Rugby
Being out of breath is a powerful factor in preventing a player performing at their max for the duration of play.
How To Make Your Lungs More Powerful
POWERbreathe IMT specifically targets your breathing muscles. It’s a form of resistance training, likened to ‘dumbbells for your diaphragm’. Developed by sports scientists, it exercises your breathing muscles, improving strength, stamina and eliminating breathing fatigue. This is especially beneficial in rugby as the ‘ball in play’ time has rapidly increased throughout the professional era. POWERbreathe IMT provides a combative solution to these ever-growing physical demands of the sport.
Scientific studies also show POWERbreathe IMT will help you warm-up more effectively, as well as, cool-down and recover more quickly. Researchers in Brazil found that breathing against a small inspiratory load straight after exercise reduces lactate by 16%. It also showed lactate reduced as soon as exercise stopped, as just 5-mins after using an inspiratory load, lactate concentration was equivalent to 15-mins passive recovery. And this study provides evidence that IMT improves recovery time during high intensity, intermittent exercise in repetitive sprint athletes, such as rugby players.
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 fitness capacity. It’s this pattern of exertion that places extreme demands on your breathing and where POWERbreathe inspiratory muscle training benefits rugby players.
In fact, following intense sprinting, your breathing will be driven to its highest levels, inducing extreme breathlessness. So, to continue contributing to the game, your breathing must recover quickly.
Also unique to rugby is the involvement of high intensity upper body activity. This induces conflicting demands upon your breathing muscles, which as well as bringing about breathing, are essential when involving the upper body. This includes fixing, twisting and flexing of your trunk. In fact, your breathing muscles contribute to stabilising and turning the trunk during a scrum, ruck, maul, plus kicking and passing. It’s no surprise that breathing muscle fatigue affects more than just your sprinting ability.
Furthermore, during an intense game of rugby, blood flow and oxygen delivery to your legs is restricted because your inspiratory muscles fatigue, impairing performance. This is called metaboreflex – a ‘survival’ instinct, with your body choosing to breathe over the need to ‘perform’. However, if your main breathing muscle (diaphragm), is strong and well trained, greater blood flow to your limbs can be maintained.
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 and it is […]
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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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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 level, exercise is limited only by the […]
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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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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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Why Train Your Breathing: The Key to Unlocking Athletic Performance
Re-worked from the original article, written by Duncan Kerr, 2017 Breathing. It’s automatic, fundamental, and often overlooked. But why should we train our breathing? In the realm of sports performance, where every muscle group is meticulously trained, the respiratory system is frequently neglected. Yet, it holds the key to unlocking your full athletic potential. The […]
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Rugby Union Specific Training
Training The Inspiratory Muscles Can Improve Performance For Rugby 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
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
