This was awesome read. I have never ever done a breathing exercise or knew anything about the arousal etc. But what I used to do was the following:

1. Prepare myself with all the anxiety and sort of work it up to a level I can sustain. I just did it, no measures or calculations as such.

2. Just before the attempt I take about 30 seconds of very relaxed deep breathing (just focusing on getting lots of air in and out, no such patterns like you have mentioned in the article (which I will start using from now). From a very aroused state, I tend to get some sort of stable arousal or sustained I would say.

3. When I approach the bar, I am mostly calm and body pretty relaxed ( being over hyped never worked for me, I used get burnt out in the aggression) but it all comes back i.e. the aggression etc just when I go under the bar or I set up for deadlifts.

4. And pop, the weight moves (most of the time it does :))

But now, I will incorporate some structured breathing exercises, reason being, even with the above stated approach, there were times I am was out of breath and too much of quick/ deep breathing was making me giddy.

Thanks, Azzy. Make sure to read the zone series to get the background of what I am talking about here. Also there are related posts such as my posts on controlling anxiety, etc.

But now, I will incorporate some structured breathing exercises, reason being, even with the above stated approach, there were times I am was out of breath and too much of quick/ deep breathing was making me giddy.

Yes, this is more of a case of simply willing yourself out of the high chest breathing and making sure to take correct deep diaphragmatic breaths, which will let you recover faster and get more oxygen flowing quicker, etc. You don't really need the patterns for that as such because remember the purpose of them is to relax, calm, or center yourself. There is a such thing as being too relaxed as you clearly realize. However, when you have a hard time reaching that state that you feel is most conducive for you, starting from the breathing exercises is kind of like turning down the volume and then working from there.

Thanks Eric, I finished all the series of the flow before getting to the breathing.

starting from the breathing exercises is kind of like turning down the volume and then working from there.

Me no understand the above.

I explain that analogy better here in Controlling Anxiety During Lifting. That was a related post to the Zone series but the related post list was missing.