Over the past couple months during football or football^[1] games, I noticed announcers refer to defensive players already having hands on their hips. They mean the defensive players are already tired and out of breath, so breathing more heavily than they should. Also, the players are ready to be broken by the offensive players.

So, I was curious. Is this a universal behavior? The lazy person that I am, instead of running a bunch and seeing whether or not I did it over and over, I queried Google. An interesting answer to, “When we get out of breath, why do we put our hands on our hips?” kind of made sense:

When you do so, it takes the weight of your arms off your lungs, which allows them to get more air into them and increase the oxygen to your body.

[1] For United States readers: soccer or American Football.