In the beginning of the anime, Tanjiro will do several training sessions that will improve his strength, agility, and efficiency. These trainings are simple, and basic enough to be done by most of us, but, what would be the effects on your own body if you had to do it? (you’d be surprised at the answer…)
Besides, we are here to answer this question and to go further, we will see if it is possible to master Total Concentration Breathing technique in our world.
Throughout the anime Tanjiro had 5 different types of training with each of them having different purposes and effects, so, we will divide our article into 5 steps:
- Step 1: Training in the mountains
THE FIRST FORM OF TRAINING YOU CAN SEE IN DEMON SLAYER IS THE TRAINING IN THE MOUNTAINS OF TANJIRO:
Every morning he’s supposed to go down the mountain as fast????♀️as possible and to top it, all the road is riddled with traps, which every day are more and more dangerous.???? Finally, after some training he will get there quite easily, this training allowed him to gain: a better endurance, to improve his sense of smell and to have better reflexes.
Now let’s say you do this training, what would be the results on you? Well, if you don’t die from the traps, you will be able to have a rather fast progression even if it would end up being ephemeral. Actually, this kind of training is practiced by a lot of high level athletes, especially in endurance sports.
During his first training session, Tanjiro will say he has trouble breathing, and his head is spinning????. This, is due to that fact: the altitude is less loaded with dioxygen.
When training in this kind of environment the body will try to adapt so this lack of dioxygen will stimulate a hormone: EPO (you can learn more about it on the wiki page on this subject: Erythropoietin Hormone). EPO is a hormone produced mostly in the kidneys which through the bone marrow will increase your red blood cell count.
The more red blood cells you have to carry dioxygen, the better your muscles will be able to take advantage of it which will eventually make you perform better once you get down from the mountain.????
So yeah, this workout can improve your endurance pretty fast, BUT not in the long run. That’s the trap, red blood cells have a lifespan of about 120 days and EPO is secreted at its maximum after 48 hours, then it decreases.
After 3 weeks your red blood cells won’t increase any more so here you go, training in the mountains is cool, but it’s not magic (that’s why some athletes won’t go to the trouble of doing all this and will directly dop????themselves with this hormone, there we can talk about magic).
- Step 2: Katana Training
SOON ENOUGH, TANJIRO WILL HAVE TO PRACTICE THE KATANA WITH THE SAME MOVEMENT, THOUSANDS OF TIMES:
What will be the effects of this practice on your body?
Of course, you would simply progress, “practice makes perfect“. The more you will repeat a movement, the more you will reinforce the nervous circuits of your brain????linked to it and therefore, the more efficient you will become on this movement. That’s why we can see katana masters to be much more efficient and this despite their size less impressive than some oafs.
The repetitive work of a movement in question can make you much more effective on it and it’s logical.
- Step 3: Strengthening the muscles
TO CONTINUE HIS TRAINING TANJIRO WILL DO VARIOUS MUSCLE STRENGTHENING EXERCISES EVERY DAY:
Push-ups, abs, squats and even handstand push-ups???? Now, what would happen if you did it every day? Well it’s very simple, this training would just serve to increase your endurance (yes) and even here, it’s looking for injury because you don’t give yourself enough rest and recovery.
And that’s not all because you won’t get stronger and more muscular by doing these exercises every day. The tensions caused by these exercises are not strong enough to cause strength and mass, apart from the handstand push-ups but doing them every day you can be sure to end up getting injured.
So that’s what Tanjiro training is all about, this part, these exercises, at this frequency, wouldn’t make you progress (it’s the same for Saitama’s training in One Punch Man for those who knows ????).
It would just end up hurting you or just not bring you what you want (for the toughest ones ????).
- Step 4: Apnea Training
IN PARALLEL WITH MUSCLE STRENGTHENING, TANJIRO WILL SIMPLY TRAIN HIS APNEA.
Now quick question! If you, from one day to the next, start training your apnea, do you think you will get results? Do you think it will have any effect on your body?
Well I can assure you that if you start training your apnea, of course you will certainly get results. What would those results be, as you can imagine, would be benefits related to the breathing as well as the blowing.
So here we start to get closer to the main subject of this article, apnea training is a practice done by a lot of swimmers ????????♀️and even some runners trying to progress.
The goal of this kind of training will be to soften and strengthen the inspiratory and expiratory muscles (we will see more precisely the anatomy in the next point).
Finally, the strengthening of these breathing muscles will increase your lung volume.
Besides all this, it is also a workout that will strengthen you mentally and increase your threshold of sensitivity to CO2 (I advise you to see the very well known work of Wim Hof on this subject Wim Hof Breathing Method).
- Step 5: Total Concentration Breathing
HOW TO DO TOTAL CONCENTRATION BREATHING
Let us recall the effects of this practice in the anime: they are able to increase their physical capacity ???? (strength, stamina and agility) and their mental capacity such as focus, they can even heal themselves and slow down the poison, all this thanks to this breathing technique.
In short, does the Total Concentration Breathing technique exists? Will you get super-boosted ???? if you start breathing like Tanjiro? Well it’s pretty crazy but just know that it’s totally possible.
There is such a thing as a full breath in and full breath out. Moreover the effects are quite similar to those in the anime, these breaths allow a better endurance, a better recovery, concentration, less stress, less fear, less pain…
In short I invite you to try it ???? (as I said before, Wim Hof is in fact the living example that shows it works and probably the most closest to this technique). When you breathe in you don’t breathe out completely, or almost never completely.
Well, to make an effort, or just for the sake of, try to exhale as much as possible and then you will see that unconsciously you will have a much deeper and stronger breath in and out, that’s it, as silly as it may seem, but if you are already able to put this in place you will see that it can help you in many situations (stress, anxiety …).
That’s also how we better understand why our favorite manga heroes have so much fun (at least we think so) making screams during fights, the scream allows a forced exhalation and therefore better breath by instinct.
We all tend to tuck in the belly, imagine that by doing this we reduce at the same time our lung volume so, instead of tucking in the belly: try to get the belly out.
This is called belly breathing and it’s what will allow your lungs to expand, note that this can increase your lung volume up to 30% more. That’s basically Total Concentration Breathing. That’s it.
Going back to Tanjiro, he will do a training that will allow him to maintain his full breath, he will do various exercises but the one that interests us the most is this one: try to blow as hard as possible, do you think it’s doable for you? Of course it is. How can I do it? In order to understand all this, we are going to look at the anatomy part.
Your breathing is provoked by muscles, and when you breathe in, it is your diaphragm that will contract and make a call for air, so air will enter your lungs.
Because of this contraction, and when you breathe out ????, the diaphragm will relax and will be accompanied by the contraction of other muscle groups, all of this with the aim of pushing the air outwards.
And the more you want to exhale, to blow harder, the more it will be your abdominals that will be involved so this part of the Tanjiro training can very well strengthen your diaphragm and abs which is very interesting for us.
Finally we have come to the conclusion: apart from the muscular reinforcement????????♀️of the beginning with the frequency really badly optimized, I think that all the exercises are interesting, they are things that very few people have the opportunity to do but the breathing is really an essential point, and even essential for any sportsman, do not neglect it: work your apnea, work your breathing, work your endurance.
That’s it guys! Our article is complete, we hope that you learn a lot with us on the Total Concentration Breathing technique and its possibilities in our real world. If you want to go deeper in the training of Tanjiro I recommend you to see the AWESOME video of Jax Blade ❤️ on Youtube:
