COACH'D
Join us on COACH’D, a podcast where the some of the world's top athletes, coaches, and performance experts come together to share their stories, insights and secrets to what has made them successful in their own right.
Think of it as a "locker room" chat — unfiltered, raw, and real. We dive deep into all things athletic performance, wellness, science and culture.
COACH'D
David Jackson - "Unlocking Athletic Potential: Breathwork Revolution For Athletes"
Ever wondered how a simple breath can transform your athletic performance? Join us as we uncover the secret power of breathwork with expert David Jackson. Learn how to harness the mechanics of efficient breathing to elevate your game in high-stakes sports environments like MMA and UFC.
Explore the nuances of diaphragm training, and discover why breathing should complement, not replace, traditional training methods. David illustrates, through personal stories from his ultra running and mountain racing experiences, how optimising breathing can significantly enhance both mental and physical states.
In our deep dive into athletic breathing techniques, we discuss the growing role of specialised breathing coaches and their impact on sports performance. From fascinating insights into rib cage positioning to jaw articulation, we explore how these often-overlooked factors can drastically improve athletic efficiency and focus. Plus, delve into the innovative ways breathing exercises can be integrated into pre-game routines and recovery protocols, proving invaluable for athletes under physical stress.
This episode also shines a light on crucial new concussion recovery guidelines, where breathing techniques play a pivotal role in managing symptoms and promoting brain health. We tackle the challenges of current fitness tracking technologies and their limitations, offering alternative solutions for effective heart rate variability monitoring.
Whether you're an athlete, coach, or just curious about breathwork, discover practical tips and resources, including the benefits of foundational breathing courses available online to help manage stress and improve overall well-being.
You can follow David here:
Instagram: jacko.david.jackson
If you're in NZ and looking for last minute tickets to David and Nigel's workshop here's the link:
https://www.tickettailor.com/events/elementhealthnewzealand/1278120
Here is also the link to David's free resources:
https://www.probreathwork.com/course/foundations-of-breathing
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https://open.spotify.com/show/1YJMztpYSgnPusEXB3fWcc?si=FJsWITv7QdSCSgCt3lkElw
Join us on Coached, a podcast where some of the world's top athletes, coaches and performance experts come together to share their stories, insights and secrets to what has made them successful in their own right. Think of this as a locker room chat unfiltered, raw and real. We dive deep into all things athletic performance, wellness, science and sporting culture and sporting culture. Hear from those who have played, coached and built their way to the top with athletes from the field, coaches and medical in the performance setting, or owners, managers and brands in the front office, while also getting an insider's view on my own personal experiences in this high-performance world. If you're passionate about sports, curious about the minds of champion athletes or looking for information and inspiration on your own journey, coach is the place for you.
Jordi Taylor:David Jackson, welcome to Coach. Thanks for having us on the podcast, mate. I'm very excited to chat. As I mentioned to you before, the audience is specific, probably, to the athlete population, whether that be coaches or athletes listening to this, when we talk about your specialty being breathwork, or breathing in, amongst all the other things an athlete or a coach has to deliver on a day-to-day basis. Where does breathwork? Where does breathing actually sit in that overall pie?
David Jackson:Yeah, great question. Because I'd been working as an S&C coach with Paralympic athletes for a good few years before I came across the importance of breathing. And to me, I still work as an S&C coach now, but I teach this weird thing breathing because it underpins absolutely everything you're doing. Anything that you're doing in the gym or on the field or whatever it is, you're breathing. And if you're doing that thing a little bit better, that's the foundation for all of the chemistry within your body, how you manage your heart rate, everything that your body is going to try and do. What about if we were breathing a little better? What if we were breathing a little more efficient? What if you had a bit more control of your breathing? How that affects your mental state as well as your physical, like your physical state and physiology, um, so for me it's integrated into everything that we're potentially going to do Now that doesn't mean.
David Jackson:I'm like constantly thinking about my breathing because then I can't think about anything else. We do some work to change the automatic, ultimately, and also we do some work with breath training to elicit some which I'm sure we'll go into in the podcast, like elicit some really strong stimulus to create some really strong adaptation, whether that's performance-based or that's recovery-based.
Jordi Taylor:I love it and I think the biggest thing when we're talking about any method is that it doesn't take away from the training principles. You perfectly articulate that there, like we don't just all of a sudden think. I think when people think breathing in our space, they probably think of two things that come to mind, especially for myself Wim Hof the Wim.
Jordi Taylor:Hof method, which is obviously hyperventilation, and then potentially like PRI, the Postural Restoration Institute, where it's the balloon in the mouth and it's controlling every little minute detail of can you expand here? Can you do all that sort of stuff there? And that's not what you're saying. It fits in holistically with everything that you're doing about. We're talking about what it is. Let's talk about straight away where people get it wrong. Is that part of one of the things where people go wrong? Is they then all of a sudden? This is everything. This is all that they do?
David Jackson:as in if you just go, oh, breathing so important, I'm just gonna fight. Yeah, if you want to get, if you want to get, if you want to get fit or you want to get strong or you want whatever you want to do, you got to do that thing. But if you're doing that thing with less than optimal breathing, then improving your breathing and training your breathing, then you're going to add to what you're already doing. If you just do breathing but don't do any of the the physical, actual hard work, then you're not going to get the same carryover. I approach breathing and breath training with the same principles that govern, like our S&C work. So with breathing you've got a movement pattern. With breathing, you've got muscles that govern that movement pattern and you've got joints that articulate to make that movement pattern happen.
David Jackson:One thing with breathing that's a little bit different is we've got this like auto as well as the conscious control of it, and we've got the biochemical element to it that that a lot of people completely miss, um, and taking an approach to it like a specific adaptation of imposed amounts, like a simple s and c principle. Well, if I want to get good at breathing whilst playing rugby, I need to be able to do that if I want to get good at breathing, whilst for me, like I'm into like ultra running now and mountain running um, and I made that mistake myself where I was doing lots of good work on breathing and I was doing like long, slow ultra runs and we've moved to somewhere in in the uk and wales, right in the mountains, and there's these like tuesday night mountain races where you pay two quid and some crazy welsh guy shouts at you in welsh. You have no idea what's going on and you ask some other people around you that will speak english to you and they go well, we're running up that mountain. They point over there and it's like, well, how far is that? Well, it's a short one. This week it's just four miles, two miles up, two miles back, and I'm going.
David Jackson:Well, I know that man, I know it's 700 meters tall or high, and you're like musk and then everyone just bombs it off. So I like fly, just my competitive nature, like I'd go with them, and my breathing during the first two-thirds of that race was horrendous because I was good at breathing and I was good at breathing whilst running long and slow in ultras, like 24 hour events, three day event, whatever, running at that intensity, that pace, with that type of incline? I'd not. And what something I questioned was like oh gosh, I'm actually not as good at breathing as I, as I thought it was, and this was a bit of a worry for me, cause I was like this is what I do for a job now.
David Jackson:And what? What was what I'd missed? That's very simple principle. Going like well, hold on, can you? Can you have you got the physical attributes to run up that hill, that mountain, at that pace with those what I call mountain goes, regardless of whether you're nasal breathing or diaphragm, whatever your breathing is, have you got those physical attributes to do that at that pace? Well, guess what, if you haven't ran at that pace at those moments, you haven't. So of course, my breathing was going to be massively hard.
David Jackson:Now the interesting thing was, after sort of two-thirds of the thing, I was starting to like get back control of my breathing.
David Jackson:I was starting to put into place the principles that I teach and then, when we're getting to like the last quarter of the climb, I start overtaking people.
David Jackson:I was semi-recovering I'm not recovering, you're dying by the time you get to but relative to everyone else, that was getting worse, getting worse, getting worse. Once I'd psychologically got used to like okay, maybe you're not quite so good as you thought you were at this thing, but then went right, what do I need to do in order to regulate my breathing, to actually get myself in a better place? Did those things, and they're simple things and I'll go into these, but did those simple things and I said last quarter I'm like over, I'm overtaking people, um, and I was like, but it's quite funny because experience of like going through like a bit of a shock and realizing that you haven't actually prepared properly for this type of thing, um, really good challenge. But then also having that experience again of like totally being out of control of your breathing, when you're so used to being in control of it but then use getting it back and then seeing the effect that that then then has yeah, talk us about what.
