Breathwork Tips for More Effective Assault Workouts

We’ve partnered with breathwork experts, XPT, and their leading human performance scientists to explore how breathwork can make Assault workouts even more effective.

Intro

Understanding proper breathing techniques is crucial for maximizing the benefits of your workouts and performing at your best in the moment. While these two goals seem closely related, they require entirely different approaches. In simple terms, if you haven’t trained nasal breathing, mouth breathing will likely be more effective for maximizing immediate output during a workout. However, unless you have a competition tomorrow, that’s probably not your primary goal.

If your fitness target is months away—or if you’re simply focused on long-term improvement—training your capacity for nasal breathing can unlock a host of benefits. In the sections below, XPT outlines how to prepare yourself to maximize the benefits of nasal breathing during your workouts.

Setting a baseline for nasal breathing during exercise

Before incorporating nasal breathing into your workouts, it’s essential to build a solid foundation. Start by mastering relaxed breathing while lying on the ground. This involves a slow, controlled nasal inhale from your diaphragm, followed by an even slower nasal exhale. Once you feel comfortable doing this for a few breaths, progress to sitting, then kneeling, and finally standing. Aim to spend at least five minutes practicing in each of these positions.

Once you’ve established a baseline, you can begin challenging your breathing mechanics by adding physical activity.

Start with a 20–30-minute walk, breathing only through your nose. Keep your breaths slow and quiet, avoiding over-breathing. This ensures you take in adequate oxygen and release sufficient carbon dioxide during each breath.

Ramping up the intensity level

After mastering nasal breathing during walking, it’s time to increase the intensity. Begin with light jogging, then progress to slow rowing or cycling. Throughout these activities, focus on maintaining nasal breathing, steady cadence (about five to seven breaths per minute), and sufficient depth (avoid shallow gasps or heavy inhales).

Next, try bodyweight exercises such as lunges, air squats, push-ups, or pull-ups. Perform these movements slowly at first. As you become more adept at monitoring your breathing, increase the speed or combine exercises into a circuit with minimal rest between sets.

Once you’ve demonstrated consistent nasal breathing at lower intensities, you can start increasing the demands with longer durations, heavier loads, higher speeds, or greater overall intensity.

To begin, focus on endurance. For example, try a 40–60-minute run while maintaining nasal breathing. Once that feels manageable, challenge yourself by running at your 10K pace for a few sessions, gradually progressing to your 5K pace.

If you’re still doing well, incorporate interval training: perform half of your work periods with nasal breathing at about 75% of your usual intensity. If you find yourself switching to mouth breathing, dial back the intensity slightly. The goal is to maintain awareness and control of your breathing pattern.

Mastering breathing techniques during exercise

As you progress, aim to complete four out of eight or five out of 10 intervals with nasal diaphragmatic breathing. Once you can do this, increase your pace or add more intervals while maintaining nasal breathing.

For an added challenge, practice nasal breathing during your active recovery between intervals. Over time, you may even reach the point where you can complete your fastest intervals with nasal breathing alone. Achieving this will significantly improve your aerobic and anaerobic capacity.

By enhancing your ability to work harder and longer while nasal breathing, you’ll recondition both your body and brain to redefine their perception of your endurance, power, and speed thresholds. This minimizes fatigue in secondary respiratory muscles (like the lats, intercostals, and obliques), which often send premature “stop” signals to your brain. As a result, you’ll sustain higher intensities for longer, avoiding the dramatic crashes that occur when breathing patterns falter during a race or intense workout.

When mouth breathing is necessary

This doesn’t mean you’ll never need to mouth breathe again. During maximal efforts—around 85–95% of your max output—mouth breathing becomes necessary to meet your oxygen demands. However, by following the progression outlined above, you’ll gain greater awareness of your breathing patterns, even under extreme stress.

When you’re truly pushing your limits, this awareness will give you more control over your breath, helping you stay composed and perform at your best.