Are You Bracing—or Just Holding Your Breath?
Strength Training After 40
I can usually tell within one set when someone has confused bracing with holding their breath.
They get into position, take the biggest breath possible and hold it until their face turns red. When the repetition is over, they gasp and tell me they were “bracing.”
Sometimes they were.
Often, they were simply holding their breath and hoping the tension showed up somewhere useful.
The two strategies overlap, but they are not the same.
Bracing is the muscular tension that makes your torso more resistant to movement. Breath-holding is one way of increasing pressure inside that torso.
That additional pressure can be useful during a genuinely heavy lift. It is unnecessary during most exercises, and it cannot replace learning how to create muscular tension.
After 40, that distinction becomes worth understanding. Not because your body suddenly becomes fragile, but because training should become more deliberate rather than more fearful.
What Bracing Actually Is
Bracing is a coordinated contraction of the muscles surrounding your trunk.
Your abdominal muscles, obliques and spinal extensors work together to make your torso more rigid. Instead of allowing the spine and pelvis to move freely under load, the trunk becomes a more stable platform through which you can transfer force.
The closest everyday comparison is the moment before someone bumps into your stomach. You do not pull your belly inward. You tighten the entire area in preparation for the impact.
That is much closer to a brace.
The goal is not to flex only your “six-pack” muscles. You want tension around the front, sides and back of your torso.
Research comparing different abdominal stabilization strategies has generally found that full abdominal bracing creates greater lumbar stability than drawing the abdominal wall inward because bracing involves broader co-contraction of the trunk musculature.
Think of your torso as a cylinder.
A good brace stiffens the entire cylinder rather than pulling in one small section of the front wall.
Bracing Is Not the Same as Hollowing
For years, people with back pain were commonly told to pull their belly button toward their spine.
That technique is known as abdominal hollowing or drawing in.
Hollowing is not useless. It may have a role during early rehabilitation, low-load motor-control exercises or situations in which someone is learning how to activate the deeper abdominal muscles.
But it is not the same strategy you would normally use to stabilize your torso during a loaded squat, deadlift or carry.
When you pull the abdomen inward, you emphasize a narrower muscular strategy. When you brace, you create tension through the full abdominal wall.
For someone lifting an external load, I generally do not want the stomach sucked inward. I want the trunk to become firm and resistant to movement.
A simple cue is:
Tighten your torso as though someone is about to bump into you.
That usually works better than telling someone to “pull their belly button toward the spine.”
Where Breath-Holding Fits In
The Valsalva maneuver is a specific pressure strategy.
You take a breath, close the airway at your throat and attempt to exhale without allowing the air to escape. This increases pressure inside the chest and abdominal cavity.
That pressure can add rigidity to the torso.
This is why experienced strength athletes frequently hold their breath during a heavy squat, deadlift or press. The breath hold acts as a pressure amplifier for an already-established muscular brace.
Reviews of the research have found that intra-abdominal and intrathoracic pressures generally increase as lifting intensity and effort rise. The Valsalva maneuver can increase that pressure further and may assist trunk rigidity during demanding resistance exercise.
This does not mean that holding your breath automatically creates a good brace.
You can take a huge breath, clench your throat and still allow your ribs to flare, your pelvis to move or your lower back to lose position.
You can also brace effectively while continuing to breathe.
The best way to think about it is:
Bracing is the foundation. Breath-holding is an optional layer added when the load justifies it.
Why a Brief Breath Hold Can Help During Heavy Lifting
A heavy squat or deadlift creates a very different stability demand from a biceps curl.
During a near-maximal compound lift, your legs may be capable of producing more force than your torso can efficiently transfer if the trunk is not sufficiently rigid. A strong brace combined with a brief breath hold can make the torso more resistant to unwanted movement and help you maintain position through the most difficult portion of the lift.
That is a legitimate performance strategy.
It is not simply a bad habit that experienced lifters need to eliminate.
Telling every person to “never hold your breath while lifting” ignores the reason the strategy exists. For a healthy, experienced lifter performing a very heavy repetition, a short and intentional breath hold may be appropriate.
The problem begins when the same pressure strategy is used automatically during every exercise, every repetition and every set.
Breath-Holding Is Not Free
The pressure created during a Valsalva maneuver does not remain isolated inside the abdomen.
