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completed during the different predominant phases of breathing. The violation of such observances has been claimed to adversely affect health performance and the outcome of the task. These fluctuations in the working of the organism seem to have a definite bearing upon our state of health and fitness, thereby affecting the physical and mental performance of a person. This may be because of the qualitative and quantitative modifications in the activities of our vegetative system during the period of the above mentioned different phases of breathing, which has been said to be very closely related to mental functions.
The present study was undertaken to investigate the impact of phases of alternate nostril breathing patterns upon performance using adolescent school boys as the subjects. The main purpose of the study was to find out if there were any differences between the performance scores on the factors of power, strength and endurance under two different experimental conditions; that is, the right nostril-dominated phase and the left nostril-dominated phase of breathing.
The performance of subjects on the factors of speed, power, strength and endurance was tested through field items of:
1. 60 meter dash in seconds, 2. standing broadjump in meters, 3. grip strength with hand dynamometers in kilograms,
and 4. endurance through cash step test.
The tests of speed, power and strength were administered under the dominance of left and right nostril breathing phases separately, with the help of trained assistants for the 60 meter dash on the track and the standing broadjump of the field. The grip strength, with standardized method, was tested under the direct supervision of the investigator himself. Data for the first three items only was ready for this paper, and hence the results for endurance are still awaited.
The outcome of the analysis of the data indicates that the subjects gave better performance in the areas of power and strength during the dominance of the right nostril breathing phase. The difference between the two means of the right nostril-dominated and the left nostril-dominated performance was very highly significant at 0.01 level. These results have in a way confirmed those of Moorthy, et al (1982). They stated that
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