POWERbreathe met up with Great Britain’s Olympic and Paralympic ‎Archery teams at Lilleshall National Sport Centre & Conferencing Centre where they’re working towards British success at the Rio 2016 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

We presented POWERbreathe Inspiratory Muscle Training (IMT) to team members and management, explaining the benefits of IMT and demonstrating how the POWERbreathe K5 with Breathe-Link Live Feedback Software can be hugely informative when training the breathing muscles as it allows for instant feedback and later analysis which can used to tailor training guidelines per athlete.

Certain members from each team have begun to train their breathing muscles using the POWERbreathe Plus after returning home after the World Championships in Shanghai.

Performance benefits for archery team members are:

  1. A reduction in upper respiratory muscle dominance and over recruitment of musculature around the neck which can be over used for stability and breathing. “We get a large number of athletes that report tightness in the upper traps and anterior neck muscles due to some of these reasons” says Matthew McGovern, Senior Physiotherapist for GB Archery, English Institute of Sport.
  2. Increased trunk stability and improved shoulder function. Both areas are of massive importance for archers.
  3. General health, due to optimised breathing which has been shown to improve efficiency of breathing, build stamina and help reduce fatigue.