Fitness

Breathing Effort in Fitness & Exercise 

Breathlessness is a common feature of exercise and although aerobic activity does provide training benefits to the inspiratory muscles (the muscles we use to breathe in), it’s not sufficient to elicit their full potential. The breathing muscles never really get trained enough to cope with the ‘heavy breathing’ that results from high intensity exercise, and for this reason it will always present an uncomfortable challenge during exercise and fitness training. 

Inspiratory Muscle Training: 

• Improved inspiratory muscle strength by 31.2% 
• Improved inspiratory muscle endurance by 27.8%
• Reduced whole body effort during exercise
• Accelerated recovery during repeated sprints by up to 7%
• Improved performance within 4-weeks (following tried & tested training regimen)

• Breathing Training

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  • When you experience high intensity fitness training that is above your lactate threshold, your breathing moves out of its comfort zone and increases steeply. And when your inspiratory muscles are weakened or fatigued, your breathing feels harder still. A useful analogy is to think about how much heavier a barbell feels on the 12th repetition than it did on the first. Inspiratory muscle training has been scientifically proven to strengthen your breathing muscles to help them cope with the demands of breathing at this high intensity.

    Research and trials also suggest that during heavy exercise, blood flow (and hence oxygen delivery) to your exercising muscles is inversely related to respiratory work. This means that your inspiratory muscles are capable of stealing blood from your other working muscles, and in so doing, impairing their performance. However when you use POWERbreathe to subject your inspiratory muscles to an appropriate training resistance, they will adapt, increasing in their strength, power and stamina.

    Other research on inspiratory muscle training and exercise performance revealed the universal reduction in whole body effort sensation, meaning that after 4-weeks of inspiratory muscle training, people didn’t feel they were exercising as hard and were able therefore to push themselves that bit further, increasing their training intensity and ultimately their performance.

     

• Warm-up with POWERbreathe for Fitness & Exercise

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    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.

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

    ² Inspiratory muscle training improves rowing performance.

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

• Cool-down & recover with POWERbreathe for Fitness & Exercise

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    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%.¹ 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.

    ¹ Blood lactate during recovery from intense exercise: impact of inspiratory loading.

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

• Interval Training with POWERbreathe for Fitness & Exercise

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    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

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  • Inspiratory muscle training as an ergogenic aid: credible at last?

• Research

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  • Exercise-induced inspiratory muscle fatigue

    • 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.

    Miscellaneous

    • Entraînement de la force des muscles inspiratoires chez le sujet sportif amateur (Inspiratory muscles strength training in recreational athletes)
      
    • Inspiratory muscle warm-up and inspiratory muscle training: Separate and combined effects on intermittent running to exhaustion
    • Inspiratory muscle training enhances pulmonary O2 uptake kinetics and high-intensity exercise tolerance in humans
    • Development of respiratory muscle contractile fatigue in the course of hyperpnoea.
    • Inspiratory muscle training attenuates the human respiratory muscle metaboreflex.
    • The effect of inspiratory muscle training on high-intensity, intermittent running performance to exhaustion.
    • The influence of respiratory muscle training upon intermittent exercise performance.
    • 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.

    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.

    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.

    The underlying physiology of IMT and inspiratory warm-up

    • The influence of inspiratory muscle work history and specific inspiratory muscle training upon human limb muscle fatigue.
    • Inspiratory muscle training attenuates the human respiratory muscle metaboreflex.
    • The effect of inspiratory muscle training upon maximum lactate steady-state and blood lactate concentration.
    • Effects of changes in inspiratory muscle strength on the sensation of respiratory force.
    • Effect of inspiratory muscle work on peripheral fatigue of locomotor muscles in healthy humans.
    • Influence of acute inspiratory loading upon diaphragm motor-evoked potentials in healthy humans.
    • Diaphragm and intercostal surface EMG and muscle performance after acute inspiratory muscle loading.