Jordi Taylor:Where do you think you went wrong? And then, how did you bring it back in? Because obviously maybe not ultras and and crazy hills in sydney like that in the welsh mountains, but running is obviously huge. Yeah, everyone's doing long distance runs you look at strava and they bust out 10ks by 5am like it's ridiculous. Um, I reckon so many people will find value in just some simple, probably things that you did to yourself but obviously things you probably teach a lot of people as well.
David Jackson:One of the biggest things is people were just not aware of what our breathing is doing and a misconception of, yes, it's automatic. But also you can take conscious control of it. And just because it's automatic doesn't mean that it's optimal. Like when you start getting a bit out of breath and you're like panting and you're breathing with your mouth quite fast, what are your mechanics? Like your upper chest breathing. When it's fast, it's shallow, like it doesn't go down deeper, and there's a cascade of things that are going to go on to that. One thing is that we forget that your body doesn't really want you to go out and do that run. You're trying to create a little stimulus and adapt from it. But when your body doesn't like being stressed, what does it do? Whether you think it's central governor theory or whatever you think the mechanism is, ultimately a body is trying to get you to stop. You feel some pain when you're out running. When do you most want to feel like you want to stop and you can't catch your breath? But we don't realize this and we just get into a like a faster panting state. What's that going to? What's your heart rate respond to your breathing? Or does your heart rate and your breathing rate respond. Are they linked? Yes, they're intimately linked. Spiritual science arrhythmia is a concept of of how they and people that track hrv. You're tracking your relationship between your breathing, your heart rate. So when you're breathing faster, what happens? Your heart rate, your heart rate, goes up. Compare that to so the opposite. Very simply, if I'm breathing a bit slower, then I get to lower my heart rate. Um, one of the things is, though, if I'm going to breathe a bit slower whilst I'm trying to run up this mountain, that's not going to help, because if I'm breathing slow, I'm potentially taking in less air, but then the then, if I can control the speed of my breath and slow that down a bit or I can do that if I can take a bigger breath, increase the volume of each breath.
David Jackson:There's a very simple equation in breathing that minute ventilation, the amount of air that you breathe in a minute is equal to the tidal volume, the size of breath multiplied by the speed of your breathing. That dictates the volume of air that you're breathing. Nothing else does. Mechanically, how you do it. We can do that efficiently or inefficiently, and the more efficiently your mechanics are working for you, the better or the more likely you are to be able to have control over your rate, your speed of breathing. If you've got control of your speed of breathing, you can influence the volume. So, rather than like gassing out, you're able to regulate yourself a little bit better.
David Jackson:So me being able to slow down things a little bit and increase the depth or size or volume of those breaths actually one ventilating well enough rather than my body's trying to get me to shut down. And then the second thing being that slightly slower breathing rate helping to slightly bring my heart rate down. Hence the oh, hold on a minute last. You know, bear in mind a lot of those runners there. They're better runners than me and better conditions because they did that more, that type of stuff. But that last quarter of the, that mountain climb and I start overtaking people, I'm absolutely combined.
David Jackson:I've seen it on my own data of like what my heart rate is like when I'm doing different types of breathing and some like what my heart rate is like when I'm doing different types of breathing, and some data I'm collecting for a book that I'm writing for bloomsbury on runners, of tracking this stuff when they're running, when they're trying to recover, like a huge impact of how you breathe and what happens to your heart rate during the recovery period, whether that's recovery after a training session or within intervals of a training session. The data is absolutely hard. In fact. It's black and white and it's like so simple and easy to do. But we, because it's breathing and it happens automatically, I've been doing it my whole life, mate. That's a nice one that we get to hear. But if you, what if you optimized it? And what if it?
David Jackson:if, what if you optimize the thing that's controlling, almost, whether it's controlling everything that's going on your body or not, it's happening all the time, um, and even going one step further how much energy and oxygen do you have to, or does breathing take when you're going out running?
David Jackson:I don't know have we exactly, and I'd never thought of it either. It's like alarmingly high in the 15, 20, 25 percent of my energy consumption. Oxygen consumption can be spent on the act of breathing. So if you think the worst I'm at breathing, what happens? You do more of it and then you have to spend energy on doing it. You see someone like going hard at something and if how aggressive the breathing can get and that's all energy that's not going to something else. So if I'm more efficient with my breathing, I'm able to breathe a little bit slower, a little bit less, save energy, save oxygen on breathing and have a better regulated heart rate. What's that do for then your mental state as well? Like, am I in a better state of? Like focus and concentration? Am I actually supplying oxygen to brain in a better state? Am I in less sort of sympathetic, like too much sympathetic? Can I control my nervous system with my breathing? Yes, you can, and this is where I then, as you can probably tell from I get then excited for like the sports, like the sports I work in in rugby, because I had none of this when I played professional rugby and I wish that I did. But what I love doing is giving people those tools, and they can be very simple. We can pull some more simple stuff out of this, but it can be very simple to go right. When you're doing X, try controlling this. When you're doing y, try doing a little bit and just see the effect that it has. See how you feel. But track something, track your heart rate, see the difference that it makes. Um, and if you've never trained breathing before, it's gonna have an. It's gonna have a positive impact if you do something correctly with it. Like, how can it not be like?
David Jackson:For me it was a bit like finding this whole thing of like, oh, I can train my breathing. Like I could train my diaphragm. Can I make my diaphragm stronger? Well, it's a muscle. Well, why, why? Why? Why do we look at the diaphragm and go, yeah, we probably won't train that like every other muscle in our body. Do you mean? It'd be like me working with a? As a? As a sprinter, I played wing fullback, like being a fast guy and then, and then, all of a sudden, the snc show is going. I found out that, uh, this new thing we're going to do and be like, why, what's that? Um, not many people know what it, this particular, must be. It's called the hamstring. Okay, right, it's like we're going to train that because it's really important for, like your posterior training, power production. Imagine if I'd never trained my hamstrings and I start actually building up some light strength and some speed throughout it, like what the impact that's going to have. We just haven't trained our breathing. It's gone under the radar.
Jordi Taylor:Okay. So if we haven't trained it a whole lot, it probably falls down to awareness and not knowing enough about it, which I think we've probably established that already.
David Jackson:I know education, but the only thing I think that we get is SNC coaches. Get education on in terms of breathing is like bracing for the heavy lifts, yeah.
Jordi Taylor:That's it, and potentially some recovery protocols for post-training. You know great If you do. I never got anything any of that.
David Jackson:Okay, that might be just the tip of the iceberg.
Jordi Taylor:That's probably about it, and I think off the back of that I mentioned at the start, like we probably think breathing may have got a bad rap, but it also got introduced by people like Wim Hof who maybe commercialised it or made it a know. There's snc training, for example, and there's also just your regular training. There's hit classes.
David Jackson:There's all these variations of something similar yeah, and if you're, if you're a, if you're a coach working with athletes or you're an athlete itself, you need to do the thing that's for like sports performance. So you know you don't go and do a zumba class, but zumba class could be nice, but that's not specific to you and that's where, um, I guess I'm having a positive impact in that sort of sporting world. Rugby, probably um, mma and like ufc fighters. That's is another area where their buy-in is massive because their awareness of it is critical and they intuitively know it in that if we were going to go in a cage, if this was a cage and we were going to have a fight, now I'd be very aware of my breathing compared to yours. And if you start panting whether I've done that, I don't have to have done a course.
