Feeling Croaky? The power of the HUFF

It’s been a chilly winter, chest infection, cough or flu like symptoms are apart of winter. These issues can really affect our ability to exercise or feel energized throughout the day. COVID aside, chest infections, cough or flu like symptoms are a part of winter!

If you are experiencing any lung issues such as a phlegm production, a croaky throat, persistent cough, or breathlessness certain breathing exercises can help. Yes, we can exercise our lungs and chest, and this is part of what a physiotherapist is trained at helping you with.

So, if you are experiencing any of these symptoms try our active cycle breathing techniques, this technique is proven to help clear phlegm from the bottom of the lungs and thus clear infections effectively.

This real power of this technique is the huff. Which is a little know technique to really help to shift stubborn phlegm deep in the lung. Huffing is like a long-sustained cough, it’s the action of fogging up a window or mirror with your breath, making an audible slow wheezing noise by constricting your throat a little.

The constriction of the same muscles you use to build pressure for a cough but slow and controlled, unlike the explosive cough. When we do a huf and make this sound we are building up pressure in our lungs which helps to move the sticky phlegm at the bottom of our lungs.

So now you understand huffing, its best to put it into practice but first a proper warm up to get the best results, exercising your lungs is like exercising other muscles. The warm up is what makes up the breathing cycle. The more you prepare your lungs and breathing muscles with slow and deep breathing, the more effecting your huffing and cough will be to clear that phlegm.

So give it a try by following this cycle below. Slow deep breathing for two rounds, then 2 slow controlled huffs and then see how effective your cough is at bringing up that stubborn phlegm, a bit gross. But such a good feeling when the lungs clear