Even if you’re a fitness nerd like me you’ve probably never heard of a respiratory muscle strength training device. This is a shame, as there is a strong body of scientific evidence that shows that training your breathing muscles can greatly increase your endurance, in variety of areas. You can expect up to a 29% or more increase in performance. As you’ll see, there are several different types of exercises that respond well to respiratory muscle strength training devices. In this article we’ll review the current evidence for this style of training, and recommend a simple training protocol that you can follow to increase your endurance. Keep reading for more.
If you’ve read any of my other articles, you shouldn’t be surprised that I like to base my fitness programs off of scientific studies, and evidence. As you know, the best type of scientific evidence is a systematic research review, otherwise known as a meta-analysis.
For this article, I will be reviewing a great meta-analysis on respiratory muscle training, as well as covering a few individual studies that highlight just how beneficial this style of training can be for endurance oriented athletes of all types.
Respiratory muscle training is very simple. It requires you to breath through a hand-held device that provides resistance to your inhalation or exhalation. As you’ll see, most of this training provides resistance to the inhalation portion of breathing, or to your inspiratory muscles. Before we go any further, take a look at this quick overview.
Respiratory Muscle Strength Training Device Overview
- Respiratory training strongly benefits endurance athletes
- Most studies focus on training the inhalation portion of breathing called Inspiratory Muscle Training (IMT)
- IMT is most beneficial for tactical populations that carry body armor and heavy packs
- Research shows a practical 3-10% increase in running and cycling performance
- Studies show that female athletes benefit most from respiratory training
- One study showed 42% improvement in running time to exhaustion
- IMT Training shows effects within 4-6 weeks on average
Originally, inspiratory muscle training (IMT) was used to treat folks that suffered from cardiovascular disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and other respiratory diseases. While research continues to show great quality of life benefits for these populations, we won’t be covering this aspect of respiratory training.
For the purposes of this article, we’ll be reviewing the performance enhancing aspects of inspiratory muscle training. There is nothing wrong with doing expiratory muscle training, but it doesn’t show as much improvement as IMT. I’ll also recommend a simple device that you can use to do this style of training. Lastly, I’ll give you a really simple program that should increase your endurance in no time. Now, let’s talk about some IMT research.
Respiratory Muscle Training Research Studies
First, we’re going to review a recent study, which is actually a full meta-analysis that examined all relevant studies since 2013. This study is entitled, “Recent advancements in our understanding of the ergogenic effect of respiratory muscle training in healthy humans: a systematic review.“
These researchers reviewed hundreds of scientific papers, including only 34 research studies that met their stringent criteria. All of these studies examined healthy individuals (with normal respiratory function), and had been done within the last 9 years. Here are their findings.
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Research Findings on Respiratory Training and Endurance Performance
Most of the research studies they reviewed lasted an average of 4-6 weeks in length. Those individual studies often reviewed IMT training on the following activities: running, rowing, cycling, swimming, and soccer performance. A few did include exercise for expiratory muscles.
In practical terms, they found that all most all studies showed a statistically significant improvement in endurance and exercise capacity, in the 3-10% range. These tests were often graded time trial events; however, some of them were specific tests of respiratory muscle function, that are less applicable to us. Check out some of these findings.
– Improved peak power output (+10.3%) and speed (+6.0%) in cycling and running maximal incremental exercise tests, respectively
– Improved running time-trial performance with 25 kg backpack load carriage (+8%)
– Improved performance in 5-mile cycling time trial (+18%)
Recent advancements in our understanding of the ergogenic effect of respiratory muscle training in healthy humans: a systematic review.
While the vast majority of evidence in this research review indicated that there are tremendous exercise performance benefits from IMT training, not every study showed this. Studies with the least amount of IMT training showed no improvement.
There was a clear relationship between the frequency of respiratory training, and the derived benefit. Most of the effective studies had the participants doing breath training 5+ days per week, from 5-20 minutes per day. They used a variety of devices, but that seemed to matter less than consistent training.
Naturally, these significant differences in performance lead us to ask just how does this work?
Why Does Respiratory Training Work?
The quick answer is researchers aren’t 100% sure, but they have some good ideas. It’s a well known fact that as you exercise your muscles fatigue. The more rigorously you use them, the quicker they do so. This is no different for your diaphragm, which is the primary muscle that allows you to breath. Check out this excerpt from the meta-analysis.
