Even though you might be paying more attention to your feet, legs and back during a hike, your lungs will quickly let you know if you've been neglecting to breathe well. Every hiker knows the airway burning that results from an over-exerted switchback climb. Maintaining a solid breathing rhythm ensures that your walking remains an aerobic activity--with muscles well-supplied with oxygen--and has the side benefits of slowing you down and remaining fully aware of your surroundings.
A Breathing Pace
Hike at a pace that allows for deep, full, measured breaths. Do not power along the trail gasping for breath. You won't be supplying oxygen to your body as efficiently as otherwise and you'll tire yourself out more quickly, plus you likely won't be enjoying the sights and sounds around you at your breakneck lurch. Allow your breathing to set your hiking rate and pay as much attention to your breaths as the slogging of your feet. At higher elevations and traversing more challenging terrain, this means slowing down. Rick Curtis, writing in "The Backpacker's Field Manual," emphasizes that a proper hiking breathing rate means you aren't heaving for air and that you can still speak without excessive effort.
Breath-holding
It is often true in hiking as in any other mode of exercise that during particularly intense stretches of activity, for example when you are negotiating a narrow ledge pathway, or leaping from boulder to boulder in a talus slide, you might neglect to breathe at all for short stretches. As it is easy to hold your breath in such situations without being conscious of it, do your best to stay aware and keep inhaling and exhaling.
Resting
If your breathing becomes more labored, give yourself a rest to bring it back to a more comfortable rhythm. In "The Backpacker's Field Manual," Curtis suggests adopting the mountaineer's "rest-step" method. Lock your knee as you transfer body weight between legs and pause briefly. In addition to taking some of the strain off the legs, particularly in a steep climb or descent, the rest step focuses your attention on your breathing and can give you the opportunity to bring it under control. Stop entirely whenever you feel like it and try to force yourself to do so with some regularity during a hike even if you don't want to halt. Give your entire body a break and allow your lungs to take some full inhalations.
Accounting for Everybody
When hiking with a group, not everyone is likely to be moving at the same rate. Stay aware of your fellow hikers' rhythms and slow the communal pace. It's natural for lagging trekkers to exert themselves to keep up with the others, a situation that could provoke inefficient, stressed breathing on their part.
References
- "Backpacker Magazine"; Mind Over Mileage: Breathing Techniques for Hiking; Therese Iknoian; Sep 2001
- "The Backpacker's Field Manual"; Rick Curtis; 2005 (pgs. 167-168)
