so you're fresher going back in. maximize your ability to recover during that one minute so you're fresher going back in does he have a routine do you have a routine and he doesn't sometimes he's seated sometimes he's kneeling on the rope sometimes he's jabber jabbering with you know the opponent sometimes he's pacing it's random he hasn't developed a protocol he isn't even aware that when he comes

Starting point is 00:36:24 out of a five minute round if he got you know the crap kicked out of him, he's on a two-count breathing cadence, and he now is arguing with the ref. He is in deep, deep trouble. Now, you watch Khabib. He's a whole different intelligence. This guy knows when he is on that two-count and he knows he's in trouble, he's got to get back in control. He's got to get his breathing cadence a four higher. Conor McGregor will take a five minute round, come out with a two count breathing cadence and go back in with a two count breathing cadence because he's too busy jibber jabbering. He shows me that he doesn't know what he's doing. And that's what we want to do

Starting point is 00:37:03 is we want to give the athlete these tools to know whether or not they're in trouble. How do you know whether or not you're going from the pull-up bar to a barbell and you're okay? The breath is the tell. Have you personally noticed any like ultra benefit to utilizing nasal breathing? I do. I think there's a tremendous benefit to it.

Starting point is 00:37:24 I mean, one of the things, so I'm very skeptical because i've been around as an athlete and i've seen a lot of hocus pocus out there where people think it's oh this is the greatest thing ever and blah blah blah and it's like i just i'm i'm so tired of hearing that like the changes it's very rare you see something with like real value something yeah right and that's the hardest part and so like my first introduction i went to north shore wahoo and i coached some surfers and one of the things that they were talking about was breath holds you know part of it is is that if they have two sets that you know like a wave and then another wave and they have to do a two-wave hold it's, that's an incredible thing that you're down under that water flipping and

Starting point is 00:38:08 churning. And so I was talking to them about like breath holds and they talked to me about Wim Hof and all of that. And so I looked it up afterwards after I left and I'm watching these videos and I'm like, this is BS. Even though he's like, you know, huge, I'm thinking this doesn't make any sense. But like you, open-minded, I'm going to give it a try. And I have a decent, my lungs are, I have very big lung capacity.

Starting point is 00:38:31 And so, I mean, I could hold my breath for two minutes and I go through a YouTube video following like Wim Hof's, like what he gave away, it was a TED Talk. And I did three and a half minutes. First try. And I'm like, there's something here. That is real change. And it's not me going from two minutes to 205. It was incredible.

Starting point is 00:38:53 And so to me, those things are important. That's why what resonates for me with you guys is that you're athletes. I don't understand how people can coach if they're not an athlete. How do you know? Like, how do you know? I know because I've done these things. I've done them for 40 years. And so I know from my own experience and I know from watching others do it. How do you know if you haven't done it yourself? That's why when the breathing thing and when hoff i'm looking at i'm like that actually is legit the question is is how do i now put that into what i do and you're you're a big proponent of just people just having a good base before they go off and really worry about like the nasal breathing might be something where uh maybe you have concern for

Starting point is 00:39:42 that or not even concerned but maybe somebody thinks about implementing that. Maybe like when they go on a walk or maybe when they're... Your easy pace should be able to breathe through your nose. Okay. There you go. So there's another tool. 180 minus your age is another easy pace. So we want to have these ways without having to look at gear. And nasal breathing is one where you should be able to do your easy pace through your nose you should as soon as you can't now you're going into and then the lactate threshold time maybe maybe over time what you what feels easy to you and what you can do with nasal breathing increases yes absolutely area yeah your ability to use oxygen more efficiently and that's

Starting point is 00:40:23 what we're really trying to do

Mark Bell's Power Project - Experts Say You're Breathing Wrong, Here's How To Fix It

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