David Jackson:I'm saying these guys, like they know it intuitively, when someone's mouth starts hung up and they can't control their breathing, they're like I'm gonna, I know now I'm gonna knock you out and vice versa, like I don't want to lose control of my breathing because then I know that I'm um and you know the, the mma and the ufc stuff is like you know your close quarters as well and I made it. I made a joke, not a joke. I made a point on another podcast about this and some some tennis fans got um annoyed, but I used tennis as example. I said in mma ufc if you, if you lose, like it hurts a lot and actually you might even sustain a brain injury like I did, like it's bad news, so it's important, whereas tennis you lose the final at wimbledon yeah it's it.
David Jackson:It makes you. You might feel sad and someone misinterpreted this and was like, yeah, but yeah, no, but the point I'm making is it isn't physically in terms of someone hasn't punched you in the face until you can't stand up anymore and you've still got aim with probably three million quid in your back pocket. Yeah, you're going. So, once you've got over the disappointment of, yes, you've worked your whole life to get to that women's final, you haven't had someone punching you in the head repetitively until the referee finally goes, oh, he's had enough, and you're like well, he probably had enough. Five punches before that. You know it's brutal, um, so they're very, you know, when the risks, when the risks or the consequences are higher this is my experience with athletes when the consequence are higher this is my experience with athletes when the consequence is higher, they, they, they're more bought into, they seek out the breathing because, intuitively, they, they know it.
Jordi Taylor:Yeah, no, it's a very good point, I think. Well, you had your oxygen advantage course here on the weekend which, as I mentioned before, I was devastated, I couldn't go, so I only found out very we we didn't go to.
David Jackson:I only found out very we didn't do enough marketing for it, did we? We had to shout out that.
Jordi Taylor:But anyway, and you're going to New Zealand with the great man Nigel over there as well.
Jordi Taylor:He was just in with the Jilaroos for the last couple of weeks in camp. Now, again, I don't know what he was doing, I don't know how much information you know, but putting that into a practical stance there the has dominated the whole tournament, by the way, um, and there was lots of little posts he put up and looked like the girls were right into it, like right into it. Do you know a little bit about what he was doing, for example? And like putting that into a practical sense, what you're speaking about there, like in a team setting, how does that sort of look?
David Jackson:yeah, I've not had the chance to speak to him yet, obviously seeing him at the weekend, um, but I do know that he's the only. There's the first international team, or probably even just first seem to have a dedicated breathing coach with the team, like there full time, like I've done some stuff with teams in sort of workshop styles and but not like immersed in that of like right, boom, you're there full of time, you're doing this thing and we're all in on it, um, and it's amazing. So he's paving the way and it's it's. It's nice to see that like it is coming. Um, for me, whether every team is going to have like a breathing coach, I don't know, but snc physio like, for me it definitely falls into to those and, like I mentioned before, we went on there like doing some work with the, the, the snc and the physios at teams so that they ultimately deliver yeah on a day-to-day basis.
Jordi Taylor:So I tend to do a little more like a bit of a consultancy type of role in that setting I saw, uh, on one of these stories there was a screenshot of the schedule and so they had the schedule for the day and there was about right before kickoff there was a three minute breathing block. Yeah, now, we mentioned a couple different methods before, but my assumption there would be that would be to up, regulate the system. For most of the girls potentially the case. How would you program that? So say, you had a three-minute block beforehand getting super practical here.
David Jackson:What does that?
Jordi Taylor:look like, like, how do you actually prepare athletes?
David Jackson:for kick-off Up-regulation, like in warm-up and there's been some really great studies on this, particularly in one of them this year or last year was done with rugby players and utilizing breath holds on an exhale with like some stride outs. So when we hold the breath, oxygen is going to drop in the, in the blood and in the tissue, co2 is going to go up, we get a dampening down to the vagus nerve and we get an increase in sympathetic activation, increase in heart rate and you feel it. You literally feel that up regulation because you're using your breath to influence the nervous system. One of the potential benefits of like doing some of those exhale breath holds is when you get good at it. It's a trainable thing in that people could appreciate that my ability to hold my breath whilst running I can get better at doing that and there's a few mechanisms that are going on, but we can appreciate it. Get better at doing that and there's a few mechanisms that are going on, but we can appreciate get better doing that.
David Jackson:But the way the body responds to that is also seems to be trainable. So when they study someone like a free diver that does loads of breath holding compared to someone that's never done it at all. The response that how, how well they're able to do it. Of course they can do a bit better, but the response their body gives one of the short-term responses if you can get yourself to experience some reasonable hypoxia. So low oxygen in the in the blood and tissues is the spleen contracts. The spleen's a blood bank holds about eight percent additional red blood cells like really rich in in. Uh, red blood cells like hemoglobin rich blood cells.
David Jackson:so you can get one of the studies showed like something like quote me something about 24 but something in that sort of reason a percentage of a contraction of the spleen releasing additional red blood cells. It obviously reabsorbs them again after a certain period of time, but getting a little bit of an upregulation, getting some potential for a few more red blood cells circulating around that bloodstream before you go out to play a footy game or whatever, it's like that little bit of Aussie bit to go footy game then like is that not going to be?
David Jackson:is that not going to be beneficial? Um, so there that's. That's one of the techniques the breath out, the exhale breath holes that we use for for those reasons yeah, no, it's great.
Jordi Taylor:I was chatting to, uh, one of the players for the Bulldogs in the NRL this week. Um, and the Bulldogs in particular there's a few other teams now that are doing it is after a try is scored or after points are scored. They get in a circle and they all take two deep breaths or three deep breaths in as a team. And I asked him in particular because I knew we were having a chat what is the purpose for that? Like, is it actually performance-based? Are you genuinely thinking about? You know, is it I'm breathing in a certain way or is it more so like a mental reset? And he goes, honestly, it bounces between the two.
Jordi Taylor:For him personally, you know, sometimes it is a physical thing. He might drop the ball, so it gives him a chance to you know that flush it mentality. Yeah, you know, combining breath work plus their mental skills work together. You know it's a bit of a trigger response, um, or it's a team reset as well, but he really likes it and you're now starting to see teams do that now. Yeah, five years ago, 10 years ago, you could never imagine a group of, you know, 13 big blokes going getting around in a circle doing a yeah, doing three breaths together, could you like?
Jordi Taylor:how have you seen it adapt and change the mainstream like from that standpoint?
David Jackson:well, like just pick up on on that, like that's, they're trying to like regulate and regroup. You know, one of the other things that could be happening in that three minute block Nigel was talking about, there might be and this is where we ideally want to like individualize things as much as we can, yeah, and so there might be some players that that time for them is like they need to actually like do some work to just to regulate and to focus and to concentrate and and control their sort of arousal curve when their breathing is going to be the great tool for that. This is what's beautiful about the breath we can we can ramp us up, we can keep us where we want to be or we can bring us back down if we're getting a bit too high. So it could equally be something very simple like box breathing, or it could be something. You know, there's some other little like awareness exercises that we might do, where we're trying to slow things down a little bit Like. That could also be the case for someone, um, but with the breaths in the.
David Jackson:I had this recently, um, where I'm trying to think I probably shouldn't, I probably I'm probably not allowed to say what team it was, but so I went anyway. But I went somewhere and they went I have, um, yeah, we're taking two breaths together. And I was like, okay, cool, so why are you doing that? That's cool that you're doing it, but why are you doing it? And they were like, well, the All Blacks do it. And I went I know the All Blacks do it, mate.
Jordi Taylor:I didn't say that. I said something else. I don't know the All.
David Jackson:Blacks are doing it. But I'm saying, do, do you know why you're doing it? And they're like this, literally didn't know how, and one of the things that this is a great example actually of breathing and it being beneficial. I watch, I like watching movies, but so I watch and see these teams do it and I see some people do it that have definitely never had anyone actually give them any like coaching, education on how to actually breathe. Well, what are you trying to do this for? And they're just trying to copy what someone else is doing and they would take what we would describe as a very um, poor, inefficient biomechanical breath and um, sort of disrescard for the bike, a total like got no idea about the biochemistry side of it and even taking on those two levels, a very like technically a terrible breath. So when they say, take two breaths, there I go. I don't say this to them, but I'm like in my head going like, okay, you take two terrible breaths together and you like it and you benefit from it, like you don't even have to do it that well, because it does have that impact. Now, what about if we teach them how to actually diaphragmatically breathe? Well, what about where they understand the positioning of the rubric is how to actually fill up and whether they're supposed to be doing that through the nose or through the mouth, and if they're struggling like how they can offload some co2 or do they need to keep it inside.
