 Hi, I'm Lance Goyke and today we're going to talk about holding your breath while squatting, okay? So a lot of people will use this breath holding technique to create pressure in their abdomen while they're doing a heavy squat so that they don't collapse under the load as the load gets heavier. Now, this is a great way to utilize this, right? This is a the what you're trying to do is you're trying to pressurize this midsection, this canister, this core area and and keep it from buckling underneath extra load. And now I can, I want to walk you through how to do it first. So first and foremost, I need to make sure that my butt isn't sticking out too far like this and I need to make sure that at the bottom I'm not collapsing. So big thing is I want your hips to stay underneath your shoulders, right? So I want, I like to tell people that when you're squatting, I want your back to stay straight like a board or in a more neutral position, okay? And so I can set that up with an exhale. I roll my hips back a little bit and I feel my abs turn on slightly as I'm pulling my pelvic bones backward. And then I say, okay, I know I'm in a good position. Now, what I'm going to do is I like to picture having a belt on. Maybe you actually do have a belt on when you're lifting, but I think if you need the belt to figure this out or to, you can't do it without the belt, that you need to learn how to do it, right? You need to learn how to turn those abs on on your own. So we're going to pretend that I have a belt on and we're going to keep that exhale, hold that pressure here. I've got pressure all throughout my midsection here. And what I'm going to do is breathe in all directions into it. If I pretend I have this belt on, wrapped around my whole body, it's going to expand forward, side to side and backward all at the same time. So it looks like this. Doesn't look like much, but it sure feels like much, right? I can feel the pressure building. Now, if I breathe in to my upper chest like this, I'm losing the pressure here and I'm building the pressure up in my neck, but that's not where I want it, right? All the load is coming through this midsection. So I need to force that air down. So again, what does it look like? So I roll my hips back, get a good exhale because that helps set me up and then breathe into that belt. Okay. So that is how I'm using bracing when I'm doing exercises. When is it inappropriate? So if I'm not looking for maximal loads or maximal weights, then I probably don't need to brace. If I'm maybe six or above reps, maybe I could let you brace when you're doing six, but above that, anything where a lot of metabolic fatigue is accumulating where your legs start to burn, you're going to want to continuously breathe throughout that, right? You're going to want to keep those oxygen levels high so that you can fight that fatigue off for even longer. So in those cases, I would say, inhale on the way down, exhale on the way up, instead of holding your breath on each rep. Okay? Because you'll gas out quicker that way. It looks something like that and it sounds something like that. When does this come up? So that's generally, like generally I want you to inhale on the way down, exhale on the way up for longer reps, but what you'll notice is people who are averse to feeling that pain of, you know, my muscles are getting tired, my legs are burning. People who avoid that won't do that. They will hold their breath. And that's one of those really detailed, intricate things that as a coach, I've seen over the years and I've started to learn how to notice, but you can really start to see where someone is comfortable or uncomfortable if you notice their breathing patterns. So if you're particularly hypertensive or detrained, I would challenge you to never use breath holding during your squats. Always use higher reps, 10 or more, until you get a base level of, or a base level of endurance and fitness before you start loading up on breath holding squat and power stiffness related things, right? So again, inhale on the way down, exhale on the way up, and just keep moving while you're doing that. You might need to take some shallower breaths so that you can keep going, and you might need to squat a little bit slower so that you can time the breathing. But to recap, we're bracing, we have our belt, we breathe into the belt, and then we go, and that works really well for like one to five, one to six reps or so. And then anything above that is good when you inhale on the way down, exhale on the way up.