Heavy resistance exercise already produces a significant acute blood-pressure response. Adding prolonged breath-holding can increase that response further.
Small laboratory studies using maximal or near-maximal leg presses have recorded dramatically greater blood-pressure responses during closed-glottis breath-holding than during controlled exhalation. Those experiments involved highly demanding lifting conditions and should not be interpreted as representative of every recreational set, but they demonstrate why continuous straining is not appropriate for every exercise.
Breath-holding and heavier resistance exercise can also temporarily increase pressure inside the eye. A 2024 systematic review found that heavier loads, longer efforts and breath-holding tended to produce larger increases in intraocular pressure, although pressure generally returned toward baseline shortly after the exercise ended. The long-term importance of these temporary increases remains less certain.
This does not make the Valsalva maneuver inherently dangerous.
It means that the strategy has a physiological cost, and that cost should provide a meaningful benefit.
Holding your breath through a heavy deadlift may improve stability.
Holding your breath through 15 repetitions of a leg extension probably does not give you enough benefit to justify the additional strain.
Why This Deserves More Attention After 40
Turning 40 does not suddenly make your spine, heart or blood vessels unreliable.
Strength training remains one of the most important things adults can do to maintain muscle, strength and physical function as they age. Major professional recommendations continue to support progressive resistance training throughout adulthood and older age.
What changes is context.
By the time people reach their 40s, 50s and 60s, they are more likely to be returning to lifting after a long break, managing an old injury or training alongside a medical concern that deserves consideration.
Some know they have high blood pressure. Others may not have checked it recently. Some have been diagnosed with glaucoma or elevated eye pressure. Others have experienced dizziness, exertional headaches, pelvic-floor symptoms or complications from previous surgeries.
None of those automatically rules out strength training.
They mean that your breathing strategy should be chosen intentionally rather than copied from a powerlifter performing a maximal attempt.
More Bracing Is Not Always Better
Many people treat bracing like an on-and-off switch.
They are either relaxed or squeezing as hard as physically possible.
That is not how efficient movement works.
Bracing should operate more like a volume dial.
Picking up a coffee cup requires almost no conscious bracing. Carrying a moderately heavy grocery bag requires more. Performing a challenging set of squats requires considerably more.
A near-maximal deadlift may require almost everything you can create.
The amount of tension should match the task.
Using a maximal brace during every exercise wastes energy and often creates unnecessary tension in the jaw, neck and shoulders. It can also make it harder to breathe naturally during longer sets.
The goal is not to become as rigid as possible at all times.
The goal is to create enough rigidity to control the movement.
A Practical Breathing System
The correct breathing strategy depends on the exercise, the load, the number of repetitions and how close you are to muscular failure.
It should not be determined by the exercise name alone.
A light squat and a maximal squat are both squats, but they do not require the same pressure strategy.
Light and Supported Exercises
During curls, triceps exercises, lateral raises, leg extensions and many supported machine exercises, breathe continuously.
Inhale during the easier portion of the movement and exhale during the harder portion.
You still need enough background trunk tension to maintain your position, but there is usually no reason to create a maximal brace or hold your breath.
Your face should not turn red during a set of cable curls.
Moderate Compound Exercises
During moderate squats, split squats, presses, rows and deadlift variations, take a controlled breath before the repetition and create tension around your torso.
Begin the movement while maintaining the brace.
As you move through the most difficult portion, allow air to escape gradually rather than releasing everything at once.
Some people find it helpful to exhale through slightly pursed lips or make a quiet hissing sound. This allows air to move while helping them retain some abdominal tension.
Reset your position and breathing as needed between repetitions.
Very Heavy Repetitions
During a very heavy squat, deadlift or press, a healthy and experienced lifter may choose to hold the breath briefly through the most demanding part of the repetition.
Create the brace before the weight begins moving.
Maintain the breath hold through the portion where losing trunk position would be most likely.
Release the breath once you have passed the sticking point or returned the weight to a secure position.
Reset between repetitions whenever the exercise provides a safe opportunity.
A brief, deliberate breath hold during a heavy repetition is different from refusing to breathe through an entire set.
Carries, Planks and Longer Holds
You cannot hold your breath throughout a long farmer’s carry or a 45-second plank.
This is where you need to learn how to breathe behind the brace.
Maintain enough abdominal tension to prevent your position from collapsing while taking smaller, controlled breaths.
