How to Breathe While Playing Football

How you breathe during football training and matches has a direct impact on your sprint speed, endurance, recovery, and mental focus. Most players work hard on strength, fitness, and nutrition, but very few think about how they breathe.

This guide covers the Oxygen Advantage method for football players: how nasal breathing, breath hold training, and CO2 tolerance work together to improve every dimension of your game.

Why Breathing Matters for Football Performance

Nose breathing improves performance on the football field. It pushes your mental and physical boundaries. Especially when you are running flat out.

Take it a step further: exhale and hold your breath. Jog or sprint with empty lungs. Keep going until you feel strong air hunger. This exercise boosts repeated sprint ability in professional team sports players, and it works in just a few weeks.

Add nose breathing and breath holding to your sprint training and you will feel less fatigue and better stamina during play. Nose breathing adds a load. And effective training is all about adding an extra load.

The Oxygen Advantage method for football players works through two pillars:

Pillar 1: Functional Breathing

• Optimise everyday breathing for reduced breathlessness
• Increase oxygen uptake and delivery to working muscles
• Improve energy
• Boost recovery
• Strengthen the breathing muscles

Pillar 2: Breath Hold Training

Breath-hold exercises to lower blood oxygen saturation and increase carbon dioxide (CO2). This is a powerful stimulus that delays lactic acid and fatigue, and results in improved oxygen-carrying capacity.

What Football Demands from Your Body

To be successful and maintain performance, you need to be faster and stronger. You need weekly strength and power training even out of season. Off the pitch, you work hard to optimise physical condition.

You need physical agility, but you also need mental focus, resilience and recovery. Skills like maximal speed and repeated sprint ability are fundamental.

From healthy diet and nutrition to interval training and core strength, you eat, sleep and breathe football. But do you think about how you breathe during exercise?

Breathing Exercise Benefits for Football Players

For soccer players, breathing exercises offer a wide range of performance benefits:

• Better repeated sprint ability
• Better buffering and lactic acid capacity
• Stronger breathing muscles
• Better endurance
• Boost EPO and increase red blood cell count
• Faster recovery times and less risk of injury
• Mental clarity and elimination of performance anxiety
• Better sleep quality
• Easily integrated into your football warm-up with no extra equipment
• Suitable for young soccer players and international professionals
• Helps you maintain condition even if you are injured

The Oxygen Advantage method pushes you harder to maximise fitness and conditioning. It also teaches you to access your nervous system so you can maintain a calm, focused mind.

How the Oxygen Advantage Method Works

The method addresses breathing from three dimensions:

1. Biomechanical (using the diaphragm)
2. Biochemical (breathing to optimise oxygen and CO2)
3. Cadence (paced breathing at 4.5 to 6.5 breaths per minute)

The foundation of all three dimensions is nasal breathing.

Despite what many fitness experts tell you, breathing in and out through the nose is better. During intensive play you may need to open your mouth to breathe. But when you are training, nose breathing:

• Protects against dehydration
• Prevents exercise-induced asthma and airway trauma
• Keeps your airways clear of congestion
• Adds resistance to breathing for better lung gas exchange
• Engages your diaphragm, building strength in your core
• Keeps you mentally alert, activating areas of the brain connected with concentration
• Calms your nervous system so you can make better decisions
• Provides better body oxygenation and faster recovery
• Is less tiring for the breathing muscles
• Improves circulation in your legs
• Improves blood flow to your brain

Not a bad result from simply keeping your mouth shut.

Add Breathing Exercises to Your Football Warm-Up

Your football warm-up is an ideal time to add some breathing exercises. You can do this in two easy ways without interrupting your training:

1. Breathe slow and low, only through your nose

During low intensity work, nose breathing is key. Open mouth breathing makes it difficult to engage your diaphragm and blows off too much carbon dioxide (CO2).

CO2 is important. Your body needs it to access the oxygen in red blood cells. When you breathe hard through an open mouth, you deprive your body of oxygen.

Mouth breathing is also linked with:

• Mental stress
• Back and neck pain
• Muscle trigger points

When it comes to airway health, open mouth breathing bypasses your body's immune defenders. It leaves the goal wide open for viruses and allergens.

Recommendations: Use MyoTape Sport while your body adapts to nasal breathing. If you have a small nose, deviated septum or nasal obstruction, use a nasal dilator to optimise airflow.

2. Practice strong breath holds

During your football warm-up, practice 2 easy breath holds followed by 5 strong breath holds.

Strong breath holds simulate training at high altitude. They challenge the body, open the airways, and improve diaphragm strength. They also boost your body's response to your workout. Practice this exercise as part of your weekly training to increase EPO.

