Regardless if you’ve been running in your entire life or have just recently taken up the practice to lose a little bit of weight or to get in better shape, the odds of you coming down with a case of side stitches is pretty significant.
All of a sudden – and often times out of the clear blue sky – you’ll feel and incredibly severe pain event and it’s your lower abdomen and just doesn’t go away. Most of the time the pain is going to be relatively manageable, but a lot of times you are dealing with such a severe and stabbing pain that it can bring you right to your knees.
Most new runners stand by the side of the road and wait for the side stitch to go away, but there is a pretty cool solution that experienced runners use that will help you boot side stitches to the curb once and for all.
The solution has recently been published in the Sports Medicine Journal and you’ll want to put into play ASAP.
Get your breathing right
The overwhelming majority of runners are going to go about breathing in a pretty straightforward way – there breathing pattern is going to be symmetrical and they are going to inhale and exhale on the exact same footfall every step of the way.
This is big trouble.
You see, if you inhale and exhale on the same foot every single time of their repeating the process over and over) one side of your body is going to be continually bracing against a specific load and specific weight – which can be a considerable problem that leads to side stitches.
By changing up your breathing pattern (inhaling for two steps, exhaling for three, for example) you’ll be able to eliminate side stitches altogether because your body weight will always be shifting from one side to the next on your odd-numbered exhales.
It’s a pretty simple and straightforward change, but it’s one that’s proven to be tremendously impactful and very effective for runners all over the world.
It realigns your body’s biomechanics, it even outs your active load, and it allows a lot more blood and oxygen to flow throughout your body which prevents strain and soreness from taking hold as quickly as it may have (especially when you’re brand-new to running to begin with).