The outer wall of the torso stays firm, but air continues to move inside it.
That skill transfers well beyond the gym. You use it when carrying furniture, moving equipment, lifting a child or maintaining control in an awkward position.
How to Feel a Proper Brace
Stand upright and place your hands around your waist.
Put your fingers toward the front of your abdomen and your thumbs toward your sides or lower back.
Take a moderate breath into the lower part of your torso. Try to feel some expansion toward the front, sides and back rather than allowing only the upper chest and shoulders to rise.
Now tighten your trunk as though someone were about to bump into you.
You should feel the area under your fingers become firmer.
Do not pull the stomach inward.
Do not lift your shoulders.
Do not arch your lower back to make room for a larger breath.
The breath should help you create pressure, but the muscular tension should remain even as some of the air begins to leave.
The Cough-and-Breathe Practice Drill
Place your fingers against the front and sides of your abdomen.
Cough gently once.
You should feel the abdominal wall briefly tighten around your fingers.
Now recreate part of that tension voluntarily without coughing. Use approximately half of your maximum effort.
While maintaining that tension, continue breathing or say a short sentence out loud.
You do not need to speak normally while producing a maximal lifting brace. The purpose of the drill is simply to show that muscular tension and complete breath-holding are not the same thing.
This is a coordination exercise, not a test that determines whether you are ready for maximal lifting.
Exercise-Specific Cues
Squat
Before descending, take a controlled breath and create tension around your waist.
Think:
Breathe low and wide. Make the torso solid before you move.
During a moderate set, begin exhaling as you drive through the most difficult part of the ascent.
During a very heavy repetition, you may briefly hold the breath through the bottom position and begin releasing it once you have moved beyond the sticking point.
Avoid taking such a large breath that your ribs flare upward and your lower back overextends.
Deadlift
Brace before the weight leaves the floor.
Do not begin pulling and then attempt to create tension halfway through the lift.
Think:
Take the slack out of the bar. Brace. Then push the floor away.
During moderate repetitions, you can begin exhaling gradually as you stand.
During a heavy repetition, a brief breath hold may continue until the bar is secure at the top or has returned to the floor.
Bench Press
Set your upper back and establish your trunk position before lowering the bar.
For a moderate set, inhale as the bar descends and exhale gradually as you press through the difficult portion.
During a heavy repetition, a brief breath hold may help maintain whole-body tension until the bar has moved beyond the sticking point.
Your abdominal brace does not need to be as aggressive as it would be during a maximal squat, but a completely relaxed torso gives your shoulders a less stable platform from which to press.
Overhead Press
The overhead press exposes poor trunk control quickly.
Brace the abdomen and glutes before the weight leaves your shoulders.
Keep your rib cage reasonably stacked over your pelvis rather than leaning farther backward as the weight gets difficult.
For most training sets, exhale as the weight passes the most difficult point.
Split Squat
A split squat requires control, but it rarely needs the same pressure strategy as a maximal deadlift.
Take a controlled breath, create enough tension to keep the torso and pelvis organized and continue breathing throughout most sets.
If you find yourself holding your breath through an entire set of split squats, you are probably using more pressure than the exercise requires.
Signs You May Be Holding Your Breath Instead of Bracing
You may be relying too heavily on trapped air if:
Your chest and shoulders rise dramatically before every repetition.
Your neck and jaw feel tighter than your abdomen.
You lose all trunk tension the moment you exhale.
You hold one breath through several repetitions.
You become lightheaded after moderate sets.
Your face turns red during exercises that place little demand on trunk stability.
You feel more limited by the breath hold than by the muscles you are trying to train.
A good brace should improve control.
It should not turn every set into a survival test.
When to Be More Conservative
People with diagnosed or poorly controlled hypertension should generally avoid prolonged breath-holding during resistance exercise. The American College of Sports Medicine specifically cautions that breath-holding while lifting can produce very high blood-pressure responses, dizziness and fainting.
A more conservative strategy may also be appropriate if you have:
Known cardiovascular or aortic disease
Glaucoma, elevated intraocular pressure or recent eye surgery
A history of dizziness, fainting or severe exertional headaches
Recent abdominal, hernia or cardiovascular surgery
Pelvic-floor symptoms such as leaking, pressure, heaviness or bulging during lifting
Chest pain, unusual palpitations or unexplained shortness of breath during exercise
Most physical activity is beneficial rather than harmful to the pelvic floor, but strenuous activity and increases in abdominal pressure can provoke or worsen symptoms in some people. The available evidence remains mixed, so symptoms should lead to individual modification rather than a blanket claim that heavy lifting is either always harmful or always harmless.