• Breathe in and out through your nose.
• Pinch your nose with your fingers to hold the breath.
• Hold your breath and walk.
• As air hunger gets stronger, walk faster or begin jogging.
• Continue walking or light jogging, holding your breath until you feel a strong air hunger.
• Let go of your nose and resume breathing with six minimal breaths in and out through the nose. Try to avoid taking big breaths.
• Breathe normally for 12 to 18 breaths.
• Repeat from the top, five times. Practice once daily.

Strength Training and Sprint Speed in Football

Anaerobic capacity is an important factor in football. In any single game, you need to switch quickly between jumping, running and repeated sprints. You can reach speeds of 30 km/h for as much as 5% of the match and change direction as many as 500 times.

It is quite easy to increase aerobic capacity using cardio training. But anaerobic capacity is different. It is during anaerobic exercise that your body adapts to become faster and stronger.

Positive effects of anaerobic exercise include:

• More power
• Better bone mineral density
• Faster metabolism
• Weight management
• Higher lactate threshold
• Less depression
• Less risk of disease
• Increased energy

During training you will practice speed drills like repeated shuttle sprints. These exercises are intense but can increase the risk of ankle, ACL and hamstring injuries, leaving you on the bench during important games.

Instead, add strong breath holding to your football fitness drills. You will get a better anaerobic workout without the risk of injury.

Breath Holds and Oxygen Desaturation: What the Science Shows

Repeated sprint practice with an open mouth only reduces blood oxygen to around 93%. But with breath holds, it is possible to achieve oxygen desaturation to around 80%. This intensive oxygen desaturation stimulates anaerobic glycolysis, causes the spleen to contract, and boosts long-term oxygen-carrying capacity.

How to Measure Football Fitness: The BOLT Score

Research shows that stamina on the pitch is directly related to breathing efficiency. When your breathing is slower, circulation and oxygenation are better, which means you have more energy when you need it.

Breathing becomes more efficient when you decrease your sensitivity to CO2. When tolerance to CO2 is low, you will experience more breathlessness and your breathing muscles will have to work harder.

The Oxygen Advantage method uses a measure called the BOLT score. The BOLT is an objective measure of sensitivity to CO2 and breathlessness.

To measure your BOLT score, you will need a stopwatch or timer that counts in seconds.

• Take a normal, silent breath in through your nose.
• Allow a normal, silent breath out through your nose.
• Hold your nose with your fingers to prevent air from entering your lungs.
• Count the number of seconds until you feel the first distinct desire to breathe in.

Many pro athletes start out with a BOLT score of about 20 seconds. If you have asthma it might be lower. With regular practice of the breathing exercises, you are aiming to reach 40 seconds.

The exercises improve tolerance to CO2 and can be integrated into your football fitness training drills. Better tolerance to CO2 will significantly increase your exercise capacity.

When your BOLT score reaches 40 seconds, breathing is light and slow during rest and moderate exercise, and the nervous system is well balanced.

Muscular Endurance and Diaphragm Strength for Football

When you think about muscular endurance in football, you might not consider your breathing muscles. But any fitness program for football players should include exercises to strengthen the diaphragm.

Your diaphragm forms an integral part of your core. As it moves up and down, it creates pressure in your abdomen that stabilises your spine and pelvis.

A strong diaphragm muscle is essential for agility. If breathing is not functional, movement cannot be. If your diaphragm is exhausted, you are more likely to get injured.

The diaphragm is made from the same type of muscle as the muscles that move your joints. You can thicken it to support functional movement, power and endurance. 

However, it can be difficult to strengthen the diaphragm during normal football fitness training, because it is normally only possible to exercise to the limit of the breathing muscles.

Strong breath holds exercise the diaphragm. To add a greater load to breathing, Oxygen Advantage uses the SportsMask. The mask works progressively, strengthening the diaphragm just like lifting weights builds your arm muscles.

Strong breath holds also stimulate production of EPO, increasing the oxygen-carrying capacity of your blood. They also reduce lactic acid build-up, delaying fatigue and improving endurance.

But lactic acid is not the only cause of heavy legs. Your body will always prioritise breathing. When your breathing muscles tire, your body diverts blood from your legs. The only way to avoid this is to develop more efficient breathing. When your breathing muscles are stronger and do not have to work so hard, circulation to the working muscles in your legs can increase by as much as 7%.

Muscle Recovery After Training

It is normal to have sore muscles after your workout. Delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS) is a sign your muscles are building. But you can use breathing exercises to help the process of recovery, post-sprint, post-match and during half time.

