As a wind instrument player you’ll know how important airflow is, how it affects tone and phrase length, and how your performance can suffer with lack of breathing preparation. Furthermore, lack of breathing strength and stamina can leave you gasping between phrases, without the strength to hold prolonged, powerful notes. Thankfully your breathing muscles can be trained to improve strength and stamina. 

If you make any muscle stronger, you improve your ability to control it and the movement it creates, whilst operating under load, such as a bicep curl. The same applies to your breathing muscles.

Harness Your Breathing To Become A Better Performer

You learn to control your breath by using your diaphragm. Your diaphragm needs to be strong to help you control your breathing and your breathing muscles need to have the stamina to carry you through your performance. 

Inspiratory Muscle Training

As a musician you need to take in a large amount of air in a very short time. POWERbreathe Inspiratory Muscle Training (IMT) trains you to do this.

When you breathe in through a POWERbreathe IMT device, all of the muscles of inspiration are activated, and for a musician, POWERbreathe IMT provides a unique stimulus to your inspiratory muscles.

POWERbreathe IMT targets the breathing muscles you use to inhale, primarily your diaphragm and intercostals, using resistance training. This ‘dumbbell for your diaphragm’ improves your breathing strength and stamina. In fact, a study found that performance of the highest and lowest pitch sounds within a vocal register in a single breath and phonation times can be improved breathing muscle training.

Flow-Based Breathing Training

In addition to improving inspiratory strength and power with POWERbreathe IMT to generate pressure, improving control of your airflow with the Flow-Ball Ultra and Respiron will help you to improve tone and phrase length. These flow-based breathing trainers are designed to encourage a focused and steady breath.

Expiratory Muscle Training 

Expiratory muscle strength helps you to produce vibration on a wind instrument, but it can be a limiting factor if you’re not able to generate enough expiratory pressure. In fact, a combination of reduced expiratory pressure and airflow can affect how loud you’re able to play, and at what pitch.

You can improve your expiratory muscle strength with POWERbreathe EMT. In fact, research shows that expiratory muscle strength training significantly increased expiratory pressure in high school band students after just 2-weeks.

Therefore as a wind instrument player, you should maximise your air input with POWERbreathe IMT and control your output with POWERbreathe EMT.

photo of a red and black flow-ball ultra breath control device

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