The answer is not necessarily to stop lifting.
It may mean reducing the load, avoiding grinding repetitions, changing the breathing pattern or working with a physician, ophthalmologist or pelvic-health professional who understands the demands of resistance training.
The Bottom Line
Bracing and breath-holding often happen together, but they are not the same skill.
Bracing is muscular tension.
Breath-holding is a pressure strategy.
Use enough muscular tension to control the movement. Continue breathing during most of your training. Reserve deliberate breath-holding for the heavy repetitions where the additional pressure provides a real benefit—and where your health and experience make it appropriate.
A good brace should make the repetition more controlled, not turn every set into a survival test.
Learn to brace first.
Let the weight earn everything beyond that.
Selected Research
Grenier SG, McGill SM. Quantification of lumbar stability by using two different abdominal activation strategies. Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation. 2007.
Vera-Garcia FJ et al. Effects of abdominal stabilization maneuvers on the control of spine motion and stability against sudden trunk perturbations. Journal of Electromyography and Kinesiology. 2007.
Hackett DA, Chow CM. The Valsalva maneuver: its effect on intra-abdominal pressure and safety issues during resistance exercise. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research. 2013.
Blazek D et al. Systematic review of intra-abdominal and intrathoracic pressures initiated by the Valsalva manoeuvre during high-intensity resistance exercises. Biology of Sport. 2019.
Narloch JA, Brandstater ME. Influence of breathing technique on arterial blood pressure during heavy weight lifting. Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation. 1995.
Hackett DA et al. Acute effects of resistance exercise on intraocular pressure in healthy adults: a systematic review. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research. 2024.
Fragala MS et al. Resistance training for older adults: position statement from the National Strength and Conditioning Association. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research. 2019.
Bø K, Nygaard IE. Is physical activity good or bad for the female pelvic floor? A narrative review. Sports Medicine. 2020.
Are You Bracing—or Just Holding Your Breath?
Strength Training After 40
I can usually tell within one set when someone has confused bracing with holding their breath.
They get into position, take the biggest breath possible and hold it until their face turns red. When the repetition is over, they gasp and tell me they were “bracing.”
Sometimes they were.
Often, they were simply holding their breath and hoping the tension showed up somewhere useful.
The two strategies overlap, but they are not the same.
Bracing is the muscular tension that makes your torso more resistant to movement. Breath-holding is one way of increasing pressure inside that torso.
That additional pressure can be useful during a genuinely heavy lift. It is unnecessary during most exercises, and it cannot replace learning how to create muscular tension.
After 40, that distinction becomes worth understanding. Not because your body suddenly becomes fragile, but because training should become more deliberate rather than more fearful.
What Bracing Actually Is
Bracing is a coordinated contraction of the muscles surrounding your trunk.
Your abdominal muscles, obliques and spinal extensors work together to make your torso more rigid. Instead of allowing the spine and pelvis to move freely under load, the trunk becomes a more stable platform through which you can transfer force.
The closest everyday comparison is the moment before someone bumps into your stomach. You do not pull your belly inward. You tighten the entire area in preparation for the impact.
That is much closer to a brace.
The goal is not to flex only your “six-pack” muscles. You want tension around the front, sides and back of your torso.
Research comparing different abdominal stabilization strategies has generally found that full abdominal bracing creates greater lumbar stability than drawing the abdominal wall inward because bracing involves broader co-contraction of the trunk musculature.
Think of your torso as a cylinder.
A good brace stiffens the entire cylinder rather than pulling in one small section of the front wall.
Bracing Is Not the Same as Hollowing
For years, people with back pain were commonly told to pull their belly button toward their spine.
That technique is known as abdominal hollowing or drawing in.
Hollowing is not useless. It may have a role during early rehabilitation, low-load motor-control exercises or situations in which someone is learning how to activate the deeper abdominal muscles.
But it is not the same strategy you would normally use to stabilize your torso during a loaded squat, deadlift or carry.
When you pull the abdomen inward, you emphasize a narrower muscular strategy. When you brace, you create tension through the full abdominal wall.
