PODCAST: How to Build Endurance When You Have Asthma
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[00:00:00] 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.
Endurance can feel impossible when you have asthma. ~Take it from me. ~When I was four years old, I was told that I would not [00:01:00] be able to play soccer, and there's no way I would be a runner of any kind without using my inhaler, well, today I'm gonna share ~with you ~why endurance feels impossible when you have asthma and. Why it's not. And then I'm gonna share with you my three step process to build endurance. If you have asthma,
so there's really three main reasons why endurance feels impossible when you have asthma. And the first one is wheezing sucks. Keeping it real when you feel shortness of breath, when you hear, 'cause it's not just a feeling, it's something you hear in your breath, in your breathing, in your lungs. ~When you hear that wheezing.~
You not only feel the tension in your lungs, you audibly know it's there. I remember the first time I was wheezing on the [00:02:00] soccer field. I was very young ~and I was ~running around and pretty quickly I started wheezing. I didn't know what ~the heck ~was happening.
It was hard to catch my breath. Pretty soon ~after that ~I was taken to the doctor and they said, ~Hey. ~You have asthma? Have you felt ~effects like ~this throughout your life? I'm like, yeah, ~I have. I just, ~it really hit me. ~And ~recently ~when I was ~on the soccer field, it was wheezing, terrified me.
To this day, I experienced bouts of wheezing.
Wheezing almost always hits me when I am running. Biking, hiking, hit doing, doing a hit class, a yoga class. Wheezing will hit me. When I eat way too much dairy, ~I also can start, ~I can start hearing myself wheeze. And as you know, there's a lot of ways we can deal with this. We have our inhaler.
That is probably the number one way. You can also slow down your breath, do some ~of the ~breathing exercises. I teach on my channel and ~on this ~podcast, ~and ~I also ~really ~like to ingest [00:03:00] steam into my lungs it is debilitating when someone tells you your lungs are weak.
Or maybe ~you were told that ~your lungs are different or that your lungs are weaker than other people. Whatever it is, this gets in your head when you're told something like your lungs are weak when you are told, especially when you're a kid. For me, I was four years old and ~I was not just ~told by my doctor.
I was told by ~basically ~everyone that heard that I had asthma, that my lungs are weak. That was reinforced. It reinforced to the point where I didn't think I would ever play soccer. I never hiked a 14,000 foot mountain until I was 25 and I live in Colorado. This actually pretty crazy 'cause it is a cornerstone of being in Colorado, being from [00:04:00] Colorado, living here, it's something that everyone really tries to do.
And it was never even on my radar because I was told my lungs are weak, ~and that's debilitating. ~But guess what, friend? Your lungs are not weak. Your lungs are powerful and they're just waiting for you to unleash their power. Number three, why endurance feels impossible with asthma. ~Well, ~not being able to breathe is scary.
Hey, I don't blame you. It's scary when you start wheezing and ~you've been told ~your lungs are weak. It's scary when you start having an asthma attack. Because asthma is ~a ~serious disease and you can overcome it, and guess what? You can compete with people who don't have asthma. I [00:05:00] won a hundred K Ultra, which is 62 miles
not just with people that had asthma, but people that didn't have asthma. And I ~won the race and ~didn't use my inhaler once, ~and that's because ~I strengthened my lungs over my entire life. And now I am an elite ultra runner with asthma. And that's why all of this, it's scary, but building endurance. With asthma is possible, and I have three steps I'm gonna share with you now.
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 [00:06:00] pillars of healthy living that everything changed,
so I put together a healthy living guide that you can access absolutely free by clicking the link in the description. This guide shares these amazing three pillars of healthy living that you can easily integrate into your life. To start losing weight and live healthier today. Click the link in the description or go to athlete with asthma.com/healthy-living-guide to grab your free copy.
Now let's get back to the rest of the show.
Step one, [00:07:00] change how you think. This is ~all ~about mindset, ~friend. ~The number one thing, ~the first step ~to building endurance as an athlete with asthma or ~just building endurance, ~if you've had struggles in the past, ~doing so ~is changing how you think. Throw out the window. All those people telling you that your lungs are weak, that your knees are weak, all of these different things now.
I am not a healthcare professional. I'm not a doctor. I have a disclaimer in the show notes and in the description below this video on YouTube. You always need to talk to your healthcare professional, ~and yes, ~their opinions matter. I'm just saying ~that ~even if. Asthma technically means ~that ~your lungs are weaker ~than other people. ~Doesn't mean they have to be. Just 'cause they are. Doesn't mean they have to be
so step one is change your mindset. Change how you think ~you are strong. ~Your lungs are strong. ~Now, ~Tony Robbins talks about [00:08:00] how
manifesting ~coming up with ~a goal ~visualizing ~is great in all the law of attraction's, great. You start saying mantras to yourself. ~You put the, you put your focus out into the world. Like ~I have strong lungs, I have strong lungs, I have strong lungs.
