Breathing During High-Intensity Running — How Do You Approach It?

Hi everyone hope you’re all doing well.

After reading the discussion on Catherine’s post about breathing, I’d love to bring the topic back from a slightly different angle, especially around running at higher intensities in a HYROX context.

I understand the value of keeping breathing rhythmic and predictable, and the points raised about nasal vs mouth breathing made a lot of sense. What I’m still trying to better understand is how breathing should be approached when effort gets very high.

• Do you tend to use a specific breathing rhythm when intensity rises?

• Do breathing patterns change across intensity zones, or does it become more of an automatic response over time?

• From a physiological standpoint, what should we actually be trying to “optimise” with our breathing when running hard?

Personally, when I feel intensity climbing, I often fall into a pattern of two inhales and one long exhale. It seems to calm things down and give me a bit of emotional control, but I honestly don’t know if that’s something beneficial and trainable, or simply an automatic response under load.

I’d really value hearing how others approach and train this and whether breathing is a true performance lever, or more something that naturally improves as fitness and pacing improve.

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