PODCAST - Top 5 Exercises for Athletes with Asthma
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[00:00:00] Maybe you're like me, and we're told at some point in your life that you weren't gonna be able to exercise like other people. At four years old, I was told that even though I wanted to play soccer all the time, ~I wanted to play year round. It was my favorite sport that ~I wouldn't be able to do that. And ~if I was gonna try to, I ~would need to always have my inhaler with me, which.
It was great advice to anyone to this day, but I would also have to always take it before, during, and after practice and games. ~Well, ~thank God my parents had a different idea for me ~and my life ~and my relationship with exercise throughout my life
otherwise, I would've been terrified to exercise since a very young age,
but guess what? I figured out how to play soccer year round. I figured out how to become a certified yoga instructor and ~become ~an elite ultra athlete with asthma.
And that's why today on the show, I wanna share with you my top five [00:01:00] best exercises for athletes with asthma
that I do on a weekly basis.
Welcome to the Athlete with Asthma Show. I'm your host Johnny Ha, an ultra runner endurance athlete, and yes, a guy who's had an inhaler prescribed since birth. Despite doctors telling me I could never play soccer nor run a marathon, let alone a hundred K ultra. I prove them all wrong. This show is where I share everything I've learned from breathing techniques to mindset shifts to help you become the athlete and the person you truly want to be.
So if you're ready to achieve your goals, despite limitations, let's get started.
Well, let's start it off very [00:02:00] slow, very deliberate. ~Okay.~ Because I know that. If you were told in your life that you shouldn't be exercising at all, you gotta be careful exercising 'cause you have asthma, and maybe you have ran into issues where you have done maybe your favorite exercise, maybe you were playing your favorite sport.
Maybe your favorite sport is soccer. Maybe it's basketball. And you may have had an issue ~where exercise, and you may have had a situation ~where exercise did limit you. I know I have throughout my life, even though I have pushed myself and built strong lungs. ~So let's start it off with very simple. I know what I'm spelling here.~
So let's start it off. Very easy.~ Okay. ~And if you are an athlete with asthma or ~just ~someone trying to get back into working out in general, the first thing ~that ~you should do is integrate walking into your life. ~Okay. ~Walking or hiking. You know, hiking is just walking, but outdoors. Maybe there's a little bit of elevation [00:03:00] game.
This is. The gateway exercise for anyone that has asthma and for anyone who maybe haven't worked out for a long time. ~Okay. I just actually got back from taking. A run.~ I just recently, just in the past couple days, I actually took a run with a friend ~of mine that ~I used to run with all the time.
And he shared with me that he hasn't worked out very much and the past year. And I told, I like, Hey, well let's start somewhere. ~Okay,~ let's start with walking. ~Okay.~ And then we'll throw some running in. And that's what we did. , and this is the same thing when you are building lung capacity, when you are getting used to really working out exercising with asthma,
the goal is to progressively overload. Our lungs and our bodies so that we incrementally get better. ~Okay.~ And that's what Walking slash Hiking allows us to do. And then the second thing you can really turn this into. Running. ~Okay,~ so we want to turn our walking slash hiking into running. [00:04:00] And what we really can do, and this is my favorite thing, ~this is how to, this day, ~whenever I'm going after ~a ~new mileage, or ~maybe I'm trying ~a harder workout, a harder running workout than I've ever done, what I do is I combine these two, and this is really how I got into running in the first place. Is I first got really into hiking. ~Okay.~ I love being in nature. I love hiking up things. I love hiking mountains. I like climbing 14,000 foot peaks. I live in Colorado and ~that is really the big thing here is ~we climb 13,000 and 14,000 foot mountains.
We have over 50 of them in our state. I got into hiking back in 2015, and I didn't really get into running until 2020, so five years later.
So five years of really getting into hiking, and I decided, you know what? Maybe I can start hiking faster. I can start jogging. There's really a continuum here. ~Okay,~ so what I like to look at [00:05:00] is we got walking, put walk, or hike, put on this side of the continuum.
And the other side we have running. ~Okay.~ So what I like to do, and I do this with all my training, ~okay, is ~we're always somewhere on this continuum, ~okay? Maybe ~in the center ~here ~is ~like ~a jog, so we don't even start. Quote unquote, running. 'cause when I say running, I'm actually talking about jogging as well until about halfway.
~Okay. ~So this is really a zero, or you're barely moving, you're walking, you're moving very slowly. ~Right? ~Would be here, and then this would be kind of a five. ~So ~we'll call this. ~Kind of ~a ~zero, or I mean ~one since you are moving a ~little ~bit. ~Okay.~ Then we have a five here, and this would be a 10 outta 10.
This is a sprint. ~Well, ~our goal, especially as athletes with asthma, when we're getting into exercise, we're gonna [00:06:00] start here in the walk slash hike. ~Okay?~ And then gonna slowly move towards a jog. And the great thing is. You can ~actually ~jump around on the continuum. Maybe one day you're hiking for a lot of it.
