July Fitness Challenge
Daily fitness challenge for the month of July focused on box breathing.
Daily Challenge
As a functional fitness coach of several years, I run a community-based fitness group outside of my gym. We discuss goals, meet weekly for outdoor workouts, and tackle a new daily challenge each month.
The intent of these daily challenges is to create productive habits and induce both mental and physical adaptations. The at-home exercise is never more than ten minutes - often less. Short, achievable tasks provide an opportunity to still earn the day when your plans get disrupted.
Consistency will always produce better and more lasting results than intermittent intensity.
Anyone can find a few minutes to do something beneficial for themselves.
That’s all you need to begin seeing progress.
The Specific Adaptation to Imposed Demands (SAID) Principle is an exercise physiology concept that demonstrates the more you do anything, the better you get at that specific thing.
The body’s ability to physiologically adapt and optimize performance based on what we consistently put it through is amazing. Even more impressive is the mind’s plasticity in response to stress.
Machine learning for humans.
Fitness serves as a vehicle for resilience training, with the physical benefits secondary to the mental skills developed.
Showing up daily isn’t easy but it’s how lasting change is formed.
Enhance resilience by consistently embracing self-created challenges.
July Daily Challenge: Five minutes of box breathing.
Box breathing is an exercise that adds intentionality to our vital and otherwise autonomic nervous system function. Comprised of equal emphasis on inhales and exhales interspersed with breath holds, box breathing brings attention to what is always within our control - ourselves.
Box breathing has been shown to increase breathing proficiency, decrease arousal, increase focus, and manage stress.
Emphasizing inhales or hyperventilation encourages sympathetic nervous system activation causing arousal, energy, and alertness.
Emphasizing exhales or hypoventilation encourages parasympathetic nervous system activation causing us to slow down, recover, and relax.
By consciously not emphasizing either, intentional and controlled breathing is an effective balance between hyper and hypoventilation. When focus, presence, and calm are the goal, box breathing is an excellent approach.
Stacked skill development opportunity for functional fitness and resilience.
Technique
Standard Box Breathing:
As depicted above, box breathing is characterized by cycles of inhales, breath holds, exhales, and breath holds of equal duration.
The standard is four seconds for each step. Therefore, one cycle of standard box breathing would involve a 4 second inhale through the nose, followed by a 4 second breath hold, then a 4 second exhale through the nose or mouth, and lastly a 4 second breath hold.
I encourage nasal breathing for both the inhales and exhales, however, exhaling through the mouth is also acceptable (don’t you dare inhale through that yap though you mouth breather!).
Attempting to fully inflate and deflate your lungs during the inhale and exhale steps is another intention to set to help sustain performance for time. This requires presence of mind and energy when completing the breathing exercise.
Setting a timer to help with rhythm or keeping track in your mind are both options for consistency.
Progression Guide
For beginners:
Decrease duration of each step: If four second steps are initially too challenging, decrease to two or three seconds. Intentionality and consistency are more important than step duration at first.
Decrease total time: Four cycles of standard box breathing equals just over one minute. Determine how many you can do initially and then build from there.
Take mini-breaks between sets: Complete as many cycles as you initially can and then take a short break. Once recovered, complete another set of your manageable number of cycles until you get to five minutes total.
For intermediate/advanced:
Increase duration of each step: Challenge yourself to add one second to each step within the cycle if four second steps feel pretty easy at first. Progressively add more time to each step as the challenge becomes easier. See if you can end the month with eight second steps within a cycle for a total of five minutes.
Increase total time: See if you can build up to ten minutes. Add in increasing the duration of each step within a cycle to maximize this challenge. Eight second steps within each cycle for ten minutes is an impressive accomplishment.
Add another stressor: Deep squat holds, sauna, plank holds, walking, or anything you can come up with are all ways to stack another challenge on top of this one.
As always, compete with yourself yesterday.
Start somewhere management and then progressively increase the challenge as you become more comfortable. Quality over quantity.
If you can’t do it at rest, you won’t be able to do it when already stressed.
Show up and do your best.
Battle your internal resistance and get that small win.
Everything feels easier when you occasionally make things a little harder on purpose.
Intentional Breathing
How much time do you spend thinking about your breathing? If you’re like most people, probably very little.
Similar to heart rate, blood pressure, and digestion, breathing is an involuntary function controlled by our autonomic nervous system that doesn’t require active control. It is, however, one of the only autonomic functions that can be immediately modified intentionally.
Intentional control of our breathing offers a path, and is arguably THE bridge, between our conscious and subconscious systems.
Breathing seems pretty straightforward. We inhale oxygen into our lungs, exhale carbon dioxide, and repeat indefinitely. This process helps maintain homeostasis or the balance our brains and bodies need to stay alive. While this foundation is true, there is now significant evidence demonstrating that variance in breath rate and type (nasal vs mouth) is associated with many common health conditions and performance metrics. Improper breathing has been linked to COPD, asthma, sleep apnea, inflammation, autoimmune disorders, mental health disorders, and metabolic disorders like diabetes and hypertension.
While it is not certain (nothing ever is) that sub-optimal breathing causes, increases risk, or is a consequence of these pathologies, breathwork or focused improvement of our breathing system has been shown to effectively manage, treat or cure all of these common ailments. Training our breathing system has also been shown to increase stamina, endurance, and overall performance on a variety of physical and cognitive tasks.
If nothing else, intentional breathing trains self-awareness and self-control.
Productive skill development within a practice makes the task exponentially more beneficial.
Stacking valuable inputs in training adds quality to the limited quantity of time we have throughout the day.
This is self-care.
The primary purpose of all of this - resilience development physically, mentally, and spiritually.
Get Ready
I’m posting this a day early so everyone, including my international friends, can prepare to start strong on day one at their own skill and comfort level.
Track your times and modifications only to set a goal for the following day. The outcome doesn’t matter as long as you show up and put out.
Consistent effort leads to improved performance over time.
How will you respond when you don’t feel like it?
These are the days that matter most.
These are the days that change you.
These are the moments you see what you’re made of.
This is how resilient mental states are developed.
Embrace the challenge of discipline to optimize the skill of resilience.
Deliberate discomfort daily can cause improved comfort elsewhere forever.
By the end of July, if you consistently complete this challenge regardless of modifications, your awareness and management of your breathing will be enhanced. This skill can be applied to any domain once the stress response is noticed.
Use a brief routine to insert control and success into every day.
Self-care through self-challenge.
A few minutes a day can change your life.
*Special Offer*
Join our community and earn a 15-min phone call with me to discuss your fitness or life goals:
Complete the challenge for more than half the month.
Bonus give away for anyone who completes it every day.
In our community chat, we'll hold each other accountable by posting a ✅ after completing each day's challenge. Timing and modifications don't matter—just show up and do your best.
To claim your 15-min call, share your story at the end of July:
Share a reflection on your progress (either in the community chat or privately with me) and then I’ll confirm your ✅ count.
Join our community, and let's improve together.
I started box breathing in combat before going into a mission. It is a game changer. There are many forms of intention breathing that can calm you down or jack you up depending on the situation. Great post!
Very similar to the breathe ups we do in freediving. And if you want a whole other level of mental tough, try working through CO2 tables with breath holds. Just the idea makes my diaphram anxious.