360 Breathing: Quinn Henoch on Bracing

Based on Episode 37 of the Just Fly Performance Podcast, a conversation between host Joel Smith and physical therapist Dr. Quinn Henoch.

360 breathing is one of the few mobility-adjacent cues Dr. Quinn Henoch will defend, and he starts by dismantling the cue that usually precedes it. Henoch, a physical therapist, Olympic weightlifter, and founder of Clinical Athlete, likes to ask a room full of coaches where their lungs are. The answer exposes why “belly breathing” was never quite right, and it sets up a more useful instruction: expand in every direction at once, then brace on top of it.

Key Takeaways

• Everyone is a chest breather. That is where the lungs are; “belly breathing” is an over-correction, not an anatomy lesson.
• Aim for circumferential expansion. Think of pushing out against a weight belt on all sides, front, back, and ribs.
• Exhale sets the position, inhale reinforces it. The mouth exhale pulls the ribs down; the nose inhale fills that position.
• Do not force a flat lower back. It only needs to stay where it starts, not flatten.
• It matters most under heavy load. Henoch is openly skeptical about cueing it mid-sprint.

We are all chest breathers

Henoch’s opening move at seminars is a question that lands every time, and it is the fastest way to show that a popular cue is imprecise.

The cue is belly breathing, don’t be a chest breather. But then I ask the question, where are your lungs? They’re in your chest. So we are all chest breathers. We have to be. That’s where the air is going.

His read is that the cue is an over-correction aimed at a real fault, the same way telling a squatter to “stay on your heels” is an over-correction for someone rolling onto their toes. What coaches actually want to stop is the rib cage lifting.

When we say don’t be a chest breather, what I think is being said there is don’t lift the rib cage. Some unnecessary shrugging or tensing of the neck, or tipping the rib cage up and back to where we make our torso skinny.

What 360 breathing actually means

The replacement instruction is expansion in every direction rather than lift. Henoch’s analogy makes the target concrete.

The notion of belly breathing is kind of a misnomer, because that’s not where the air goes. But the idea is that we can create expansion circumferentially, as opposed to just lifting of the chest.

He then describes what the athlete should feel, which is even pressure all the way around the torso rather than one bulging direction.

It would be like if you had a weight belt on, and you breathe in and you’re pushing against all sides of the belt. I could have my hands between the belt and your back, between the belt and your sides, and between the belt and your abdomen, and the same pressure would be sustained throughout. And that goes for the chest and the upper back too. It should all expand.

How to teach it

Henoch teaches the pattern lying down, because it removes the most variables. The athlete is supine with hands on the lower ribs, and the sequence is deliberate: nose in, mouth out.

If they exhale through their mouth like they’re blowing out a balloon, you’ll feel those ribs in the front go down. Those are your abdominals pulling your ribs down. It’s stacking your rib cage over the top of your pelvis.

That gives him the sequencing rule worth stealing, which cleanly separates the job of each phase of the breath.

Think of the exhalation through the mouth as setting the position, and then the inhalation as reinforcing it. And then you can just brace over the top and create as much tension as you need to based on the activity.

One detail he is careful about is the lower back. He does not want athletes flattening it into the floor, because that is not its resting shape.

Their lower back is relatively flat to the ground, but the idea is that it doesn’t have to arch more when they breathe in. It doesn’t have to be completely flush, because that’s not the normal curve of the lower back either. Where it starts is where it stays.

Where it matters, and where it probably does not

This is the part that separates Henoch from the usual breathing evangelism. He thinks the work earns its place in the weight room, where the athlete has time to set a position and the loads justify the tension.

I think that is relevant probably more so in the weight room, when we’re consciously able to control our breath and we’re trying to create surpluses of tension under maximal or near maximal loads, with tempos that are a bit slower.

He is much less sure about carrying it onto the track or the field, and he says so plainly.

When it comes to athletes like sprinters or team sport athletes, I struggle finding the relevance, only because it’s very hard to cue them in the moment for those types of things.

He goes further and points out that the neutral position these drills chase may not even be the goal at speed, citing what the sprint literature suggests.

We also know that neutral, quote-unquote neutral, is a hard thing to come by in real life sports. And in fact, in sprinters, anterior pelvic tilt is a coupled motion with hip extension, and actually seems to be desirable based on the literature.

Do not oversell the mechanism

The same skepticism runs through his views on the rest of the toolbox. Henoch argues that most passive modalities share one mechanism, perception, and that the danger is explaining them with stories that are not true.

We start explaining these things in false narratives. We start telling our people that they’re doing things that they have not been shown to do.

His concern is not that the tools are useless but that a false explanation moves control from the athlete to the practitioner and creates dependency. He also warns about the inverse of placebo, which coaches cause more often than they realize.

There’s also a nocebo effect, meaning that things that probably don’t matter, you can make them matter, because you can make people obsess about them.

What he does believe in is expectation and education, which he rates above any hands-on intervention he performs. It is a useful frame for breathing work too: teach it honestly, claim only what it does, and let the athlete own it.

Frequently asked questions

What is 360 breathing?
It is breathing that expands the torso circumferentially, front, sides, and back, rather than lifting the chest or pushing only the belly out. Henoch describes the target as pushing evenly against all sides of a weight belt.

Is belly breathing wrong?
Henoch calls it a misnomer. Air goes to the lungs, which are in the chest, so everyone is a chest breather. He treats “belly breathing” as an over-correction aimed at a real fault, which is lifting the rib cage and tensing the neck.

How do you teach 360 breathing?
Lying on the back with hands on the lower ribs, inhale through the nose and exhale fully through the mouth. The mouth exhale draws the ribs down and stacks the rib cage over the pelvis; the nose inhale then expands and reinforces that position, and the athlete braces on top of it as the activity demands.

Should your lower back be flat against the floor?
No. Henoch wants the lower back to stay where it starts rather than flatten, since a small curve is normal. The goal is that it does not arch further on the inhale, not that it presses flush to the ground.

Does breathing work transfer to sprinting?
Henoch is skeptical. He finds the work most relevant under heavy, slower weight-room loads where an athlete can consciously set a position, and notes it is very hard to cue mid-sprint. He also points out that in sprinting, anterior pelvic tilt coupled with hip extension appears desirable, so chasing a neutral position at speed may be the wrong target.

About the authors

Dr. Quinn Henoch is a physical therapist, strength coach, and competitive Olympic weightlifter, and the founder of Clinical Athlete, a network and directory of clinicians who understand training and work with athletes on their own terms. He has served as head of rehabilitation at Juggernaut Training Systems and runs his own practice, blending physical therapy with strength and conditioning rather than treating them as separate worlds.

Joel Smith is the host of the Just Fly Performance Podcast and the founder of Just Fly Sports, a former collegiate strength and track and field coach focused on speed, power, and athletic development. Listen to the full episode with Dr. Quinn Henoch on Just Fly Sports.