Maybe you're somewhere in this range, ~and then you're like, you know what? I'm going to push all the way to here for a little bit, and then I'm gonna come back to like here. Okay? And ~then next time, I'm gonna push all the way here. And then I'm gonna come back to here. And this is what we really want to do.
This is how we strengthen our lungs. This is how we progressively overload. This is how we build capacity. And then some days maybe you're just, ~maybe you're ~here and that's ~just ~where you are ~today. But ~that's ~the ~key with exercising with asthma and exercising when you haven't exercised in a long time.
~'cause ~we want ~to have ~a baseline. ~We wanna ~start with walking or hiking. Then we wanna move it up. ~Okay.~ And maybe you'll be like me and you'll be like, you know what? I wanna start hiking faster. Or, you know what, no one really wants to hike with me anymore, so I'm going to start running so that I can finish [00:07:00] these hikes faster.
~Okay. ~That's what happened to me. I started trail running Fourteeners, at least downhill with one or two friends versus, or used to be the 15 to 20 of us that would go hike one of these things. But once it dropped to just a couple of us, we'd hike up and then run down. And then we would actually start running up it and then running down.
Hey, friend, I wanted to take a moment to ask you a quick question. Are you struggling to lose weight due to your asthma? If so, I get it. I used to run marathons and still kept gaining weight. It wasn't until I learned about the three pillars of healthy living that everything changed,
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Athlete with asthma.com/healthy-living-guide to grab your free copy. Now let's get back to the rest of the show.
~Okay. So ~the next piece that I think is just when I don't do it, I feel it is hit high intensity interval training or HIIT. ~Okay.~ I have been such a proponent [00:09:00] of hit high intensity AL training for about 10 years. ~Okay.~ Over the past year I went from doing this at least two to three times a week to zero, and I have felt it asthmatically.
~Okay,~ hit is so good for you. But ~it's the same thing as these other things is ~you gotta be really careful with how intense you get. And we're actually talking about hit right here on this continuum, ~right? ~So when we're starting here. ~Okay. And ~then we go up ~here and maybe we're ~here for a ~little ~bit and then ~we ~come back down.
~That's an interval. That's an interval here. That's an interval of high intensity. Okay. Same thing here. ~That's an interval of high intensity. ~Well, I'll tell you this. ~A few weeks ago I did my first legitimate hit class in about a month. ~Okay? And ~that's been my cadence ~really ~lately. In the past year or so.
Because I'm running six days a week training for Ultras, ~and ~I just ~completely forgot and ~stopped doing hiit. ~And ~about a month ago, I did my first true HIIT ~class, though that. About a mo a few weeks ago, though. I did my first true hit ~class in years. ~Okay. ~Where I ~really ~pushed hard and then ~I ~rested.
~Okay. ~I've been doing them over the past year about once a month, but I didn't ~really ~push and I felt it. Like [00:10:00] the true hit and I was keeping track of my heart rate and I was keeping it ~within ~where I need to keep it. I have a hole on my heart and I need to be very careful with how high my heart rate goes.
So I try and keep it under about a hundred eighty, a hundred eighty five beats per minute. ~And I was keeping it in range, but I found, because ~when ~I'm ~running, I'm usually in the one forties, my heart rate's in the one forties, and it'll peak around 1 60, 1 65. Well, for hit. When I was in the one seventies and getting close to 180, my asthma was hitting me pretty hard.
~When I used to, ~before I found out I had a hole in my heart, I ~actually ~would push my heart rate ~all the way up ~to 200, and I'd be able to do that fine. Okay. Now, I'm probably not gonna do that anymore, period. But even pushing it into the one 70, climbing to 180. I felt that I felt my asthma, which is why doing HIIT on a weekly basis now I'm actually reintegrating and I'm doing it once a week.
~Okay. So~ I run slash walk like six times a week. And I'm not saying that [00:11:00] this is what you should do. I take one full day off every week, but walking slash hiking slash running, you could do this every day. You could walk every day. You probably should walk every day. ~Okay.~ I do. 'cause I. I'm training for ~pretty ~intense ultras.
I'm training for a hundred k plus. ~Actually ~this year I may ~even ~run closer to 70, 72 miles ~this year ~in 12 hours. ~Okay? ~So I do about six times a week hit. I am doing once a week. ~Okay?~ And I'm only doing it once a week because I am starting at zero again, basically, or once a month. So I am. Consciously upping my hit to once a week now because of the amazing benefits I have felt after these hit classes and.
Strengthening my lungs ~even more. ~I'm feeling the impact in my running now because of what I've done in, hi. ~Okay.~ High intensity interval trainer. There's a lot of ways to do this. I actually have my own HIIT classes on my YouTube channel, ~to, ~so if you're watching this podcast [00:12:00] episode on YouTube, you can actually go to my YouTube channel and find my yoga workouts for runners and athletes with asthma, and I have yoga sculpt classes that are basically hit classes mixed with yoga, and I highly recommend you check those out. If you're listening to this as a podcast, I am linking to that same YouTube playlist in the show notes of the podcast.
