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A comment on Box Breathing. Parent comment

Re:Box Breathing by mikekchar on Sunday January 29, 2017 @04:30AM (#13513301)
This is also an exceptionally good technique for controlling your pace while you are running. At the beginning, 3 steps in, 3 steps hold, 3 steps out. As you run out of breath, decrease the hold by 1. Then decrease the out by one. Then decrease the in by one. Once you get down to 2,1,2 try to maintain that. You will only be able to do it my adjusting your pace.

This is also nice because it fights getting stomach cramps because you alternate your in/out breathing wrt to your feet landing (odd numbers are best because your liver takes up a lot of room and if you are at full inhale on a right foot downstroke, it compresses things).

I've also got this working for cycling, but it's a bit more difficult due to the faster cadence.

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Re:Box Breathing by lloeki on Sunday January 29, 2017 @05:14AM (#13513461)
I used this to increase cardiovascular and lung efficiency and volume. Start at 3-1-3, then progressively train to go to 3-2-3, 4-1-4, then 5-2-5, etc, inserting shortened (say 3-1-4) but deeper inhales or skipping the hold when getting short on breath. Inhaling has a natural tendency to slightly increase your heart rate while exhaling does the opposite, so the trick helps a lot in getting in control of a racing heart.
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