For someone lifting an external load, I generally do not want the stomach sucked inward. I want the trunk to become firm and resistant to movement.
A simple cue is:
Tighten your torso as though someone is about to bump into you.
That usually works better than telling someone to “pull their belly button toward the spine.”
Where Breath-Holding Fits In
The Valsalva maneuver is a specific pressure strategy.
You take a breath, close the airway at your throat and attempt to exhale without allowing the air to escape. This increases pressure inside the chest and abdominal cavity.
That pressure can add rigidity to the torso.
This is why experienced strength athletes frequently hold their breath during a heavy squat, deadlift or press. The breath hold acts as a pressure amplifier for an already-established muscular brace.
Reviews of the research have found that intra-abdominal and intrathoracic pressures generally increase as lifting intensity and effort rise. The Valsalva maneuver can increase that pressure further and may assist trunk rigidity during demanding resistance exercise.
This does not mean that holding your breath automatically creates a good brace.
You can take a huge breath, clench your throat and still allow your ribs to flare, your pelvis to move or your lower back to lose position.
You can also brace effectively while continuing to breathe.
The best way to think about it is:
Bracing is the foundation. Breath-holding is an optional layer added when the load justifies it.
Why a Brief Breath Hold Can Help During Heavy Lifting
A heavy squat or deadlift creates a very different stability demand from a biceps curl.
During a near-maximal compound lift, your legs may be capable of producing more force than your torso can efficiently transfer if the trunk is not sufficiently rigid. A strong brace combined with a brief breath hold can make the torso more resistant to unwanted movement and help you maintain position through the most difficult portion of the lift.
That is a legitimate performance strategy.
It is not simply a bad habit that experienced lifters need to eliminate.
Telling every person to “never hold your breath while lifting” ignores the reason the strategy exists. For a healthy, experienced lifter performing a very heavy repetition, a short and intentional breath hold may be appropriate.
The problem begins when the same pressure strategy is used automatically during every exercise, every repetition and every set.
Breath-Holding Is Not Free
The pressure created during a Valsalva maneuver does not remain isolated inside the abdomen.
Heavy resistance exercise already produces a significant acute blood-pressure response. Adding prolonged breath-holding can increase that response further.
Small laboratory studies using maximal or near-maximal leg presses have recorded dramatically greater blood-pressure responses during closed-glottis breath-holding than during controlled exhalation. Those experiments involved highly demanding lifting conditions and should not be interpreted as representative of every recreational set, but they demonstrate why continuous straining is not appropriate for every exercise.
Breath-holding and heavier resistance exercise can also temporarily increase pressure inside the eye. A 2024 systematic review found that heavier loads, longer efforts and breath-holding tended to produce larger increases in intraocular pressure, although pressure generally returned toward baseline shortly after the exercise ended. The long-term importance of these temporary increases remains less certain.
This does not make the Valsalva maneuver inherently dangerous.
It means that the strategy has a physiological cost, and that cost should provide a meaningful benefit.
Holding your breath through a heavy deadlift may improve stability.
Holding your breath through 15 repetitions of a leg extension probably does not give you enough benefit to justify the additional strain.
Why This Deserves More Attention After 40
Turning 40 does not suddenly make your spine, heart or blood vessels unreliable.
Strength training remains one of the most important things adults can do to maintain muscle, strength and physical function as they age. Major professional recommendations continue to support progressive resistance training throughout adulthood and older age.
What changes is context.
By the time people reach their 40s, 50s and 60s, they are more likely to be returning to lifting after a long break, managing an old injury or training alongside a medical concern that deserves consideration.
Some know they have high blood pressure. Others may not have checked it recently. Some have been diagnosed with glaucoma or elevated eye pressure. Others have experienced dizziness, exertional headaches, pelvic-floor symptoms or complications from previous surgeries.
None of those automatically rules out strength training.
They mean that your breathing strategy should be chosen intentionally rather than copied from a powerlifter performing a maximal attempt.
More Bracing Is Not Always Better
Many people treat bracing like an on-and-off switch.
They are either relaxed or squeezing as hard as physically possible.
That is not how efficient movement works.
Bracing should operate more like a volume dial.
Picking up a coffee cup requires almost no conscious bracing. Carrying a moderately heavy grocery bag requires more. Performing a challenging set of squats requires considerably more.
