Cycling

Breathing Effort in Cycling

The hunched position adopted during cycling can create breathing problems. The contents of your abdomen (mainly your liver and gut) become compressed and pushed up against your main breathing muscle, the diaphragm. This restricts its normal movement and can make breathing feel much harder. 

Research has shown that cycling as little as 20km at race pace induces significant fatigue of the inspiratory muscles (breathing muscles).

Inspiratory Muscle Training:

• Improved cycling time trial performance by 4.6% - equivalent to slashing 3-minutes off a 40k time trial 
• Enabled participants to cycle for 33% longer and with lower sense of effort
• Increased strength of inspiratory muscles by 30 – 50%

• Breathing Training

  show

  • It’s well accepted that the work of breathing during any form of exercise, including cycling, can be high enough to cause the breathing muscles to fatigue. In fact research has shown that cycling as little as 20km at race pace induces significant fatigue of the inspiratory muscles (the muscles used to inhale).

    A research group at Birmingham University showed that inspiratory muscle training (IMT) reduces breathing fatigue and improves cycling time trail performance by a staggering 4.6% (that’s equivalent to slicing around 2 minutes off your 40k PB) after just 6-weeks of inspiratory muscle training.

    POWERbreathe inspiratory muscle training targets the breathing muscles, strengthening them by around 30-50%, significantly improving performance and helping to eliminate breathing fatigue.

• Warm-up with POWERbreathe for Cycling

  show
  •  

    A POWERbreathe warm-up boosts your inspiratory muscle performance. 

    Research has shown that a standard pre-exercise warm-up routine fails to prepare the inspiratory muscles (breathing muscles) for the rigours of exercise¹, and an inspiratory warm-up was shown to improve performance (in rowers)².

    More about POWERbreathe for warm-up can be found in our sports Training section.

    ¹ Specific respiratory warm-up improves rowing performance and exertional dyspnoea. 

    ² Inspiratory muscle training improves rowing performance.

• Cool-down & recover with POWERbreathe for Cycling

  show

  • A POWERbreathe cool-down reduces lactate during exercise & speeds up clearance. 

    A POWERbreathe ‘cool-down’ can help to speed lactate clearance even more effectively than traditional active recovery strategies. 

    Researchers at the University of Sao Paulo in Brazil have found that breathing against a small inspiratory load immediately after exercise reduces lactate by 16%.⁴ What’s more, unlike a normal active recovery, which takes around five minutes to speed-up lactate clearance, inspiratory loading reduces lactate as soon as exercise stops. Furthermore, when using the inspiratory load, lactate concentration after just 5 minutes was equivalent to that achieved in 15 minutes during passive recovery. 

    More about POWERbreathe for cool-down can be found in our sports Training section.

    ⁴ Blood lactate during recovery from intense exercise: impact of inspiratory loading.

• Interval Training with POWERbreathe for Cycling

  show
  •  

    Integrating POWERbreathe into your interval training will improve your respiratory endurance and hasten recovery. 

    More about POWERbreathe interval training can be found in our sports Training section.

• Resources

  show
  •  

    How Training The Inspiratory Muscles Can Improve Cycling Performance 

• Research

  show
  •  

    Inspiratory Muscle Training

    • Entraînement de la force des muscles inspiratoires chez le sujet sportif amateur (Inspiratory muscles strength training in recreational athletes)
    • Inspiratory muscle training enhances pulmonary O2 uptake kinetics and high-intensity exercise tolerance in humans
    • Effects of inspiratory muscle training upon time trial performance in trained cyclists.
    • Inspiratory muscle fatigue in trained cyclists: effects of inspiratory muscle training.
    • Inspiratory muscle training improves cycling time-trial performance and anaerobic work capacity but not critical power.
    • Effect of high-intensity inspiratory muscle training on lung volumes, diaphragm thickness, and exercise capacity in subjects who are healthy.
    • The effects of different inspiratory muscle training intensities on exercising heart rate and perceived exertion.
    • Inspiratory resistive loading improves cycling capacity: a placebo controlled trial.
    • Effects of Inspiratory Muscle Training on Whole Body Exercise Performance in Males.

    Warm-up and Cool-down

    • Inspiratory resistive loading after all-out exercise improves subsequent performance.
    • Blood lactate during recovery from intense exercise: impact of inspiratory loading.
    • Inspiratory muscle training reduces blood lactate concentration during volitional hyperpnoea.
    • Effect of specific inspiratory muscle warm-up on intense intermittent run to exhaustion.

    Exercise-induced Inspiratory Muscle Fatigue

    • Contribution of respiratory muscle blood flow to exercise-induced diaphragmatic fatigue in trained cyclists.
    • Inspiratory muscle fatigue in trained cyclists: effects of inspiratory muscle training.
    • Influence of environmental temperature on exercise-induced inspiratory muscle fatigue.
    • Aerobic fitness effects on exercise-induced low-frequency diaphragm fatigue.
    • Exercise-induced diaphragmatic fatigue in healthy humans.
    • A comparison of inspiratory muscle fatigue following maximal exercise in moderately trained males and females.
    • Inspiratory muscles experience fatigue faster than the calf muscles during treadmill marching.

    Miscellaneous

    • Development of respiratory muscle contractile fatigue in the course of hyperpnoea.
    • Inspiratory muscle training attenuates the human respiratory muscle metaboreflex.
    • Development and evaluation of a pressure threshold inspiratory muscle trainer for use in the context of sports performance.
    • Specificity and reversibility of inspiratory muscle training.
    • Inspiratory muscle training: a simple cost-effective treatment for inspiratory stridor.

    Review Articles

    • Effects of respiratory muscle training on performance in athletes: a systematic review with meta-analyses
    • Effect of Respiratory Muscle Training on Exercise Performance in Healthy Individuals: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.
      Inspiratory muscle training and endurance: a central metabolic control perspective.
    • Does training of respiratory muscles affect exercise performance in healthy subjects?
    • Respiratory muscle energetics during exercise in healthy subjects and patients with COPD.
    • Respiratory muscle training in healthy humans: resolving the controversy.