The spanish team presented an interesting session highlighting how breathing with purpose can enhance performance. They brought the theory over from their competition stream and were trying to develop how to implement the same principals in general teaching.
We started with an interesting exercise involving pinching or index finger and thumb together while either inhaling or exhaling. Someone would then try to pull the fingers apart. There was a noticeable difference in strength with one compared to the other; some people in the group had more strength while exhaling but most seemed to prefer inhaling.
We then tried to apply this to our snowboarding by coordinating our breathing with specific movements, parts of the turn and sets of turns. There is definitely some application for purposeful breathing in our snowboarding, but the Spaniards agreed that they had not worked out the most reliable techniques yet (the session was being used as a workshop to generate more ideas on the topic).