CAN YOU BREATHE YOURSELF FITTER?

Were you to embark on a 10k with this year’s new breed of runners, you might think you’d wandered into a sporting dystopia. Mouths clamped shut, they tread for kilometres breathing just through their noses, sometimes holding their breath for strides at a time.

Welcome to the world of breath optimisation. On the wings of wellness, breathwork is gliding out of the yoga camp and bumping up next to nutrition and sleep in your fitness toolkit. And the latest techniques promise to do more than soothe your mind after a tense Teams call. Change the way you breathe, say proponents of these methods, and you can hack your fitness by improving your oxygen efficiency, boosting circulation and delaying muscle fatigue. While techniques like nasal breathing and hypoxic training have been around for decades, there’s been an uptick in interest in recent years. Gyms including Melbourne Altitude Training, Altitude Performance Centre (also in Melbourne), Air Locker (NSW and soon QLD and VIC) and Sydney’s Peak Fitness all offer workouts designed to replicate the experience