792 It Starts with Your Breath with Laird Hamilton

This is five minute Friday a legend in today's sports world. His name is Laird Hamilton, and at 215 pounds at six foot three inches, with an uncommon combination of balance, flexibility and strength, he is truly a larger than life athlete and individual. Not only is he the quintessential big wave Surfer, Laird is also known as a renowned innovator and guiding genius of crossover board sports. including tow-in surfing, stand-up paddle boarding, and hydrofoil boarding. Why is breathing so important in our, not a lot of entrepreneurs here, but in our existence, yes, in our lives?

I mean, and I've been fortunate to be exposed to a couple different forms of breathing, and of course, you know, when you're in the ocean or in the water, breath is an ever important thing, because your relationship grounDing. But lately I've been kind of studying under this guy Wim Hof who does all this breath training. But the thing that you realize is that your spirit or your soul is connected to your breath. And that when, that when you, you know, like when a baby takes its first breath is when it, the spirit comes into the body, just like when the breath stops, so does the spirit leave.

Wow.

So if you really want to get into like a kind of a little bit, you know, deeper conversation, it's a connection to your soul or your spirit. It's a you have a and then and then it's, you know, obviously mandatory for life. Exactly. Breath is the way we get oxygen. Oxygen is essential for living. So it's all about breathing at the end. And then and then we know through cardio vascular activities and any kind of exertion, it's all about breathing. I mean, breathing is is your fuel, that's your energy, that's your power. when you're not eating food and digesting and drinking water, but oxygen is the thing that ultimately fires every cell in your body. So that's your, you know. So have you been practicing breathing strategies.

Or techniques or working on your breath since you've been surfing and swimming in the ocean for your whole life? Have you been doing that or is it more in the last year you said you started to dive in and.

Really practice it now? Well, it's been the last year or last year or so that I've really focused on isolation of the breath. I've been exposed to some yoga breathing and some types of yoga breathing over the years. But I haven't been so disciplined and consistent with it like I have been the last year and a half or two. And I indirectly have been doing it anyway.

Sure.

Because first of all, when you have.

To when you're swimming.

Swimming's a breathing rhythm. Being in the water, you always have to hold your breath. So you have a relationship with your breath. If you do any kind of diving or free diving, you already have established a deeper relationship than normal people. Yeah, yeah. Because normally people aren't, they don't even think about breathing. They're not even, they're not even conscious.

And if you want to become a better swimmer or better in the water, whatever sport you're doing, you have to master your breath at some level.

Absolutely. So, you're getting better just by practicing it. Yeah, it's a byproduct of your, of you doing it without even being conscious of it. And, and, and then, you know, and then when you do some heavy, you know, circuits or or other types of intense training, you know, you know what the breath is all about. I mean, usually the breath is what dictates the failure. At a certain point when you're out of breath and you're behind, you know, you look at any endurance athlete or any fighter, you know, as soon as they start mouth breathing and they like, everybody will say, oh, they're finished.

Yeah, their body can't do it.

They're done. Yeah, they're done. They're gonna say they're done.