Breathing Technique for running! Fish Face!!!

You'd think that breathing while running would come naturally. I've read and tried so many things but just can't seem to get it right. I might have a good few days of running but can never pin point what I did to help me breathe better while running to improve my endurance and to prevent side stitches.

General Running breathing technique/tips (gathered from various websites):

1. Develop a 3:2 ratio for breathing, inhale 3 steps and exhale for 2 steps. 
2. Belly Breathe rather than Chest breathe.
3. Breathe through the mouth and nose if possible.

Honestly, I don't think about the 3:2 ratio for breathing, I'm typically chatting up with my coworkers and am not counting my foot strikes. Regarding the Belly Breathing technique, it's funny. I thought I was belly breathing but for a while there, I was constantly hit by side stitches and my breathing was very difficult to control!

My coworker gave me some advice to do a 2 short exhales and 1 deep inhale technique, it helped for one day but I felt like I was doing Lamaze breathing (hoo hoo heeeeeeeee) and this technique seemed to encourage shallow chest breathing for me. (this may work for you though! but it didn't help me).

I finally came really really close to finding something that worked while trying to find out how i could prevent side stitches. One remedy for side stitches that I came across was to purse your lips as though you're about to blow out a candle. This helped train me to exhale with minimal expansion of the lungs in the chest (try it right now!!). The only problem I had with pursing your lips is that your face isn't totally relaxed. So what's the equivalent to a totally relaxed face that's close to pursing your lips???

Fish Face!!

Not to be confused with Fish Lips (where you suck in your cheeks). I noticed when I exhaled while pursing my lips, I was breathing more towards the back of the lungs and deeper. For exhaling, I read somewhere (sorry I've been to so many websites, I tried to google them to see if i can reference them but I couldn't find them again) one website likened it to a Yawn. When I pretended to yawn, similar to pursing your lips, I felt as though I was breathing more towards the back of the lungs. By completely relaxing your face while running and breathing in and out with lips similar to our swimming friend in the picture it's allowed me to breathe properly while running. I'm not sure if this will work for everyone but I used to not even be able to run 100m before getting hit with a massive side stitch or my lungs would hurt like heck. Once I figured out what worked for me for running I'm now comfortable to add on some distance. I even ran over 5miles today without any side stitches or achy lungs!

Share with us what works for you or let us know if you have any questions about fitness :) We're not experts but we'll pretend we are thanks to the power of Google ;P just kidding! or am I?