David Jackson:There's a big part for me, particularly when I get to work with athletes one-on-one that are really like invested in it, like there's an education piece for them to give them tools to wonder. I want you to understand it. So you got the tools so that you can do what you need to do in the right given time, rather than I'm just going to take two crap breasts together, um. But that said, even taking them badly is still because you're doing something together. You're doing it in, you're bringing some awareness to yourself rather than just the mind racing around. But my point with all these things, with everything, not even just with anything in life, is like, well, can I do it better? Can I optimize it? Um, what would? Why wouldn't I want to do it more efficiently?
Jordi Taylor:100. So this is where I love to get into maybe the weeds a little bit. Yeah, real life example. Say you get a rugby athlete, they come in they say, mate, I really want to go through, um, an assessment with you. I'm bought in, no matter what you say, I'm going to do it all right. So you've got someone that's 100, bought into it. Where do you start, like, what's your assessment process? What's your ongoing, I guess, prescription? Yeah, I think this is where I will say that breath work and understanding this side of thing, probably, versus a lot of other different methods, you know whether that's a be like brain training or reactivity, all this sort of stuff to me it seems very seamless in the way that you plug and play, but it also seems like you can actually maintain some sort of actual periodized plan going forward, which probably aligns closer to the quote unquote like purists you know what I mean they have to have the X's and O's sort of ticked off. It probably aligns to that a lot closer.
David Jackson:Yeah, great question. No, yeah, um, great question. No one's ever asked me specifically like so that that whole thing. I'm an open book so I'm more than happy to share. So someone comes in first thing is I want to assess their auto breathing. How are they breathing when they're not thinking about it? So actually the assessment can needs to start whilst we're having a bit of chit chat rather than when we then actually start assessing the breathing.
David Jackson:So getting an eye, getting some visual cues on, like how they're breathing when they don't know that I'm looking at their breathing, then some slightly more formal, like awareness of or assessments of their breathing, um, mechanically, um, as well as biomechanically, would be, like some some static breath hold tests, um, and then, uh, airway is important.
David Jackson:So we do some weird things where I'm gonna ask you to open your mouth as wide as you can, because how wide you can open your mouth and it's going to be indicative of how your jaw is articulating. Your jaw, your lower and upper jaw are important for where your tongue placement is going to be, and your your the top of your palate, like when you smile, of what your teeth are like, getting an idea of what is the air, what is your facial structure and what is your tongue telling me about your airway? So if you open your mouth as wide as you can, can you fit three fingers in there? It sounds like recently what I'm like. We do some before and after photos of things and you know, rugby is a sport where for various different reasons maybe knocks and hits and things a lot of guys are in like positions where the jaw is like quite recessed, they pull it back a lot and they actually restrict their airway literally by pushing their jaw into it guards as well.
Jordi Taylor:do you find, because you're biting down, that you've got a tension? Possibly the musketer around the jaw?
David Jackson:But what was funny was we were taking some before and after photos of various different things, and that's one that was like do you mind if I and he's like?
Jordi Taylor:yeah, mate.
David Jackson:And then I showed him one of these ones and he's like no delete that one, but anyway he's like.
David Jackson:No, delete that one, but anyway, like, um, he was a really good example, like he couldn't open his mouth and when he struggled to open his mouth, so that after like, because so he's got some issues around his jaw but he, he holds himself in a position where he's ramming his jaw into his airway. So I'm more I'm interested in like how it's affecting his airway, but it will be affecting other things, probably negatively as well. Um, but then he's also then got trouble with, like, being able to get his tongue onto the roof of his mouth and the tongue on the roof of mouth feel like natural day-to-day nasal breathing is critical for the support of the jaw, the structural integrity of the airway, um and so, but literally assessing whether people can actually create some suction with their tongue to the roof of the mouth, you had a good video on that on instagram as well.
David Jackson:Yeah, and the different yeah, and then so the difference between my ability to just open my mouth compared to suction it, and open it is then also going to tell me how tight the the bottom of the tongue is, because if that's super tight and they can't get it up, then we need to do some work to like lengthen and strengthen that. So that's like the weird bit. The rest of it, I feel, is not weird, but that's a bit of a weird bit. Then I'll look at like how they actually move. So how the rib cage is moving was indicative of like how are you breathing? So if my ribs can't move, it's difficult for my diaphragm to work a face, and if my ribs don't move, my spine won't move. So is this static or is this stationary? So be lined down, yep, um, so just some, just some, yeah, some, um, some relaxed, uh, what's the right word like passive is what I don't know. So it's just some passive assessments of like spine shoulder spine's probably a bit more active, but spine shoulder like internal, external rotation, hip rotations, um, a little bit of like overhead positions lying down. Like how much do we break out through through the rib cage? Um, what are some of the when they're supported by the floor? What are some of their like go-to positions of compensation, um, and from a from a rib cage perspective and what I just see more and more and more.
David Jackson:Like I say, I worked as an S and C coach for quite a while before coming across, breathing at all, and weirdly I looked at the body and you're looking at all the bits around the rib cage, but never looked at the rib cage, whereas now I look at a body, I look at you sat there in front of me. I'm like there's a big rib cage underneath that t-shirt. There's arms hanging off the sides and there's your hips and legs hanging off the bottom, like you're a rib cage. Um, and now when I see someone move, I see the rib cage moving, I see the rest of the body compensate, either above and below it. So getting people's rib cage in a better position not only helps their breathing optimize their breathing, optimize how much the diaphragm can move the zone of opposition is like how far the diaphragm is going to move and forth but also when you get the ribcage in better position.
David Jackson:And the guy yesterday was like internal rotation just fairly bad, and then we got his ribcage in better position with a simple exhalation drill and then we retest and he's like probably too much internal. It was like I said to him this I was, he's another coach. I was showing him, I was he wanted to see some of the other stuff I was um doing with some of the guys. I work with one and one, all girls. I work with one and one um, and I said this is I said to him this is a classic example. When I do it like this and you get this sort of change with just that one exercise, that was like you did three exhales. I say to the blokes. I say to him I'm not charging you enough for this because you can spend your whole life trying to get that range back by just stretching and mobilize it.
David Jackson:But if the rib cage is out of whack it's difficult for like. In that scenario, if the rib cage is like forward and pronounced and tilted, like the scapula is going to go with it. So there's probably other things going on as well, but my rational thought on it is like we're just helping that, that relationship between the scapula and the and the ribcage by getting that ribcage in a better position, but we're also getting good breathing off the back of it, and then yeah, so and then there's and there's plenty of stuff that go down into the hip in terms of, like the diaphragm, so SQL, like all those guys like in together, and if I'm not creating stability with my breathing dynamics in that lower portion, those tissues have to stay tight or those tissues have to tone up to maintain that.
David Jackson:So I'm writing a book at the moment where getting the chance to interview a lot of experts and it was one of the head physios at british athletics gave a lovely little um anecdote to exactly that where she said if I've got a, a runner with a hip problem and their dysfunction with everybody, they're like more of an upper chest bill that they've got. They're not good at breathing in whatever domain. She said biomechanically, if I don't, she's what she's just over time but noticed and what it's like. Unless I sort out their breathing I'm going to treat the hip as well. But unless I sort out their breathing the hip problem will not go away, no matter what I do to the hip.
