Football
Breathing is at its highest after sprinting, inducing breathlessness and oxygen debt. Continuing to play effectively your breathing must recover fast.
How To Improve Football Stamina
Developed by sports scientists at leading universities, POWERbreathe Inspiratory Muscle Training (IMT) is scientifically proven to improve breathing strength and stamina, reducing breathing fatigue. This is particularly beneficial if you are one of the 3 out of 10 elite footballers may have undetected lung and airway problems, such as EIA (exercise-induced asthma).
POWERbreathe IMT is also ideal for non-impact rehabilitation during recovery from injury, as it helps to maintain fitness levels when physical activity is prevented.
In research, IMT is shown to improve aerobic capacity in amateur indoor football players. And in other research, POWERbreathe IMT demonstrated enhanced inspiratory muscle strength in professional soccer players. Also, an increase in inspiratory muscle efficiency led to a decrease in sprint time and improved exercise tolerance.
Research also shows that your expiratory muscles fatigue the same as your inspiratory muscles, impairing exercise performance as previously reported for inspiratory muscle fatigue. The good news is that you can train your expiratory muscles to become stronger and improve expiratory endurance with a POWERbreathe EX1 EMT device.
Finally, POWERbreathe IMT is also proven to help you warm-up more effectively when called onto the pitch as a substitute, as well as, cool-down and recover more quickly. In fact, research from Brazil found that breathing against a small inspiratory load straight after exercise reduces lactate by 16%.
Breathing Effort In Football
On average football players are likely to cover around 6.2 – 7.5 miles during the course of a match, at an average intensity of 75-80% of your maximal oxygen uptake (VO2 max.). Throughout the 90 minutes of the game you’ll be cruising for 30-90 seconds and sprinting for 3-5 seconds.
Although most activity during your match will be sub-maximal, your intermittent sprints are supra-maximal. This pattern of exertion places extreme demands upon your breathing because these activities are anaerobic and generate high levels of lactate. CO2 levels stimulate your breathing to increase which in turn restricts blood flow and oxygen delivery to your legs, impairing performance.
When your breathing muscles fatigue, blood flow will always be diverted away from your working arms and legs as breathing is essential and will always win out. This is a process called metaboreflex.
However, with well-trained and strong inspiratory and expiratory muscles, your breathing muscles won’t need to ‘steal’ blood flow from your limbs, so you can delay the onset of fatigue and keep going.
Strong breathing muscles are also essential while playing football for the twisting and flexing movements of your trunk and contribute to stabilising and turning your body during kicking. They also assist with flexing your upper body during heading. Fatigue of a footballer’s breathing muscles can affect more than running ability during play.
Select An Activity
Rowing
Breathing During Rowing As a rower, your breathing muscles are not only used for breathing but also for maintaining your posture and for transmitting force during the ‘drive’ phase. This is because your breathing muscles, including your diaphragm, engage in helping to strengthen your trunk and protect your spine. Both breathing and postural control is […]
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Swim, Bike, Run
Breathing Effort In Swimming Competitive swimming is one of the ultimate challenges for breathing, as you have to inhale as much as possible in the shortest time possible, so that you can return your body to the optimal position for generating propulsive force. This creates an enormous strain on your inspiratory muscles […]
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Racket Sports
During the intense bouts of running that characterise tennis, badminton and squash, such as sprinting to reach a ball, breathing is driven to its highest levels, inducing extreme breathlessness. Being debilitated by your breathing is very frustrating and can hinder your performance. You cannot afford for your breathing to hold you back as it provides […]
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Altitude
Breathing Effort At High Altitude At high altitude, the partial pressure is less than at sea-level, meaning oxygen molecules are further away from each other. The higher you go, the more difficult breathing at high altitude becomes. In order to compensate, your lungs work much harder. At sea […]
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Rugby
Breathing Effort In Rugby The physical demands of rugby are highly specific to each player’s positional role. Nevertheless, all players require high levels of aerobic fitness, lactate tolerance, strength and power. Although most activity in rugby is sub-maximal, the intermittent sprints, tackling, scrums, rucks and mauls are supra-maximal, taking you above 100% of your maximum […]
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Wheelchair Sports
Breathing in Wheelchair Sports As a wheelchair user you may experience difficulties with your respiratory system because if your abdominal and chest muscles, including your diaphragm, are affected by injury you’ll find it more difficult to breathe. Your neurological level of injury will determine to what extent your breathing poses to be a problem. If […]
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Fitness
Breathe Your Way To Faster Fitness Breathlessness is a common feature of exercise and although aerobic activity does provide training benefits to your breathing muscles, it’s not sufficient to elicit their full potential. Your breathing muscles never really get trained enough to cope with the ‘heavy breathing’ that results from high-intensity exercise, and for this […]
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How Training The Inspiratory Muscles Can Improve Performance For Football Players
POWERbreathe is a useful device to stimulate sports performance and increase pulmonary function in various sporting fields
5 weeks of POWERbreathe K3 IMT attenuates the respiratory metaboreflex
POWERbreathe IMT can be considered a worthwhile ergogenic aid for club-level competitive soccer players
Expiratory muscle fatigue impaired subsequent exercise tolerance primarily through increased severity of limb locomotor muscle fatigue and a heightened perception of leg discomfort
Effects of expiratory muscle work on muscle sympathetic nerve activity
Expiratory muscle training increases expiratory muscle strength and reduces the sensation of respiratory effort during exercise
