Altitude
Training and strengthening your breathing muscles will help you to make the most of the limited oxygen at higher altitudes.
Elevate Your Performance With Simulated Altitude Training
Not only should you prepare your breathing for the challenges at altitude, but also your body. This is achievable with altitude training, as individual athletes and sports teams report extensively on its benefits.
As an individual’s response to altitude exposure varies massively, it is important to understand that a one size fits all approach will not work and training programmes and/or altitude exposure must be tailored to suit the individual’s needs. This is possible with altitude simulation and simulated environmental conditions equipment by POWERbreathe.
Hypoxic mask-based systems, sleeping rooms, exercise rooms, and inflatable modules all help to provide various tailored extreme conditions in a safe, controlled, local environment for:
- Individual amateur athletes, elite athletes and sports teams
- Individuals and groups preparing for extreme adventures
- Sports science researchers
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 1,000m, some people feel short of breath during moderate exercise
- At 3,000m, oxygen availability in the air decreases by 30% (compared to sea level)
- At 4,000m some people feel short of breath at rest
- At 5,500m, oxygen availability in the air has decreased by 50% (compared to sea level)
At sea level, exercise is limited only by the capacity of your heart to pump oxygenated blood to your muscles. But at high altitude, you’re limited by the ability to pump air in and out of your lungs.
At Mount Everest’s summit it requires maximal levels of breathing just to put one foot in front of the other. This is only sustainable for minutes at a time. However, Inspiratory Muscle Training (IMT) may reduce the expected decrease in oxygen saturation at rest with ascent to altitude above 4,900m.
Also, when your respiratory muscles work very hard, they ‘steal’ blood from your extremities to meet oxygen requirements, impairing performance. This is called metaboreflex. Hard respiratory work leads to chronic breathing muscle fatigue.
IMT is Beneficial at High Altitude
POWERbreathe IMT exercises your breathing muscles using ‘resistance training’. Developed by sports scientists, this ‘dumbbell for your diaphragm’, improves breathing strength and stamina to reduce breathing fatigue, beneficial because ‘High-Altitude Exposure Reduces Inspiratory Muscle Strength’.
- Reduces oxygen requirement of exercise in simulated altitude by 8-12%
- Reduces cardiac output requirement of exercise in simulated altitude by 14%
- Reduces breathing requirement of exercise in simulated altitude by 25%
- Increases arterial oxygen saturation by 4% and lung diffusing capacity by 4%
- Reduces perceived exertion and breathlessness
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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Football
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 […]
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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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POWERbreathe is a useful device to stimulate sports performance and increase pulmonary function in various sporting fields