David Jackson:And she's convinced that that notion that like those tissues are going to stay high in tone to create that stability around the midline because your breathing dynamics are not doing it for you. And so when we optimize those breathing dynamics, it's not just our not feeling out of breath, it's like our ability to transfer force through the midsection, our ability to stabilize through the midsection. Like how's that going to play out through all sorts of different things when our, for our athletic um output as well, as you move more, you move potentially, particularly for runners, you move more efficiently, which then again you're moving more efficiently so you're not using as much energy and oxygen for your movement, but then your breathing is more efficient as well, so that that potential 20 25 percent of energy you're spending on your bad breathing starts to come down. You've got more oxygen and energy for actually the thing you're trying to do. You don't go out for a run to just experience breathing. You go out for a run to do the running Interestingly.
Jordi Taylor:I product of of the runner yes. Interestingly, I post my brain injury when I was trying to work on my brain injury in a little bit of depth, cause you mentioned a couple of times, obviously, social media.
David Jackson:if people follow you, they're probably aware of it, but yeah, I'll come, but just to say that I actually trying to work on your breathing as a rugby banged up old rugby player that's like just knackered. Because what do you get taught in in sport, the contact sports? You get taught to not listen to your body because if you listen to all your injuries all the time, you never play a bleeding game. So you get very good at like switching off and not listening to the body and you play with all sorts of niggles all the time. That's normal. So you try to like work on your breathing because you've learned about how important it's going to be for brain health. Then sitting down and just trying to feel your breathing and work out whether you're doing it right or not. It's fairly difficult. One because you're not good at feeling on the inside and two and that's not me, I'm not, that's not being sick, that's just personal experience. I think a lot of people can resonate with it. But, um, it's also quite small and light, gentle at rest, because you're not doing anything.
David Jackson:So I actually started running because when I was running you notice that like oh, actually my tuners. Just now I've realized my like if I actually know how well are you breathing now out of 10, like you go, I don't know. You just put me on the spot and how am I measuring it? I don't know. Whereas you go out for a run and if you're a bit aware of, like um, some biomechanics of breathing and what's affecting you, go out for a run and if you're a bit aware of, like um, some biomechanics of breathing and what's affecting you, go out for a run and then you realize, oh my gosh, I'm running, my chest is just bouncing like mad and anytime I go anywhere near about 20k, 20 kilometers, I've got like neck pain for the rest of the day because I'm just like hiking up my rib cage with all those exterior breathing muscles and then you go huh running's.
David Jackson:Actually, for me, running was a great tool to experience my breathing, so I actually did run for the purpose of feeling my breathing and then be able to work on it. But, yes, most people don't know. But, yeah, the brain injury. So I um, 2013, um, had a seizure on the field, um and a small bleed on the brain after an innocuous like it was apparent. I've I lost two weeks of my memory that I've luckily never got back, so I don't remember having a seizure or anything, which is, I think, fairly good. I don't think I'd have liked to have remembered that, but yeah, my mate tells me. That tells.
David Jackson:The story was like there was two of you on the same team. We were playing touch in the warmup not for a game, for training and we both just went to catch the same ball. That was it. He was a fair bit taller than me, so his shoulder hit me in the, in the jaw, um, and they said everyone we were about to. You know it was funny and then you hit the deck like a sack of spuds and they started having a fit and everyone went fucking shit. And, you know, put me in the recovery position and get the physio on and I go to hospital and you know it, it took a long time to actually get to. You know, at first you get sent home, so would you? I just got a concussion and it's just. And we've done a, we've done a ct scan which gives you about as much information as me. Looking at your, your head now, going like like it looks all right, I can see. It's just not.
David Jackson:But anyway um, and then months when I initially I was trying to get back to playing Um, but I I was scared of saying I'm done, like, and no one had any answers of like. This is actually what's happened to you and uh, you know it would be dangerous for you to carry on, but anyway, my symptoms were getting worse rather than getting better. I'd had probably 10 concussions in the past of significance and been taken to hospital, I think four times in the past, but this one was different and, looking back, quite obviously they were getting worse. It was taking longer to get over them when you track back and see, but yeah, I eventually had some MRI scans and the experts the neurology, experts saying, like you know, you can see the scar on your brain.
David Jackson:That scar on the brain was the bleed you'd have had when you've had a seizure. It's like, basically, the seizure is a sign of like a bleed and like the brain was the bleed you'd have had when you've had a seizure. It's like it's basically the seizure is a sign of like a bleed and like the brain resetting, um, and you need to not play contact sports anymore. And she was really lovely and that she was like saying it to me like um, as if I'd be upset about that, and I was like a huge sigh of relief, um, because I was scared of going back on the field. But I was. I was scared of saying I'm scared of going back on the field, but I was scared of saying I'm scared of going back on the field.
David Jackson:I think only if you played sport you understand that right I put myself and my wife through a lot of pain rather than just going I'm done, because I knew I was done, but, yeah, trying to hold on to that a little bit, yeah, and how have you found so far like because I remember Dino in the sauna here the other day was saying that it's been a big part of your recovery is also the breathing side of things and the actual effect it's had.
Jordi Taylor:You know, post long term and I think rugby league, afl, you know our main sports over here you know concussions are every year, year on year, getting not only probably more severe, but a lot more media attention as well, and when there's media attention they look more severe as well. So it's just the impact of the game is getting faster, it's not getting slower. Boys are getting bigger, girls are getting bigger and stronger and faster, like two race cars hitting each other eventually things are going to happen, you know, and an easy way to.
David Jackson:Well, one thing that's simple and rational to get our head around is, as any just think about any injury. If you pull your hamstring and you come back too early, what happens? You report your hamstring and is it worse than the first time? Of course it is probably. Yeah, if you have a concussion, you come back too early, what's going to happen? And the problem we have is we haven't got a good enough protocol to be able to assess and it's more difficult to assess.
David Jackson:But there's actually quite a lot of research out there now I've done quite a lot of work with medical teams on this of how breathing can be a reflection of the nervous system. So my breathing not only can be the thing that I can do to help regulate the nervous system and help improve blood flow and oxygen supply to the brain, so that's one of the biggest things like blood flow and oxygen supply to the brain gets reduced and the nervous system is that we see more dysregulation in the nervous system HR, like measuring HIV plummeting. So our breathing can actually be a really good metric to measure alongside HIV, to dictate how well is someone's brain actually recovered from this injury rather than just the symptoms, because the moment we just track symptoms and if I've got, if you look at all the research on this, it shows that when someone's symptom free, like and you scan their brain with a functional MRI scanner, like I don't know what the percentage is but just because they're symptom free doesn't mean that they're not, um, still seeing signs of the injury. And and I think it was even six months later or three months later no, it was months later they had one group where they scanned them after seven days, when they were symptom-free, an X percentage of them still showed signs. They scanned them again six or three months later and they still had those signs. And so all it was being is like going back onto the field with that hamstring not fully recovered.
David Jackson:The breath is great for one, helping to regulate the nervous system and then two, restoring blood flow and oxygen supply to the brain. And one of the key things for the oxygen supply and blood supply to the brain is recalibrating CO2 sensitivity. So our central chemoreceptors in the respiratory center, the brainstem, are very responsive to co2 and that gets disrupted because of the you know, our brain injury. Our brain sounds off of that brainstem and there's respiratory sensor in it. It's getting whacked about, um, that dysregulates that, that autonomic function, and we become more sensitive to co2. And when we're more sensitive to co2, we we breathe it out more and so we have less in the body and we have less CO2 in the body. That might not seem bad to people because we think of carbon dioxide as being this bad thing.
David Jackson:Well, if you lack levels of CO2, levels in your body go lower.
David Jackson:You have reduced blood flow, you have reduced oxygen delivery and the brain is a big hungry thing for oxygen and it needs it and it prioritizes, it tries to prioritize itself.
David Jackson:But, um, when you restore those levels of oxygen, when you store those levels of co2, with some of the breathing exercises and they're the same breathing exercises that help regulate the nervous system, they go hand in hand you get, you see, improved blood flow and oxybites the brain, you see, improved like, um, with people's like post concussive syndrome symptoms, um, and then I've worked with quite a few players that have if they've been, if it's not been a straightforward, you know, seven days later I still don't feel well like, and they're struggling.
