Lithium air or lithium oxygen batteries draw keen attention for its high energy density even with the fact that considerable obstacles must be overcome in order to achieve reasonably stable discharge-charge cycles. Limiting the formation of insulating discharge products on the surface of air cathodes by cutting off the cell operation at a certain capacity instead of using a voltage window is a widely-accepted way of enhancing the rechargeability, along with methods preventing the formation of electrochemically irreversible products due to parasitic reactions by manipulating the composition of electrolyte and modifying carbon surface with metallic catalysts or organic functional groups. In this study, we propose a novel process of operating the cell based on our finding that the accumulation and subsequent removal of reaction products during discharge-charge cycles cause severe delamination of freestanding carbon nanofiber cathode structure. It is demonstrated that rebinding the multiple carbon layers of the cycled air cathodes via heavy metal press results in the enhanced cycle performance and reduces the discharge overpotential at the same time. The results stress the importance of maintaining physical structure of the air cathode from volume expansion during cell operation, and provide a new insight towards pulling out full capacity retention of the system by better utilization of the available carbon surface in the air cathode.