Although assessing your breathing pattern and being aware of diaphragm-driven breaths can take time, eventually it can become your default breathing pattern without having to think about it.
Addressing posture and upper body tightness through percussive massage (HI wording and link), mobility exercises, and focusing on breathing through the nose can go a long way toward managing stress levels.
When fighters are in the Octagon and when we are responding to a high-stress environment, performance breathing is a great strategy, but what can we do to manage chronic and repeated stressors?
Breathwork Training and Meditation
One strategy to deal with stress is meditation. Core by Hyperice is a physical device that gently vibrates in your hands and is paired with a library of content in the Core App. Users simply put in headphones, pick up the device, and listen and feel the meditation through vibrations while synced to audio soundscapes. Core also has ECG sensors that listen to and track a user’s heart rate while meditating, giving you actual HRV data and feedback as to how you perform over time.
Nutrition Strategies:
Stressors in the body trigger a series of biological responses in the body as well; attention to the foods and nutrients we take in support the body’s response to stress.
Stress uses energy, meaning your calorie and nutrient needs change when exposed to stress. It is often tempting to turn to fast foods or comfort foods in times of stress. Be sure to balance your diet with healthy foods like lean meats, fish, green leafy vegetables, citrus fruits, nuts, seeds, whole grains, and fermented foods, which can all positively impact mood and performance. When stressed, your body burns through nutrients like vitamin C, B vitamins (especially B6), calcium, and magnesium. When the demand for these nutrients is high, and the diet can’t keep up, supplementing these nutrients helps ensure the body can provide the best response to stressors.
Finally, minimizing the stress of physical training can help the body optimize its response to other stressors. Protein and protein supplements, such as whey protein or amino acid complexes, can optimize your recovery from training and competition. Leucine, an amino acid building block of protein, provides the signal your body needs to stop muscle breakdown and turn on the recovery process after training. The sooner we provide this trigger to the muscles, the longer the recovery window. You need about 2.5 to 3 grams of leucine to turn on muscle recovery; the amount found in 20-25 grams of protein-containing foods or protein powders. Look for a total of 0.5-1 gram of protein per pound of body weight spread across the day to ensure adequate protein intake for training and recovery.
To learn more about stress management and training considerations, Hyperice, Thorne, and the UFCPI are continually updating their resources to provide cutting-edge information to help you best build out your personal stress response action plan.