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I have always practised breathing out through the mouth on the positive and in through the nose on the negative and kept it constant throughout the movement. However I have recently slowed my cadence, to 4-5 seconds on the raising of a weight 4-5 the lowering and holding in the contracted position depending on the exercise for either as long as i can or for a distinct pause. Now obviously in the contracted position if im holding it aslong as I can, im not going to be able to constantly exhale air constantly inhale for say 10 seconds and it would seem wrong to hold one′s breath due to the possiblity of sky-rocketing the blood pressure, so it must be ok to breathe normally in the contracted position as I have been doing ?
Also due to the slow down in my cadence I have found it taxing constantly inhaling on the negative and constantly exhaling on the positive. Is this because of poor cardiovascular condition or is my breathing technique wrong ?
I would be grateful for anyone has any advice to offer on this topic as seems to be a very overlooked subject.

When you do SLOW reps as in 4/2/4 you should NEVER hold your breath. You should BREATHE CONTINOUSLY by opening the air ways (mouth) and concentrating on BLOWING air out. I even have a technique that can be useful for tracking the CADENCE. IF let say the positive rep requires 4 seconds I blow out (exhale through the mouth) 4-5 times. I think the SUPERSLOW method of breathing is the BEST for SLOW rep execution. PEACE.

Thanks for the advice.
One more thing totally off the subject to anyone out there, can PRE-EXHAUST be used in an either or fasion ? For example could you do say a set of squats, immediately followed by a set of leg extensions as opposed to vice versa.

Dan_ur_man,

What you had described is what is called POST-EXHAUST Supersets. Pre-exhaust is always done with an ISOLATION exercise first then immediately followed by a compound exercise. PEACE.

Does it have the same effect as PRE-exhaust ?