brent99’s BodyBlog

I’m a serial yawner.  Seriously, the lions in the zoo can sometimes here my yawns between workouts.  They are legendary, and quite involuntary.  And it doesn’t really matter if I’m actually tired or not.  Well, sure, its worse when I *am* tired, but I yawn between sets like a champion.  I’ve read that this isn’t terribly uncommon, although its not really understood by those who don’t do it.

Yes, I breath when I lift.  Yes, I have awesome lung capacity.  Do I just lift more intensely than other people?  What’s the deal?

Well, there is an answer!  Very recent research into the mystery that is "yawning" has uncovered some fascinating information.  Apparently, "yawning" is a cooling mechanism for the brain!  That’s right, deep in the core of our brain, we can get overheated, so the yawn is a fan for our CPU.

Looking into it more, I found that we have another way of cooling our cerebellum — breathing through our nose!!  I realized that I’m a mouth breather in the gym, to get high volume air intake between my workouts, huffing and puffing.  So last night, during my workout, I focused on nose breathing between sets.  

And you know what?  I didn’t yawn!  Now the lions at the zoo can get some peace.  

"Danielson…in through nose….out through mouth…in through nose…out through mouth"

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 2nd, 2009 at 5:06 am and is filed under Training. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.