~I'll tell you this friend, ~if you tell yourself every ~single ~day that you have strong lungs and you don't do anything else, you may mentally change your. View of your lungs, which will help you, but you're not gonna actually do anything physically to change your lungs. We have to take action. That's why step two is to pick something you enjoy.
~What does this mean? Well,~ if at four years old I didn't care about playing soccer, running, playing in the playground, all these different things and ~I ~was told I had asthma and ~Hey ~Johnny, you can't ~really ~run.
You have to be really careful ~when you're ~on the playground. If I was told these things, I wouldn't have cared. I would've been like, okay, that's fine. I'm just walk around, have my inhaler, not really worried about it. And later in life when [00:09:00] I realized working out building my cardio is extremely important for living a healthy life. And by integrating a healthy workout practice into your life, all cause mortality rates all cause death decreases by 35% or more. That's how important working out is. If I didn't like soccer, I wouldn't have had the motivation to do anything. But I liked soccer. I didn't like running at the time. I didn't like running until I was 30.
Well, you need to pick something that you enjoy if you wanna strengthen your lungs. So find something you love. For me, it was soccer. In the last five years, it's been running trail, running trail, running with my fiance, ~trail, running with ~our dog, ~trail, running with ~friends, climbing mountains, ~all these things.~
~I ~enjoy it. So first, change how you think you have strong lungs, and then pick something that you enjoy. That you can start focusing on and really integrating. Step three. [00:10:00] Step three. I have called by many different names on this channel. I do have a favorite, but really you're gonna go slow and consistent.
I also like to call this progressive overload.
Over a long period of time.
So really you need both of these slow and consistent. ~So ~once you've identified what you enjoy, ~then what you need to do. So once you identify what you enjoy, so what, once you identify what ~you ~enjoy, ~can do what I did. When I was 4, 5, 6, 7 years old with soccer is I ended up going to an alternative medicine doctor, and they told me, ~Hey, ~you always need to have your inhaler with you.
It could save your life someday. That is your fail safe. But there is a strategy ~of how ~to ~actually ~build up your lungs. So ~what I want you to do, ~Johnny, ~is ~instead of taking your inhaler at the beginning of a soccer practice, I want you to keep it in your pocket, have it on you, and I want you to start practice without taking your inhaler for five, 10 minutes.
~Then ~when you start [00:11:00] wheezing, take your inhaler. ~I want you to ~do that for a week or two. Then ~I want you to extend the time that you. Then I want you to extend the time that you play soccer without using any, without using. Then I want you to ~extend the time ~that ~you play soccer without using your inhaler.
Go from five minutes to 10 minutes, to 15 to 20. Eventually, you're gonna be able to play a whole game without using your inhaler. ~Mind you, ~this took months, if not years, for me to get to the point where I was playing three to five games in a day and not having to touch my inhaler.
Now there's changes with, depending on what I put into my system, and I talk about this in other episodes, on the channel and on my podcast, about inflammation and asthma. If you have higher inflammation in your body, if you're eating things, if you're interacting with the environment that's creating inflammation in your body, this could cause your asthma to flare up even if you've built your lungs stronger.
So. Progressive overload. We are ~slowly, ~progressively overloading our lungs ~and we're doing it ~consistently over time. If you progressively overload once, it's not gonna do anything. But if you progressively overload for years. [00:12:00] Then you get to the point like me, where I only use my inhaler when I'm sick. I always have it with me, but I only use it when I'm sick and I am winning a hundred kilometer ultra marathons.
~Step one, change how you think you have strong lungs and just because they may be weaker, step one, change how you ~step one, change how you think. Just 'cause your lungs may be weaker right now doesn't mean they have to be. ~Weak. You have strong lungs. ~Step two, pick something you enjoy. Could be a sport, ~could be ~walking, ~could be an ~exercise, ~could be ~hiking, ~could be anything, could be ~cooking, ~could be ~anything with movement counts.
And then go slow and consistent. Progressively overload your lungs over time, building strength, building your body, building your powerful athletic. Life. Now I have a gift for you ~for spending time with me today. It is ~my three pillars of Healthy Living Guide. The first pillar is movement, the second is tracking, and the third is accountability.
It's gonna take you less than two to three minutes to read this guide and start integrating these three pillars into your life.
Thanks for tuning in to the Athlete [00:13:00] 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. 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 possible.