A near-maximal deadlift may require almost everything you can create.
The amount of tension should match the task.
Using a maximal brace during every exercise wastes energy and often creates unnecessary tension in the jaw, neck and shoulders. It can also make it harder to breathe naturally during longer sets.
The goal is not to become as rigid as possible at all times.
The goal is to create enough rigidity to control the movement.
A Practical Breathing System
The correct breathing strategy depends on the exercise, the load, the number of repetitions and how close you are to muscular failure.
It should not be determined by the exercise name alone.
A light squat and a maximal squat are both squats, but they do not require the same pressure strategy.
Light and Supported Exercises
During curls, triceps exercises, lateral raises, leg extensions and many supported machine exercises, breathe continuously.
Inhale during the easier portion of the movement and exhale during the harder portion.
You still need enough background trunk tension to maintain your position, but there is usually no reason to create a maximal brace or hold your breath.
Your face should not turn red during a set of cable curls.
Moderate Compound Exercises
During moderate squats, split squats, presses, rows and deadlift variations, take a controlled breath before the repetition and create tension around your torso.
Begin the movement while maintaining the brace.
As you move through the most difficult portion, allow air to escape gradually rather than releasing everything at once.
Some people find it helpful to exhale through slightly pursed lips or make a quiet hissing sound. This allows air to move while helping them retain some abdominal tension.
Reset your position and breathing as needed between repetitions.
Very Heavy Repetitions
During a very heavy squat, deadlift or press, a healthy and experienced lifter may choose to hold the breath briefly through the most demanding part of the repetition.
Create the brace before the weight begins moving.
Maintain the breath hold through the portion where losing trunk position would be most likely.
Release the breath once you have passed the sticking point or returned the weight to a secure position.
Reset between repetitions whenever the exercise provides a safe opportunity.
A brief, deliberate breath hold during a heavy repetition is different from refusing to breathe through an entire set.
Carries, Planks and Longer Holds
You cannot hold your breath throughout a long farmer’s carry or a 45-second plank.
This is where you need to learn how to breathe behind the brace.
Maintain enough abdominal tension to prevent your position from collapsing while taking smaller, controlled breaths.
The outer wall of the torso stays firm, but air continues to move inside it.
That skill transfers well beyond the gym. You use it when carrying furniture, moving equipment, lifting a child or maintaining control in an awkward position.
How to Feel a Proper Brace
Stand upright and place your hands around your waist.
Put your fingers toward the front of your abdomen and your thumbs toward your sides or lower back.
Take a moderate breath into the lower part of your torso. Try to feel some expansion toward the front, sides and back rather than allowing only the upper chest and shoulders to rise.
Now tighten your trunk as though someone were about to bump into you.
You should feel the area under your fingers become firmer.
Do not pull the stomach inward.
Do not lift your shoulders.
Do not arch your lower back to make room for a larger breath.
The breath should help you create pressure, but the muscular tension should remain even as some of the air begins to leave.
The Cough-and-Breathe Practice Drill
Place your fingers against the front and sides of your abdomen.
Cough gently once.
You should feel the abdominal wall briefly tighten around your fingers.
Now recreate part of that tension voluntarily without coughing. Use approximately half of your maximum effort.
While maintaining that tension, continue breathing or say a short sentence out loud.
You do not need to speak normally while producing a maximal lifting brace. The purpose of the drill is simply to show that muscular tension and complete breath-holding are not the same thing.
This is a coordination exercise, not a test that determines whether you are ready for maximal lifting.
Exercise-Specific Cues
Squat
Before descending, take a controlled breath and create tension around your waist.
Think:
Breathe low and wide. Make the torso solid before you move.
During a moderate set, begin exhaling as you drive through the most difficult part of the ascent.
During a very heavy repetition, you may briefly hold the breath through the bottom position and begin releasing it once you have moved beyond the sticking point.
Avoid taking such a large breath that your ribs flare upward and your lower back overextends.
Deadlift
Brace before the weight leaves the floor.
Do not begin pulling and then attempt to create tension halfway through the lift.
Think:
Take the slack out of the bar. Brace. Then push the floor away.
During moderate repetitions, you can begin exhaling gradually as you stand.
During a heavy repetition, a brief breath hold may continue until the bar is secure at the top or has returned to the floor.
Bench Press
Set your upper back and establish your trunk position before lowering the bar.
