I’ve been reading news stories about the benefits of breathing resistance exercises. I was wondering what the great minds at Wahoo think of this? Fad or fact? Note: An expert in Boulder is quoted.
@Sir.Jeff.Kerr Seems like they agree based on the yoga, Tapers and the mental toughness videos.
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There’s a difference between deep conscious breathing and devices designed to cause you to do pattern breathing because the passageways are restricted. I’ve never ran into a coach that recommends the latter. They do recommend altitude OR using a device designed to emulate such (GCN’s Si had a great show on using an altitude tent. These do take time to get it right though.
Let me put the question more clearly. I want to know if I can improve my hillclimb or cyclocross performance by using a device that provides breathing resistance to strengthen the muscles that I use to breathe.
“The muscles we use to breathe atrophy, just like the rest of our muscles tend to do as we get older,” explains researcher Daniel Craighead, an integrative physiologist at the University of Colorado Boulder. To test what happens when these muscles are given a good workout, he and his colleagues recruited healthy volunteers ages 18 to 82 to try a daily five-minute technique using a resistance-breathing training device called PowerBreathe. The hand-held machine — one of several on the market — looks like an inhaler. When people breathe into it, the device provides resistance, making it harder to inhale.
There may also be benefits for elite cyclists, runners and other endurance athletes, he says, citing data that six weeks of IMST increased aerobic exercise tolerance by 12% in middle-aged and older adults.
“So we suspect that IMST consisting of only 30 breaths per day would be very helpful in endurance exercise events,” Craighead says. It’s a technique that athletes could add to their training regimens. Craighead, whose personal marathon best is 2 hours, 21 minutes, says he has incorporated IMST as part of his own training.
Wim Hoff also has been teaching breathing techniques for a while.
There is an example in Scott Carney’s book about Wim where a runner who uses Wim’s breathing method heals a broken bone in record time.
BREATHING RESISTANCE DEVICE. (not other breathing exercises)
Yeah. I saw that article in the Medical Express Journal.
Interesting. I first ran into this type of device ~15+ years ago when doing free diving and free-dive spear fishing as a means of improving breath-hold ability. This article about lowing BP is interesting in that it states the effect is similar to what aerobic exercise does in lowering BP. My BP is significantly lower when I’m doing regular intense aerobic workouts. Of course that’s a lot more work than breathing through this device a bunch of times each day so it seems could be helpful for those who can’t/won’t do significant aerobic workouts. I figure my breathing gets all the workout it needs during my long mtb climbs. I’m skeptical using this device would provide any additional benefit over that wrt breathing ability or lowering BP.
That was my thought too (that I’m already exercising my breathing with HIIT workouts), but the article says they have seen benefits in elite athletes so that’s why I’m asking here hoping to get Sir Neal or Sir Mac to chime in.
This might be worth a read/listen 🚀 New Knowledge Episode - Techniques to improve breathing efficiency 🚀
Edit: and this which was what I meant to post originally
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Thanks. That’s more along the lines I was looking for.
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Thank you @Glen.Coutts! I was just loggin in to direct @Sir.Jeff.Kerr to this podcast episode!
Jeff and Mac are brilliant!
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