Most of us, whether you’re a pro­fes­sion­al ath­lete or the av­er­age sweater re­mem­bers when back in the day when you were caught tak­ing a few sec­onds to catch your breath with hands placed on hips or you were for­ward bend with hands on knees, you would be called out by the coach­es and maybe even told to “get down for ten”. It was seen as im­prop­er or a sign of lazy time-outs.

Some still do it to­day. Guess what. It may not be such a bad few sec­onds af­ter all.

For years, coach­es and train­ers have told us that stand­ing up­right, and putting our hands on top of our heads was the best way to open up our lungs, al­low­ing for more oxy­gen. The truth is, ac­cord­ing to the lat­est stud­ies, that a bent-over pos­ture, with hands on knees or hips, bet­ter opens up the di­aphragm and cre­ates more space for oxy­gen in­to the lungs—and bet­ter yet, it’s the po­si­tion our bod­ies nat­u­ral­ly seek when we’re strug­gling to breathe.

Known as “tripod­ing”, in­di­vid­u­als who are strug­gling to catch their breath of­ten stand (or sit) with a slight for­ward lean with their hands on their hips to sup­port their up­per body.

By lean­ing for­ward, this stance re­moves some of the pres­sure to breathe from your lungs and en­gages more of the di­aphragm, as grav­i­ty will as­sist it to move down, there­by cre­at­ing more space in your tho­racic cav­i­ty that hous­es your lungs.

By plac­ing your hands on your hips, you are al­so as­sum­ing a fair­ly com­mon pos­ture that sub­con­scious­ly many of us do as hu­mans.

In 2019, the Amer­i­can Col­lege of Sports Med­i­cine re­leased a study de­bunk­ing the the­o­ry that plac­ing your hands on your knees when try­ing to catch your breath is a no-no.

The study used twen­ty Di­vi­sion II fe­male foot­ball play­ers ex­am­in­ing two forms of re­cov­ery, hands on knees vs hands on the head fol­low­ing a high-in­ten­si­ty in­ter­val train­ing ses­sion. The play­ers, ages 18-22 years old, were used over two sep­a­rate test days with­in a week.

Four in­ter­vals of four min­utes of tread­mill run­ning at a pace of 90-95% of their max­i­mum heart rate. They had three min­utes of pas­sive rest be­tween each in­ter­val. Sub­jects were ran­dom­ly as­signed to a re­cov­ery po­si­tion of hands-on head or hands on knees (al­ter­nat­ing on the next test day). One minute in­to their rest pe­ri­od, their heart rate would be record­ed. Breath­ing masks to mea­sure CO2 vol­ume (car­bon diox­ide) and tidal vol­ume (vol­ume of air moved in and out of the lungs dur­ing each ven­ti­la­tion cy­cle) were used.

The re­sults came back that those test­ed who placed their hands on their knees re­cov­ered faster than when on their head.

Ron­del King, an ex­er­cise phys­i­ol­o­gist at NYU Lan­gone’s Sports Per­for­mance Cen­ter, stat­ed, “The old-school way of think­ing was that rest­ing your hands on your knees was lazy. But the ben­e­fits of that po­si­tion are on­ly now be­gin­ning to be­come main­stream, he says. “Sci­ence is on­ly just scratch­ing the sur­face.”

So the next time you’re in be­tween in­ter­vals dur­ing a foot­ball match or fin­ished with a race, give the hands-on-knees or hands-on-hips ap­proach a try. You may be sur­prised to find how much faster your breath­ing re­turns to nor­mal while it helps you set­tle your mind, putting you in a bet­ter state for your next move.

Here’s an­oth­er in­ter­est­ing point about the hands-on hips po­si­tion. It’s com­mon­ly used by the child ar­gu­ing with its par­ent, the ath­lete wait­ing for his event to be­gin,… males who want to is­sue a non-ver­bal chal­lenge to oth­er males who en­ter their ter­ri­to­ry. In each in­stance, the per­son takes the hands-on-hips to pose and this is a uni­ver­sal ges­ture used to com­mu­ni­cate that a per­son is ready for as­sertive ac­tion.

Al­so known as the ‘readi­ness’ ges­ture, that is, the per­son is ready for as­sertive ac­tion, its ba­sic mean­ing car­ries a sub­tly ag­gres­sive at­ti­tude every­where. It has al­so been called the achiev­er stance, re­lat­ed to the goal-di­rect­ed per­son who is ready to tack­le their ob­jec­tives or is ready to take ac­tion on some­thing.