For a moderate set, inhale as the bar descends and exhale gradually as you press through the difficult portion.
During a heavy repetition, a brief breath hold may help maintain whole-body tension until the bar has moved beyond the sticking point.
Your abdominal brace does not need to be as aggressive as it would be during a maximal squat, but a completely relaxed torso gives your shoulders a less stable platform from which to press.
Overhead Press
The overhead press exposes poor trunk control quickly.
Brace the abdomen and glutes before the weight leaves your shoulders.
Keep your rib cage reasonably stacked over your pelvis rather than leaning farther backward as the weight gets difficult.
For most training sets, exhale as the weight passes the most difficult point.
Split Squat
A split squat requires control, but it rarely needs the same pressure strategy as a maximal deadlift.
Take a controlled breath, create enough tension to keep the torso and pelvis organized and continue breathing throughout most sets.
If you find yourself holding your breath through an entire set of split squats, you are probably using more pressure than the exercise requires.
Signs You May Be Holding Your Breath Instead of Bracing
You may be relying too heavily on trapped air if:
- Your chest and shoulders rise dramatically before every repetition.
- Your neck and jaw feel tighter than your abdomen.
- You lose all trunk tension the moment you exhale.
- You hold one breath through several repetitions.
- You become lightheaded after moderate sets.
- Your face turns red during exercises that place little demand on trunk stability.
- You feel more limited by the breath hold than by the muscles you are trying to train.
A good brace should improve control.
It should not turn every set into a survival test.
When to Be More Conservative
People with diagnosed or poorly controlled hypertension should generally avoid prolonged breath-holding during resistance exercise. The American College of Sports Medicine specifically cautions that breath-holding while lifting can produce very high blood-pressure responses, dizziness and fainting.
A more conservative strategy may also be appropriate if you have:
- Known cardiovascular or aortic disease
- Glaucoma, elevated intraocular pressure or recent eye surgery
- A history of dizziness, fainting or severe exertional headaches
- Recent abdominal, hernia or cardiovascular surgery
- Pelvic-floor symptoms such as leaking, pressure, heaviness or bulging during lifting
- Chest pain, unusual palpitations or unexplained shortness of breath during exercise
Most physical activity is beneficial rather than harmful to the pelvic floor, but strenuous activity and increases in abdominal pressure can provoke or worsen symptoms in some people. The available evidence remains mixed, so symptoms should lead to individual modification rather than a blanket claim that heavy lifting is either always harmful or always harmless.
The answer is not necessarily to stop lifting.
It may mean reducing the load, avoiding grinding repetitions, changing the breathing pattern or working with a physician, ophthalmologist or pelvic-health professional who understands the demands of resistance training.
The Bottom Line
Bracing and breath-holding often happen together, but they are not the same skill.
Bracing is muscular tension.
Breath-holding is a pressure strategy.
Use enough muscular tension to control the movement. Continue breathing during most of your training. Reserve deliberate breath-holding for the heavy repetitions where the additional pressure provides a real benefit—and where your health and experience make it appropriate.
A good brace should make the repetition more controlled, not turn every set into a survival test.
Learn to brace first.
Let the weight earn everything beyond that.
Selected Research
Grenier SG, McGill SM. Quantification of lumbar stability by using two different abdominal activation strategies. Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation. 2007.
Vera-Garcia FJ et al. Effects of abdominal stabilization maneuvers on the control of spine motion and stability against sudden trunk perturbations. Journal of Electromyography and Kinesiology. 2007.
Hackett DA, Chow CM. The Valsalva maneuver: its effect on intra-abdominal pressure and safety issues during resistance exercise. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research. 2013.
Blazek D et al. Systematic review of intra-abdominal and intrathoracic pressures initiated by the Valsalva manoeuvre during high-intensity resistance exercises. Biology of Sport. 2019.
Narloch JA, Brandstater ME. Influence of breathing technique on arterial blood pressure during heavy weight lifting. Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation. 1995.
Hackett DA et al. Acute effects of resistance exercise on intraocular pressure in healthy adults: a systematic review. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research. 2024.
Fragala MS et al. Resistance training for older adults: position statement from the National Strength and Conditioning Association. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research. 2019.
Bø K, Nygaard IE. Is physical activity good or bad for the female pelvic floor? A narrative review. Sports Medicine. 2020.
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