David Jackson:You know, normally it's like after a few months when it's making no headway. Then they come across someone like me, um, but we get them to that point of being able to get back into some reasonable level of exercise. But then we use some of the breath holding as a way to gradually improve our resilience to excise or excise tolerance. Because what happens when you start excising to co2? It goes up and if you're still super sensitive to it, it's then going to trigger you off into like terrible breathing pattern, like we have this cascade of events and if you already got that dysregulated nervous system and then CO2 is going up, your breathing rate is going up, your heart rate is going to go through and you're going to feel terrible when you're doing exercise and that's anyone that's had any concussions.
Jordi Taylor:It's like you try to go back initially to do some aerobic exercise, even just the 10 minutes on the bike, can you feel like it's the hardest thing, isn't it?
David Jackson:but it's something that's very good to do. Why is light aerobic work good to do post brain injury?
Jordi Taylor:I believe. Isn't it just to see how sensitive you are to to movement?
David Jackson:um heart rate. Well, what so? This has been whether whether do do the medics know why, or not, like when I had my brain injury, it was don't do anything, don't. I was really sensitive to the lights. I said don't look at like you know, and it was no, no, nothing.
David Jackson:Now we know that doing some lights, when it so long as it doesn't trigger off your symptoms, some light aerobic work. Because what happens when you start doing some light aerobic work? Your heart rate goes up a little bit, you generate a little bit more co2, a little bit more co2 circulating within your blood and that's going to basically help with the blood flow and oxygen to the brain. But you can do that without doing the exercise, by slowing down and reducing your breathing, doing some of the like calming breathing exercises, which will also help with the nervous system dysregulation. Um, so I'm not necessarily sure whether people that are that would prescribe it know that maybe they do, but, um, because if they but if they did know that that was the mechanism or a mechanism, then you would also prescribe breathing anxiety yeah, well, they can.
Jordi Taylor:So the ais has brought out new concussion guidelines and off the top of my head I would not be able to explain them, but they're great because it it basically, uh, gives athletes, athletes even at a community level, some sort of return to play guidelines versus what we were sort of saying there before around, sort of a bit of the spray and pray. But it's still just symptoms, correct, it'll still be symptoms, correct. My partner works in a school and their school has concussion protocols now as well and it's all graded based on attendance in school how much work they can do.
David Jackson:So it's getting quite serious. It'll be interesting to see again. Yeah, I'm just a little bullish on this topic, having experienced it myself and I haven't even looked at it. But and I'm happy for it for me to be right I hope I'm wrong. But I almost absolutely guarantee you they're all symptom-based and if you look at the research, the symptoms are not like when your symptoms get better, like your classic symptoms headaches, nausea, does it? Poor, fatigue. When they get better, great, that's important. I want those to get better for you. But that doesn't mean you. That doesn't mean once all those symptoms are gone. That doesn't mean if you scanned your brain with a functional mri scanner that you wouldn't see any signs of injury. And so all of the research points was symptom management isn't good enough but again, if you want to use the hamstring example, as well we have different grades of hamstring injuries as well, don't we?
Jordi Taylor:One, two, three BC, depending on where you live, and a grade one hamstring versus grade three is completely different. Rehab completely different protocols are in play to get an athlete back. Sometimes surgeries are quite like. There's all these different things, but again, a lot of the time we just grade it as one one injury. You know, a massive head knock versus a simple little head knock, regardless, they're both still concussions, different grades, different severities.
David Jackson:So if you were measuring, if you're measuring some breathing metric like CO2 sensitivity, if you're measuring HRV pre and post, you'd have a really good idea of whether somebody and I've worked with players.
Jordi Taylor:Where have you been working with a player, like under your guidance? One and then?
David Jackson:had a concussion, yeah, and then he's gone, and then he couldn't get back to playing, and then we did some of the stuff that he needed to do, and then he's able to play again. Um, and and what happened is is breathing that we tracked before was way down and his hiv was way down. And what happened? When he did some work on his breathing, his breathing scores got better and his hiv got better. And how are you? And then when, when those things got better, his exercise tolerance improved, then he was able to play again and you tracking those through whoop.
Jordi Taylor:Apple watch doesn't matter.
David Jackson:Really doesn't matter the device, as long as you have some consistency. Some hiv things are better than others, yeah without getting too in the nitty-gritty that's a whole thing in itself awesome. Okay, going back to your assessment protocol yeah yeah, we'll just go to well, remember, I forgot where we're done. Well, no, just based on time.
Jordi Taylor:Yeah, um, okay, so you've gone through it. You've you've gone through an assessment.
David Jackson:Yeah, let's just so like like checking how the body is moving, because we can make some really good change with, like, our breathing. The other thing would be then um, what, what's their breathing like during exercise tolerance? So I I've got a. I like to look at a nasal threshold so at what speed on what bike can they reach nasal? Only to give us that threshold of what's that tipping point for them. And then also a breath hold, like duration of breath hold sprint, which gives us like a really strong like tolerance to co2 in a, in a in a exercise um test.
David Jackson:And then, within all of that, each time they're doing those things, I'm tracking what their recovery is like. So what's their breathing like during their recovery and what's their heart rate, what's their ability to bring their heart rate down? And I've done some stuff where you do five minutes of coaching with somebody. That's it on. Just this is your diaphragm, this is I want you to breathe mechanically and this is what I want you to do in terms of controlling your exhalations, try and manipulate your heart rate a bit. And then we go and redo the same test after five minutes testing and you see like insane differences between those two things, um. So what's nice about it is it make it can be really impactful in the short term, and that helps us get buy-in, because ultimately it's like if five minutes can do that, what if we do this for the next two seasons?
Jordi Taylor:and that's that's again without coming too off topic no, this is. I was talking to a coach about this the other day and, um, he is the master of methods. I call him. He's, he's got um tremor methods, didgeridoo, he's got all the methods under the sun and and, uh, he has done the oxygen advantage course as well so he's got that in in his you know his toolkit and I said to him you know, is this something that you use to attract athletes?
Jordi Taylor:and he said no. But if I was a younger coach, it certainly would be something that in the off season, you know, especially professional sport in australia you only get a small window and the worst thing that I think athletes want to do if they've been playing rugby league now for, let's say, you know, 10, 12 years, you know they're 24, 25 the last thing I want to do is go in the gym and do more of what they've done and what they're going to do in season. Speed work on the field a little bit different, because I don't get a, you know, dedicated block to that, so you might be able to get some buy-in there. However, something like this that if you've got an athlete that is a bit intuitive, you know they might be, you know, a bit curious this could be a really good way to get your foot in the door and then expose them to the rest of everything that you got going on because of what you just said. Then doesn't take a whole lot, but you get a quick win.
David Jackson:Quick wins are a lot and mean a lot to athletes that are it's got it, it's got to always say and I say it's like it's got to make a difference. If it doesn't make a difference, don't bother. Don't bother because I you shouldn't. If I can't help you, there's no point in doing any more work with me. But I know that it works. I've experienced it myself, I've seen it with all the athletes that I've worked with, and like it can be, the difference can be wild. When you've definitely you've never done any of it at all. Um, and that's most of us, you know, I was one of those. Like breathing, no, I'd never, I didn't. It was like I don't. How do you like, literally, how do you know if you're doing it right? And I couldn't answer that question. And that's when the rabbit holes died, you know, and you never came out. And never came out trying to get back out of it uh, okay, cool.
Jordi Taylor:So sorry, another tangent, but yeah, back to that. So we're probably up to the point of you've assessed as well. Um, so now it's probably the prescription side of things. So you know you've got an athlete. What does that look like? Is that something they're doing on their own? Are they coming in and seeing you a couple of times a week, like how does that actually integrate into their overall program?
David Jackson:um, I'm not gonna say I'm not there like day to day and seeing them, so it's like distance learning almost. But, um, their, their or their job, my job to help them with them is okay. What bits are important to them? What bits of art we identified that are going to be our starting points for them? And? And then, how do we integrate Like that's the key word, how do I, how do you integrate this into the various different things within your training week, like your warmups, your cool downs, your ice baths, your saunas, your gym session, like which bits of which things?
