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If you don't breathe properly during a rally, you'll quickly run out of breath, lose energy, focus and potentially the rally.
During the intense bouts of running that characterize 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 you with the stamina to get you through your game.
Your breathing muscles also play an additional role in racket sports other than breathing. In fact, you use the breathing muscles in your torso to brace and twist during a racket stroke. And you use your inflated lungs to brace the impact of the ball and racket, controlling the release of air from your lungs and optimizing the transmission of force during service. This control is impaired by breathing muscle fatigue but can be improved by inspiratory muscle training with POWERbreathe IMT and expiratory muscle training with POWERbreathe EMT.
Developed by sports scientists, POWERbreathe Inspiratory Muscle Training (IMT) is scientifically proven to improve your breathing strength and stamina, reducing breathing fatigue.
POWERbreathe IMT and EMT specifically target your breathing muscles using the principles of resistance training to strengthen them, eliminating breathing fatigue. Stronger breathing muscles can help with your postural control and movement too, for instance during a rally.
With stronger breathing muscles you’ll be able to brace the impact of the ball on the racket, and power off the returning shot as you control your exhale. If you haven’t strengthened your breathing muscles then your returning shot will be impaired by breathing muscle fatigue, but this can be improved by strengthening your breathing muscles with POWERbreathe IMT and POWERbreathe EMT.
An inspiratory warm-up using POWERbreathe IMT will also help you warm-up more effectively, as well as, cool-down and recover more quickly. This provides evidence that IMT improves recovery time during high intensity, intermittent exercise in repetitive sprint athletes. This is hugely beneficial in racket sports where you need to recover quickly after sprinting to return a ball.
Furthermore, researchers in Brazil found that breathing against a small inspiratory load straight after exercise reduces lactate by 16%. It also showed that lactate is reduced as soon as exercise stops, finding that just 5-mins after using an inspiratory load, lactate concentration was equivalent to 15-mins of passive recovery.
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