~Okay, so~ yoga sculpt. Is probably my favorite type of hip. That being said, I have started to integrate spin classes. Actually today, gonna go to a class that's half spin and half just hit with weights, so intervals with weights, burpees. Et cetera. ~Okay, so~ I'm trying to do this like once a week now, and then I am actually not doing yoga sculpt as much, but I am [00:13:00] putting classes together and releasing them on the channel.
~So ~when I put the class together, I am actually doing it. So I'm actually teaching those classes. I'm ~actually ~hit certified ~as well. ~So ~that's why ~I ~really ~integrate ~hi and ~intervals and cardio mixed with strength into my yoga sculpt classes. So you wanna check those out. I highly recommend you check out that playlist linked in the description below on YouTube and in the show notes if you're listening ~to this ~on your favorite podcasting platform.
~Okay, ~number four is yoga. ~Okay. And yes, yoga could be yoga sculpt. So by doing ~yoga sculpt, ~you're literally knocking out two of these things in one hit. And yoga, but also just ~flow yoga, restorative yoga, yin yoga. The big thing with yoga, ~that has been a game changer for me, and I make sure to do this once a week too.~
~Okay.~ Is breath yoga has really taught me. Breath ~and ~breath is so important. I have a ton of different videos and podcast episodes all about using your breath as an athlete with asthma and as a runner. ~Okay. ~The strong audible exhales, really keeping track and zoning in [00:14:00] calming your mind by focusing on mind and body.
Connection through breath, matching your breath with your movement. ~Okay, so yoga sculpt. ~I also have restorative and flow yoga ~flow ~classes on my YouTube channel, ~so it's in that same playlist ~linked in the description below ~on YouTube ~and ~linked ~in the show notes ~if you're listening to the, ~if you're listening to this as a podcast.
~Okay. ~The last one is ~one that I also do once a week now. Okay. Now this one I really got from a good friend of mine, Robbie. Okay. And it's ~heavy lifting ~now. ~In high school, I took. Lifting classes. I actually took classes called Strength and Conditioning, and we would learn how to lift. We'd also learn how to do some running around the track and some conditioning as well.
But it was mainly a lifting class, and I learned all sorts of lifts in high school, ~and I would do all of 'em. ~But now I really just do three lifts, or I focus on three, and I'll throw some other ones in there. But the main three that I do are. Bench press ~Now I do it ~[00:15:00] with kettlebells, ~actually. I put a kettlebell on each hand and I bench that way.~
I do ~squats, specifically ~front squats, ~and do the same thing. ~I take my kettlebells, pop my shoulders out, and I front squat and then dead lifts. And deadlifts are so important if you're an athlete with asthma, but also if you are a runner, it's so important for us runners because by building our glutes, I mean, heck by building our quads, our hamstrings, we are actually protecting our knees, we're protecting our legs, so you want to make sure you're building those muscles.
And then bench press. We gotta build our upper body as well. ~Okay.~ The great thing with heavy lifting ~is ~we also get to learn how to use our breath, and we wanna breathe as we press on the exhale. We breathe out strongly as we press ~or as we ~squat or ~as we ~deadlift. ~Okay? ~I throw in some other ones too.
I'll do ~like ~bicep curls, and ~then during my lifting routines, I'll also do ~what I call. ~Foot, or let's call it, uh, ~arch [00:16:00] Curls, which I got from my PT ~over at Human Power or over ~at Human Power. ~Shout out to Human Power where ~you basically take a towel. ~And you can ~put a weight on it if you want, and squeeze your toes towards your, your heel.
But I'll throw this stuff in just to mix it up with the main three. But the point here with this, with asthma is it teaches us ~how to use our breath, ~how to use our breath for power, because research shows that ~audible exhales actually like ~strong, loud, audible, exhales, make you more efficient with your energy output in your body.
It also expels that CO2, opening your lungs up to take in fresh oxygen. Now, movement or exercise is one of the three pillars of healthy living. ~And I myself lost 40 pounds. Really? I, ~I ~personally ~lost 40 pounds embracing ~the three pillars of healthy living, ~movement, tracking, and accountability. ~Okay, and more important.~
And more importantly, I have kept the weight off. ~So~ what I've done is I've put these three pillars into a strategy in my Healthy Living Guide that's gonna take you less than two to three minutes to read and start integrating into your life today. [00:17:00] You can grab the guide, ~either linked ~in the description below, if you're watching this on YouTube or on the show notes if you're listening to this, or go to www.athletewithasthma.com/healthy-living-guide to grab.
Your free copy today. I'll see ya in the next one.
Thanks for tuning in to the Athlete with Asthma Show. I hope today's episode inspired you to overcome any perceived limitations you may have. Remember, your health and wellness journey isn't about perfection. I. It is about progress. So I invite you to take a small step right now towards your goals, and if you found something helpful here, make sure to subscribe, leave a review, and share the podcast with others on a similar path.
Until next time, keep challenging yourself and redefining what's [00:18:00] possible.