David Jackson:Because when you're on the rugby field, you're not thinking, obviously, about breathing, because you're thinking about rugby, but there might be water break. What are you gonna do in the water break? What are you gonna do when the, when the session stops? And so what are you gonna do before you get to bed? Like, are there things that you know sleep a big priority, because we can have a huge impact on that. So, integrating into their training the things that we want to work on with them first, and then sometimes cause, you know, just doing more stuff isn't possible or isn't desirable, isn't even necessarily sometimes the right thing.
Jordi Taylor:Also becomes overwhelming for athletes. Now you end up doing nothing, yeah.
David Jackson:Or you're just making them more fatigued. What we're great at is rugby. Coaches are great at this. Snc coaches were pretty good at it, and that's the. We're very good at creating stress, but it's stress that's important for people to get better. But if all we're able to do and then you've got, the physios are running around in the background trying to put everyone back together, they are just stress.
Jordi Taylor:Well they're stressed.
David Jackson:They're trying to deal with the stress. That's been great and put them back together. Yeah, um, like who's in? Who's who's the recovery, who's in charge of recovery, who's providing who's the recovery, who's in charge of recovery, who's providing who's giving them something for recovery? And you go oh, I do my ice bath and I'm sorry, that's another stress. I do my sauna. I'm sorry, that's the thermal stress. Like I do my red light. Okay, that's, that's not stress, so that's good, okay, cool.
David Jackson:How are you breathing when you do those things? Well, I don't know well why. What about you do one of the damn regulation breathing protocols to actually manipulate your nervous system for recovery. Like what's the most important thing for recovery? Probably sleep. So what you're doing for your nervous system for sleep, because what's the difference in sleep quality and recovery during sleep if you're stuck in sympathetic compared to shifting your state into parasympathetic and it's probably not as simple as that, but you know using those terms for people probably aware of them. But basically, can I get my system? What? What thing is going to manipulate your nervous system? It's your breathing, like name, name some other recovery thing that's manipulating that in that way. Like I don't think, I don't know I'm biased, but I'm genuinely trying to think and you're looking at me, the same guy. I don't think any of this. You know we're focusing on like the muscles, or getting rid of the doms, or this that the other like, but what about you? What about?
Jordi Taylor:what are you?
David Jackson:doing for your nervous system. You know one of the classic thing take your who whoop. Most nine times out of 10, when I'm working with a professional or international rugby player I say do you track any day? Nine times out of 10, yeah, I had a whoop, but I don't fucking use it anymore. And I'm like, yeah, and I know why, because I've heard this story enough times. Why? Well, because it kept telling me I'd not recovered. I still got to go training and it's like right, you know, you're playing a team sport, you're not in control of your training load. And the problem with the whoop and HRV was that we went right. Here's a way we can track how fucked the guys are or girls are, and then, well, that's good, so long as you're going to give them an intervention to help it.
Jordi Taylor:if you just give someone something that tracks how knackered they are with no intervention, then of course they don't like it or just adds more stress because they're looking at that and they're seeing they're in the red or you know their daily strains this and the daily strains that and yeah, 100 that's actually one of the most common things.
David Jackson:You hear a lot of athletes anymore yeah, so I'll go well, if you want to, whilst we a few first few weeks put it on, just so we've got some data. So you know, I know this is going to work, but so you can see something to show it's going to work. And I remember one lad after after a few weeks he was obviously not doing the stuff. He was like doing bits and bobs and then, like at some point, he decided to do the down regulating stuff before going to bed. I told him to do it at the beginning but for whatever reason, um, and then a few weeks later he sends a screenshot of his whoop data and it was like Monday, tuesday, wednesday, it was like 83, 78, 82, whatever, and he was like I started doing it on.
David Jackson:Thursday, and then it was like Thursday, friday, saturday, sunday, 900. He was like I've never had my recovery in the night or whatever it. You know it was like. I was like, yeah, mate, it works, but you know it's uh, yeah it. It's a bit sad really that we like, when ego let's, let's give you something to measure how knackered you are, yeah and um, not give you any?
Jordi Taylor:the other thing a lot of people don't know, and I'm only saying this because whoop won't sponsor me is that um?
Jordi Taylor:they change their algorithm all the time as well. So, from a sleep research perspective and from a gold standard, they're always changing the algorithm so they can never actually track it being. Is it actually accurate? Is it the gold standard? They always tweak something. That's why, again, you look at your gold standards Aura rings probably the closest you'll get. Apple Watch probably falls. Same with Whoop wood they will sort of fall down from a reliability standpoint. But obviously a proper sleep assessment is the gold standard because of the reliability. But also they understand exactly what either metrics are coming from, where they're pulling them and all that sort of stuff. So have you come across heart, math, heart?
David Jackson:math, heart math no, I haven't ever used heart math for the hrv stuff. It's good, have a look at that, you know, because one thing is like you're taking your, you're taking your heartbeat off your wrist, which we know is not like amazing. Hrv isn't your heartbeat, hrv is the tiny variations in the space between those heartbeats and then we're going. If you go….
Jordi Taylor:That's why you wear polar around your heart and not on your….
David Jackson:See, like, just the fact that it's on your wrist is… from what I understand, the fact that there's only wrist music can't be that good.
Jordi Taylor:And it's probably a good conversation around this, and I know I'm cautious of time, but we look at a couple of things, so things that a lot of athletes are doing at the moment, even just the general public. You know whoop bands. I remember four years ago when I had a whoop band, I moved down to Sydney and I actually had my whoop band on, so Apple Watch on one side and my whoop been on the other side I kept getting called Ben 10 everywhere I went. So I got rid of it because I was like well, I'm sick of getting called Ben 10. No one fucking knows what it is, and also I'm sick of telling everyone what it is and also I'm not an athlete, so I don't fucking need it anyway. So I got rid of it. And then now all of a sudden, like even yesterday, whoop Bondi.
Jordi Taylor:Beach, followed me Whoop Bond, now you know based on their, you know, training, all that sort of stuff.
David Jackson:But they don't follow me. I've just been down to bondo as well. They saw you surf.
Jordi Taylor:That's why yeah, they don't follow. But, like everyone, everyone has one now, or everyone at least knows or aware of what a whoop is or rings, a lot more common as well. People are aware of what they are, but, same as you know. Mouth tape or um nasal strips, yeah, you know, people are putting big money behind them to just get it in from alibaba and brand it and make a heap of cash. Um, dean gave me some mouth tape.
Jordi Taylor:The other week I'm hot and cold with it, I'm playing around with it. I did five days in a row really good. I actually found that I woke up. So it took four days and my heart resting heart rate did decrease, but in general, my four, my deep sleep just kept getting less and less and less and less. So I just got rid of it because I just actually woke up feeling a bit fatigued. Yeah, um, anyway, different story is just personal experience.
Jordi Taylor:So people are using mouth tape, nasal strips, whoops, all these sorts of things. Where do you sit on them? Is it the application? Is it? It's a bit of a blanket approach. Try it all, see what works or what doesn't work. Like do you?
David Jackson:describe this stuff to you. Yeah, I'm like we. We go, we want to assess the person and like what do you need? Um, and one of the mouth tape is a classic example of um. It's just there to support the mouth staying closed. The people that are most prone to um like the mouth opening and those are just that lie on our back when we sleep because it's gravity's going to pull your jaw down. Um, but also, but probably more more than that, sorry, that's just like a, an obvious thing of, just like that's. That's what happens. The people that are most prone to not nasal breathing during sleep and that's the like, the, the difference that nasal breathing creates. A mouth breathing has on your olfactory nerve, your nervous system is is unquestionable. That's just their people. It's not my opinion. Um, the people that are prone to not being able to nasal breathe at night are those that don't nasal breathe much during the day. But what do people want to do? How long does it take you to put some tape on your face?
Jordi Taylor:0.5. A second, yeah, if that.
