RPR and belly breathing

 A year and a half ago, so April 2024, I began a journey to try to get better at sprinting. That very quickly led me down some Youtube rabbit holes where these guys are talking about the philosophy of speed training and all this sports science. Most of the information out there I think is pretty useless but a couple guys I found really seemed to know what they were talking about and made sense to me. 

In addition to all the speed training stuff they were talking about, they had this thing called RPR which involved a lot of belly breathing, relaxation, and activating different parts of the body like the psoas and the glutes by touching different parts of the abdomen and the back of the head. Initially I tried it because the claims they made about its effectiveness were pretty incredible and then very quickly I was like, 'yeah this is too out there for me. I just want to run hard and get fast.' 

Recently though I've come back to it because I'm starting to feel like I've gotten as far as 'just run hard' will take me and it's time to start trying some stuff that I initially thought was too weird in earnest. 

I spent a lot of time today belly breathing and watching videos about how to do it and it felt like it had more of an effect this time than I remembered. 

I want to write down what it felt like so I hopefully don't forget as quickly. The first thing I noticed was that it felt like my abdomen was able to expand more while breathing. I was able to take deep breaths. Especially in the climbing gym when the air is cold and dry it feels like I can only take shallow breaths. Another I noticed was how strange it felt to touch my ribs and stomach area. I was like, 'wow. I really never do this.' After a while when I took deep breaths I felt like I was more aware of my hips and the breathing kind of extended my awareness into my hips, back and legs. When I went for a walk I felt like there was a warmth in my legs and my walking gait was smoother than normal. I felt energized and if there was a good flat stretch and no one was around I would do a short run and try to pay attention to what my legs and hips were doing. Sometimes I would build up into close to an all-out sprint and I started to feel a float between when my back leg pushed off and when my front leg made contact. Almost like a very small quick bound. That's a feeling I want to hold onto when working on sprinting.

I also think it helped my mood overall and my brain. It's the kind of thing where I'd really like to make it a habit. I feel like I do stuff like this and then inevitably life or something dumb gets in the way and then it falls by the wayside and then months later I'm like, 'man I feel kinda awful. I wonder why?' But I'd really like to make this a habit. It also seemed to help my shoulder a lot which I've been feeling some discomfort in for close to two months now. 

We're optimistic on belly-breathing in 2026!

Also matches are the devil. And you should only use your oven and stove on the lowest possible setting.