Slow and Quiet

We all breathe.
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I breathe. You breathe.
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But how do you breathe, especially when you roll?
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Recently, a visiting black belt (under Roger Gracie, I must add) from the UK commented on how I roll.
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It was something like this:
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“You are really calm… and I can’t even hear you breathing.”
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People often tell me that I’m calm, but I don’t remember people telling me that they can’t hear me breathing. Some of them have surely noticed it, though.
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Your breathing patterns often show how exhausted you’re in a match. If you’re breathing heavily, unless you’re faking it, it’s an obvious cue for your opponent to intensify their attacks.
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I don’t want to give away this kind of easy signal.
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So what do I do?
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I make sure to maintain calm breathing patterns during each sparring round.
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I breathe slowly and quietly through my nose.
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I treat intervals as “practice sessions” for correcting my breathing patterns as quickly as possible.
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Every little thing counts in the end, and you can practice most of these little things if they are under your control.
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This is another way to improve the quality of your training sessions and your overall game.

p.s. I shared this video a while ago, but I think it’s helpful and worth sharing again. It’s a straightforward breathing exercise. Inhale, hold your breath, exhale, and hold your breath again, according to the video.
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When I came across this, my first score was 12 seconds, I think. Now I can do this up to 15 seconds easily. How far can you go?