6 simple exercises to recover your breathing capacity

 6 simple exercises to recover your  breathing capacity

Have you suffered respiratory problems when suffering from COVID-19? We teach you how to improve your respiratory capacity to leave behind the consequences of the disease Today with 6 simple exercises we teach you to recover your breathing capacity. One of the usual symptoms during the coronavirus pandemic has been the loss of respiratory capacity.

Symptoms such as fatigue or a feeling of "shortness of breath" are indicators of low oxygen saturation , and frequent sequelae of the disease. Of course, also as a consequence of having suffered from pneumonia, one of the most common complications in patients who have suffered from COVID-19. In many cases, these respiratory sequelae persist weeks and even months after overcoming the disease.

  

Through simple breathing exercises you can easily increase your breathing capacity We already explained to you in a past post what respiratory rehabilitation is and in which cases it is recommended . We have also given you some basic respiratory rehabilitation exercises , but in this post we want to go deeper with 6 simple exercises to recover our respiratory capacity and therefore improve our breathing.

Prepare the chest, key to improve breathing

According to Blandine Calais-Germain , we have to prepare the chest to carry out the breathing exercise, and it is an indication not only for people suffering from the respiratory sequelae of Covid but also for those who do sports activities or simply want to improve the quality of their lifetime. To do this, these 6 simple exercises are recommended to recover your breathing capacity:

Exercises to improve the flexibility of the ribs and their curve

We believe that all of them can be useful to improve our breathing and they are simple because we can do them alone and even many of them at some point in our lives we have already done. The ribs are the only elastic bone in our body, keeping them flexible is very healthy since they will give us more breathing freedom, and ultimately, more capacity. We can therefore work in two directions: expanding and contracting them.

 To expand your arch or curve , a very easy exercise with a great capacity to improve the flexibility of the ribs is to lie on your back on a mat or even on a carpet, place a deflated ball or a cushion under your back and stretch your arms outwards. behind. If we have the ball, we can place it first under the right side and then under the left side. Take a deep breath as you do this. With this we will feel how our rib cage expands in all its extension.

 To contract the arch or curve , our hands are the best instrument . It is enough to exercise with the heel of our hand and supporting the other on it, light pressure on the rib, sinking it slightly and noticing how it contracts or shrinks. Do it on different ribs, always very lightly and feeling how the breath moves towards the abdominal area.

Stretch the intercostal muscles to separate the ribs from each other

The intercostal muscles are located between each of the ribs. Although we are not aware of their use, we use them every time we breathe. At rest only the upper ones, but as our breathing becomes stronger we also use the lower intercostal muscles, that is, those of the lower ribs. 

We also mobilize them in all the turns of our upper trunk. If we have a persistent cough, it is common to feel pain in one of these muscles. We suggest some simple exercises:

 Standing, we slightly open our legs and gently turn our trunk to the left and to the right. It is important to notice how our intercostal muscles stretch.

 Lying sideways on a voluminous cushion, the lower arm stretched out and the head hanging, we will observe how our entire body expands laterally

 Palpate ourselves while we breathe deeply and follow the path of the muscle between each rib with our index finger. If we notice a painful point, we can self-massage with our index finger on that point without moving the finger.

Relax the epigastrium

The epigastrium is the abdominal area that goes from the sternum and reaches the navel. This area is frequently tense and that is where we have the diaphragm housed. The diaphragm is the most important muscle for breathing since it contracts continuously and rhythmically, and almost always involuntarily, sucking the air that goes to the lungs. Therefore, 

it is an area that is generally tense and requires our attention. We can, lying on our back, search with our fingers for the edge of the ribs, the one that is prominently marked on very thin people. If our skin allows us to do so, we will pinch a couple of centimeters at the moment of expiration and maintaining the pinch, we will complete an inspiration-expiration and rest movement. We will repeat 5 full breaths on each side. Then we relax.

Mobilize the rib-vertebrae joint

Our 12 pairs of ribs articulate at two points with the spine. Those 24 little joints are responsible for all the movement of our ribs. Therefore, it is very convenient to keep them in shape. Two other simple exercises:

 Take a stick with both hands, place it behind your head and stand with your legs slightly apart, swinging it from side to side. You can mimic a kayak paddle or just make wide, slow strokes. You will notice how those turns of your back are reflected in a movement in your ribs.

 Roll up a towel and place it between your spine and a wall. If we sit on a chair or stool without a back, we can slowly move the spine on the towel and notice how the rib joints move.

Improvement of the large muscles of the chest

The large muscles of the chest are none other than the pectoralis minor and pectoralis major . To improve its functionality for our breathing we can easily use our arms.

 Minor pectorals : by extending one arm over our head while the other rests on our torso, we can see how the pectoral muscles stretch. We will alternate left and right.

 Pectoralis majors: if we lie down with our backs on a mat or carpet and bend our knees, we stretch our arms and with our legs bent at the knees we turn them in the opposite direction, we will notice how the pectoralis major muscle expands. We inspire hold the air and expel slowly. Then we switch sides and repeat.

Diaphragm stretch

We have already seen that the diaphragm is in the epigastric area and that it is the fundamental muscle in our breathing. Therefore, stretching and relaxing the diaphragm is very beneficial to improve our breathing. For this we have some exercises that we can recommend.

 If we stand up and raise our arms as high as possible, we will take a deep breath and our diaphragm will stretch. Then let's take a deep breath

 Standing, we can put our hands on our hips and gently tilt our head back.

Incorporate them into your normal life. For your ribcage to expand, move!

All the exercises can be repeated 5/10 times, keeping the rhythmic, deep and slow repair, in the maximum extensions and with the maximum capacity, there with the lungs full of air we will stay for a few seconds, enjoying the lung capacity. Usually these simple exercises are not done in normal life, 

but nevertheless, becoming aware of them allows us to gain a lung capacity that we would not otherwise have, it will allow us to expectorate and eliminate secretions, as well as noticing how our lung capacity goes increasing, which we can control with a pulse oximeter . In summary, with these simple exercises we can recover our respiratory capacity and improve it.