David Jackson:And then your head hits the pillow and then you lie there and they go. This feels weird and then come back and tell me that mouth taping doesn't work for them. Right, the mouth taping is just there to support the mouth staying closed. If you're someone that it's opening all the time, what you need to do is you need to do some work, you need to do the work and you need. That means doing something during the day to change your auto. Um, and yeah, it's literally a band-aid over you know the uh.
David Jackson:There's a great um like functional medicine, like analogy, where you know someone's got a pain in their, in their foot and it's like, okay, so that you give you, the normal doctor would give you some painkillers, whereas the functional doctor would take the shoe off and say, oh, there's a, you got a stone in your shoe and take that out and like it's not, like just sticking tape over your mouth is not root cause. But everyone wants to do the easy thing and I'm the same. It's like I want to do easy things too, but you've got to appreciate that at some time. If you, if we understand what are we actually trying to do, it then makes a lot of sense to go oh yeah in order for my brain to be happy, nasal breathing at night when I can't, when I'm, everything's relaxed, nothing is doing anything.
David Jackson:My airway is relaxed so that we come back to then the tongue, because the tongue's connected to all the muscles in your neck and your airway and if your um, if your, if your tongue lacks tone, your airway, like structure, integrity and tone, you're going to find it harder to breathe at night. When your body finds it. What would your body always do? Path of least resistance, and air is a great one for that path of least resistance. So I'm going to go to the mouth rather than the nose if I'm got, if I'm struggling with my airway. But what if you do something during the day with your nasal breathing, with your tongue in the right position of the roof of the mouth, and start to change that auto um, start to be able to breathe slower, which is karma. Like karma, breathing literally calms your nervous system. That can be as simple as just like breathing quietly. You know, being aware of that during your day. That's not enough thing to do with when you're breathing, when you're training.
David Jackson:I've got some guys that like they're not that interested in what you can do with your breathing in training. It's like I just want the stuff away from that, away from training. Enough stress at training, enough things to think about training, not bothered about any of that. I'm like, okay, it's cool, I'd still love to, but we'll just do the stuff away from training. Your day-to-day life, like regulating yourself during the day down, regulating for, for sleep, and then they report like that they sleep so much better, they feel so much better regulated. Then what's their performance like at training on the field? Well, that's really, you know, for the real, that's significantly improved. Yet we haven't touched that. Um, the byproduct. The byproduct exactly. You know, if you could just change what, if you can improve one thing for an athlete, it'd probably be sleep out of everything, because it's going to have the knock-on effect of on everything yeah, we look at um pattyomes arguably the best NFL player at the moment probably creeping his way up to Tom Brady territory.
Jordi Taylor:There's interviews and they go. What would you like to do on your day off? Like what's the one thing you want to do? He goes. I just want to sleep, that's all I want to do he sleeps. He naps all the time, lebron fan, he naps multiple times a day, like there's a reason that these guys sleep so much, so much. Okay, you're heading to New Zealand, to Nigel, as we mentioned there before.
Jordi Taylor:We'll get this podcast up early, so those that are listening because there is a few New Zealand listeners and they are potentially in the area and want to drop in and learn more, or those that when you come back next time and you let everyone know about it a bit earlier there is the next time I was on the. I was on the plane from it's a part, and I was just I normally like where would you like over this right?
David Jackson:um well, we got option when we, when we booked. It was like you could fly from manchester, which is two hours away from us in the uk, or fly from london, which was like a five-hour drive. So we'll, we'll go from manchester what was the plane day? The plane goes from manchester to heathrow and you have to get off heathrow and get on another plane, is that okay? So and so then we went to singapore. Yeah, and after singapore then on to sydney was a bit of a I was a bit like a bit I'm a bit.
David Jackson:Normally I like it what you do? You sit there, people just bring food to you. My wife doesn't like the food, so I eat too and sit and watch films. I was like I normally like it and no one can bother you. There's no emails and no. I mean you can buy the wife but you can choose not to and just have a nice time. But you know, I was a little bit broken it's a long trip people don't get.
Jordi Taylor:Yeah, you gotta. If you you know you sell enough, you might be able to fly business and that might make you want to yeah, yeah, we're not, we're not quite a business yet we walked past business.
Jordi Taylor:Yeah, that's my experience as well. It looks good, um. So, yeah, what is the oa course? What's about? What are the key things? That you know? There's a group just on the weekends. It's probably a really great example. Yeah, the one or two things I walk away and go fuck that. That, to me, was worth the cost of admission, knowing that I now have this and this in my tool yeah, so I guess the the two main things are you get a mixture of the theory and the practice.
David Jackson:So the theory, the education, the understanding of like, why and what we're doing with our breathing and what it can influence, whether that's physical, whether that's mental, whether that's nervous system whatever, and then you've got the practical application of it. So we go through and we the first two days, like the master instructors, teach the exercises and coach them through it, but then on the last day they start to then work with each other. So you get the practice of actually then starting to within that three-day course like teaching, starting getting into taking that through. So, yes, my work is heavily sports-based. That three-day course like teaching, starting getting into um, taking that through. So, um, yes, my work is heavily sports based, um, but those that come to the, come to the certification, we always have like a wide span of um, everything from, say, at the weekend we had a mental health nurse wanted to use it within her job to like, help with, like nervous system regulation, being able to manage calm anxiety.
David Jackson:Um, I've had everything from like osteos, physios, psychotherapists for doctors and then pts, sometimes someone that's you know I, for me, I did it just for me, you know I. I was quite happy working with the is the you know, traditional essencey um, training with paralympic athletes. At the time I never even thought I was going to do the course. I did the course for myself. I never thought I'd use it, even I don't. What's weird is, and I still wonder why I didn't think I would use it with the athletes. For some reason I, even though I'd signed up to do the course, wanted to do it and knew it was really important for me.
David Jackson:At that point I'd not seen the link to like how it can be so beneficial for sports, which is wild, wild, yeah, but that's where. But that's where I was at. And then you know one of the things you do as part of the course for to get the certification is you work with three clients and do like three case studies and, like I was doing like this, the absolute simplest basic things of these people and they were like reported. You know what they were reporting of, like how they felt and they're running and this and the other was just like again, it was wild and I was like wow, because you know I experienced starting a starting point of like post brain injury, which I had a lot of work to do to get to just like an okay point, let alone like actually good. And so what was taking me? Sometimes two years in my own ability, someone's doing in like two months or even less sometimes. So that was also quite cool to see. Yeah unreal.
Jordi Taylor:I think you put up some great content on social media. Uh, there's two that obviously come to mind, which was the tongue positioning one and then obviously the one that probably went semi-viral, the the nose buds in the yeah, yeah, I've only ever had one viral that was the one happened to me and it's like you can see why um, for people that want to learn a little bit more about you, know what you reach out to you for any of your you know your services and things like that Best place to go.
David Jackson:So Instagram is jackodavidjackson and then my website is probreathworkcom. There's the app for the website is Pro Breathwork app available on Apple and Google. There's two free courses on there. So one is free foundations of breathing and the other one's specific to sort of stress and anxiety management. So, um, yeah, they're free because I just feel that the absolute basics and fundamentals for that type of stuff um, you know, something as simple as breathing, um should be available to everybody, or at least take down any barriers, so there's no cost to those things.
Jordi Taylor:Beautiful.
David Jackson:And you know it should be part of our schooling, education Like, maybe one day it will be Well, fingers crossed, but until then you can just have the course for free.
Jordi Taylor:I'll link it into the show notes. Anyone that's saved. You're having to look for it. I'll just drop it straight in the bottom of that, so it'll be right there. Any closing thoughts? Mate from beautiful sunny Bondi. Any closing thoughts? Mate from beautiful sunny Bondi.
David Jackson:Well, I'm glad that the sun has come out. I'm very grateful to have the chance to meet you and also to share a little bit of your lessons. I appreciate it.
Jordi Taylor:Awesome mate. Appreciate it.
David Jackson:Thank you.
