Abstract Quantifying biological motion is fundamentally tied to quantifying the biological structures that produce that motion. Yet, this dependence makes it essential to decouple motion from static morphology to enable general, comparable analyses across individuals and conditions. In this work, we present a methodological pipeline to study biological motion data obtained from experimental motion capture of human breathing kinematics before and after maximal exercise (gold‐standard optoelectronic plethysmography markers). We used four‐dimensional geometric morphometrics (4DGM; 3D shape through time) to characterize breathing patterns while standardizing torso shape and expiratory and inspiratory times. Results showed not only differences in breathing pattern before and after maximal exercise, but also differences in motion pattern associated with BMI and torso shape. Specifically, we found higher thoracoabdominal asynchrony in low‐BMI subjects compared with high‐BMI subjects. We also found a strong covariation between torso shape and the 3D trajectory of motion, demonstrating the power of the method to detect a shape‐to‐function signal even with a small sample size. This method is proposed as a flexible tool to separate biological motion from its underlying structure, which is particularly useful for studying complex systems. In the case of breathing pattern, it is proposed to investigate possible applications in clinical settings to test whether it detects differences between healthy and pathological kinematics, in sport sciences to attempt to link respiratory function to performance, and in evolutionary studies as a possible tool for inferring respiratory function in extinct morphologies.
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