The Oxygen Advantage method can help muscular recovery in three ways:

1. Efficient breathing for better body oxygenation

When you breathe through your nose, your muscles get more oxygen. This helps them function better and recover fast. Pay attention to how you breathe post-sprint to get optimal oxygenation.

2. Breath holding reduces muscle soreness

Strong breath holding increases lactic acid threshold. This delays fatigue and speeds up recovery. Science has shown that intermittent periods of low blood oxygen (hypoxia) stimulate muscle growth and repair. Breath holding literally makes your muscles stronger.

3. Paced breathing for quick muscle recovery

Slow, paced breathing at 4.5 to 6.5 breaths per minute improves the function of your body's rest-and-digest system. This builds better heart rate variability and vagal tone and improves overall health. HRV is important for mental and physical resilience.

Low HRV can indicate overtraining and leave you vulnerable to injury. When you slow your breathing down, you will also sleep more deeply. Deep-stage sleep is vital for your body's recovery from exercise.

Mental Toughness and Focus in Football

Mental toughness in football is not about pretending to be strong. It is about resilience, getting enough rest, recovery and confidence in your ability. It is about pre-game mental preparation, focus, concentration, and knowing how to get in the zone.

You can deliberately access this psychological control using your breath. Once you have developed this skill, it transcends every area of your game. When your mind is not racing, you can concentrate and play at your best.

The Oxygen Advantage method includes exercises to up-regulate and down-regulate your nervous system. Over time, you develop resilience to stress and learn to master the mental and physical systems you need to excel.

Stress and Performance Anxiety in Football Players

In a highly competitive sport, performance anxiety can carry a stigma. But like it or not, sports anxiety can manifest during important games or penalty shoot-outs.

It can show up as insomnia when you need a good night's sleep. And anxiety in football players can lead to problems with drug and alcohol misuse.

Performance anxiety in sport is closely related to breathing. When you are stressed and nervous, you are more likely to hyperventilate. This feeds back to make your anxiety worse.

Fast, hard mouth breathing activates your fight or flight response. If you watch top strikers prepare to score, you see them focus in on the ball. The mouth is closed, the breathing calm.

For Gareth Southgate's notorious Euro 96 penalty his mouth is open to breathe. Conversely, look at Alan Shearer, and more often than not, his lips are clamped shut as the ball flies into the back of the net. It is no coincidence.

Nose breathing supports calm mental focus and helps with spatial awareness. If you prepare your penalty kick with a big breath in through your open mouth, science says you are less likely to score.

The Oxygen Advantage method uses paced breathing at 4.5 to 6.5 breaths per minute. This activates the parasympathetic nervous system which down-regulates stress and gives you the tools to focus, even under intense pressure.

Sleep, Recovery and Performance in Football

Better quality sleep makes you a better player. But when your life revolves around football, sleep won't always be your number one priority. Intensive schedules and high stress mean sport and sleep often do not go hand in hand, even though pro football players actually need more rest.

When sleep is inadequate, stress hormones rise, and physical and mental health suffers. Science has proven that a significant number of young athletes have sleep-disordered breathing.

They are more at risk than the average middle-aged man, more likely to have low blood oxygen levels and higher pulse rates at night, leaving them vulnerable to heart abnormalities.

Some facts about sleep and sports performance

• When sleep patterns are healthy, the body naturally produces anabolic hormones with effects similar to anabolic steroids.
• When sleep is poor, performance suffers. Speed, endurance, strength, executive function, learning, attention, running performance, reaction time, mood, vigour, max bench press, leg press, deadlift and tennis serve accuracy are all affected.
• In the run up to competition, it is normal to have trouble falling or staying asleep. This may be due to stress, or it could be the result of sleep-disordered breathing. Sleep disorders are hard to self-diagnose and professional athletes are often fearful about seeking help.
• When your sleep is compromised, fitness levels drop too.

What football players can do to improve sleep

• Work to restore full-time nasal breathing day and night.
• Practice slow, low, paced breathing to down-regulate your nervous system before bed.
• Use MyoTape along with breathing exercises to resolve sleep-disordered breathing.

Take Your Football Performance Further with Oxygen Advantage

More and more team sports players are using breathing exercises to ensure optimum performance. The science already exists to show that it works.

The Oxygen Advantage method gives football players a structured, science-based system for improving every dimension of their game, from sprint speed and endurance to recovery, sleep, and mental focus. It requires no equipment, no extra training time, and can be integrated directly into your existing warm-up and cool-down.

If you are interested in trying the OA method for yourself, why not try our online breathing course, become a certified breathwork instructor, or find an Oxygen Advantage instructor near you.

Also explore: SportsMask | MyoTape | Free Breathing App