Breathing to Enhance Fitness and Athletic Performance Workshop

A Course in Breathing - How to Breathe for Improved Health, Muscle Mass, Strength or Endurance

A message from Karsten Jensen, M.Sc. Exercise Physiology, CPTN-CPT.M, Strength Coach

Dear Personal Trainer,

We live in a time where there is a certification for every little niche of our profession.

We can become "stretching specialists", "speed power specialists", kettlebell certified...the list is endless.

I am the first to welcome education. We deserve it and our clients deserve it, but there is a downside to having certifications for even the minutest topic. Our knowledge becomes fragmented.

If we take a course in stability training, we will learn about the benefits of training on unstable equipment. Take an Olympic weightlifting certification in the next week and you will learn that the only thing that really matters is to get stronger and that "you can't get strong training on a stability ball."

In order to not run away screaming in confusion, we need to merge information from different resources to form the whole picture.

Would you be interested in mastering ONE, easy to learn, tool that works to improve a variety of seemingly unrelated scenarios like health, digestion, muscle mass and strength?

This one tool is not only extremely versatile, it is also cost effective.

This one tool is not only versatile and cost effective, it is also easy to use.

This one tool is not only versatile, cost effective and easy to use, it also creates results quickly.

It sounds like something that a company would have spent 10 years and millions of R&D dollars to develop, but – as the headline of this letter suggests – we are talking about breathing here.

Do you have clients that show up for the training sessions totally stressed? – Breathing in the right way can calm them down before a session or help them sleep at night

Do you have clients that complain about poor digestion? – Breathing in the right way can help stimulate those bowels. (Yes, it is true what they say: A good "movement" is the most underrated thing in the world.)

Do you have clients that complain about lack of energy? – Breathing in the right way can increase their energy at anytime during the day (and save their adrenals from yet another Starbucks with triple cream and triple sugar).

Do you train athletes/clients that want to pack on muscle? – Breathing in the right way can help stimulate the body's own production of Growth Hormone, instead of spending 100's of dollars on (il)legal supplements.

Do you train clients who want to improve strength? Breathing in the right way can help stabilize the core (without sky-rocketing blood pressure) and thus, allow clients to train with heavier loads.

Do you train clients/athletes who want to improve their endurance? Breathing in the right way will help them make the most of what they have at any given point in time.

A (crash) course in breathing teaches you 11 extremely effective ways to breathe that cover the "whole gamut" of goals

I have been fascinated by breathing since, as a young tennis player, I was taught to "exhale through the point of impact." That was 25 years ago and I have since studied countless resources that span everything from current medical textbooks to a century old course in Muscle Control. I have taught the most effective techniques I have found to athletes (recreational to Olympic level) from 20 different sports to help them improve anything from relaxation to maximal strength performance.

Most resources on breathing teach one or a few of the breathing techniques. However, in order to understand the true value of breathing, you need to appreciate the whole range of goals from stress reduction to strength, that effective breathing can help accomplish.

Until now, no such resource existed. Therefore, I decided to share the most effective techniques I have successfully used in this 8-hour "crash course":

  • The 7 purposes of breathing
  • Mechanics of breathing and the parameters that define the breath – get out the anatomy books
  • Breathing to balance your energy – the secret the coffee shops don't want you to know
  • Breathing for health - get those bowels moving and flatten those abs
  • Breathing for flexibility and joint mobility exercisesv- increase flexibility instantly
  • Optimal breathing to stimulate muscle mass – the overlooked ingredient in the most famous squat program ever.
  • Breathing to enhance maximal strength - Why telling your client to "keep your abs tight and exhale on the exertion" can be dangerous
  • Breathing to Enhance Endurance – No red faces

In this workshop you will not only learn the different breathing techniques so you can master them yourself, but you will also learn how to teach the techniques to your clients.

This 8-hour workshop is an expansion of a 1-hour workshop, given at the 2011 CPTN Conference. It includes an in-depth discussion of the purposes of breathing, the mechanics of breathing, additional techniques - most noticeably the scientifically proven effects of heart based breathing. This 8-hour workshop also discusses the controversies between current popular techniques in "breathing for strength."

Apply these breathing techniques correctly and you will see better results – very often instantly – with any other exercise you do. Learning effective breathing techniques will "leverage" all other exercise courses and knowledge that you have ever taken.

Breathing is truly a foundation that will take you way beyond gimmicks and fads that come and go. Regardless of your workspace (gym, studio, in-home or boot-camp) you can utilize your knowledge of better breathing techniques. There are no requirements for extra investments in equipment, no requirements for extra space – your client (and you!) can benefit from breathing anywhere, anytime.

Skip to Top

Requirements:

  • Notebooks, pen, pencil, paper etc...

Course Instructors

Karsten Jensen, M.Sc., CPTN-CPT.M, C.H.E.K 2, HLC 3

Strength and Conditioning Expert Karsten Jensen has helped world class and Olympic athletes from 14 different sports since 1993. Many of his athletes have won Olympic medals, European Championships, World Championships and ATP Tournaments. He believes in the unlimited potential of the human being and shares his viewpoints as an international speaker, author of several books and educator with the Certified Professional Trainers Network. He currently works as a high performance trainer at the University of Toronto and also shares "Insider Principles of World Class Strength and Conditioning Methods" through his website www.yestostrength.com. He holds a Masters degree in Exercise Physiology as well as several other certifications. For more information please visit www.yestostrength.com.

Registration