Current evidence indicates that RMT may 1) decrease the inspiratory muscle motor drive while preserving pressure generation (31), 2) promote hypertrophy of the diaphragm and increase the proportion of type I fibers and the size of type II fibers in the external intercostal muscles (14, 16), 3) attenuate the respiratory muscle metaboreflex (83), which is a sympathetically-mediated vasoconstriction that may redirect blood flow away from the limb locomotor muscles (13, 25, 26, 68, 76), 4) decrease the rating of perceived breathlessness or rating of perceived exertion (41, 67), 5) improve respiratory muscle economy (79), 6) reduces the work of breathing (27) and 7) improves respiratory muscle endurance (65).
Recent advancements in our understanding of the ergogenic effect of respiratory muscle training in healthy humans: a systematic review.
If you don’t speak “researchese,” I’ll translate. The authors are postulating that respiratory muscle training, or RMT, increases the muscle size of your diaphragm. Similarly, they believe that this style of training increases the amount of work your diaphragm, and associated breathing muscles, can do with a given amount of oxygen.
The more you train the more efficient your breathing muscles become, thus freeing oxygen up for your skeletal muscles to do actual work. In effect, this style of training increases the function of the respiratory breathing muscles through efficient oxygen usage.
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If you actually dig into the research, you’ll find a lot of specific outcome measures for different aspects of respiratory training. You don’t really need to know what your maximum inspiratory pressure is, or what exactly your external intercostals to benefit form this training.
Next let’s take a look at which activities benefit most from using a respiratory muscle strength training device.
Endurance Activities That Benefit Most from Respiratory Muscle Training
The endurance activity that most benefited from this style of breath training was load carriage at high intensities. One study showed that participants increased their time to exhaustion while running with a 10kg (22 pound) backpack by 29.3%. Another study showed an 8% time trial improvement for participants who ran with a 25kg (55 pound) back pack. This is great news for tactical athletes, and Delta Force hopefuls!
Researchers believe that load carriage, such as wearing body armor or a heavy pack, decreases your bodies ability to breath. When rucking, the load is constraining your ribcage and chest wall. This limits how efficiently your diaphragm can work. It stands to reason that augmenting your bodies respiratory strength will increase your ability to ruck, and ruck run.
Other studies showed a 3-10% time trial improvement in cycling and running. The research for swimmers was hit or miss. Some studies showed improvement, and others didn’t. The researchers believe that this specific physical activity already mimics some aspects of this style of training, with the amount of pressure the water exerts against the respiratory system.
Women Benefit Most from Respiratory Training
It seems that the biggest improvement was on aerobic exercise activities that required the most breathing over long durations. It was also quite clear that women seemed to benefit the most from this style of training. In fact, one study, on female soccer players, showed a 42.1% increase in time to exhaustion for repeated sprints.
This is most likely because women tend to have smaller lung capacity due to their smaller body size. As breathing requirements go up, their diaphragms work harder and harder. Because their breathing rate is higher than males, their diaphragms fatigue more quickly. Strengthening their breathing muscles and functional capacity, seems to have a drastic impact on this, and provides significant increases in endurance for women.
Sports that Benefit the Least from IMT and Respiratory Training
Sports that rely on on alactic energy production, using the phosphocreatine pathway, would not benefit from this style of training. Side note, if that was gibberish to you I will explain, but you should probably check out my book, Programming Your Fitness.
Things like very short sprints, one rep max lifts, and other similarly quick activities won’t directly benefit from stronger breathing muscles. If you could hold your breath for your sport, then IMT won’t help you directly. However, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t consider this type of training.
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Indirect Benefits of Using a Respiratory Muscle Strength Training Device
Let’s say you’re a bodybuilder, and you’re following one of my awesome bodybuilding programs. You might be surprised to learn that a large portion of your training is actually aerobic. Don’t believe me, use a smart watch, like my favorite Garmin Epix 2, which I reviewed a while back.
Your average heart rate for a weight lifting session is squarely in the aerobic zone. Sure, heavy sets with challenging weight, can jack your heart rate up quickly, but that’s for a short period of time.
While there aren’t any studies on respiratory training for folks like Bodybuilders or Crossfitters, I would guess that this style of training would greatly aid these athletes in completing more overall work. Stronger breathing muscles will deliver oxygen more efficiently to your muscles, allowing you to lift harder.
Next, let’s take a look at what I recommend for a respiratory muscle training device.
Inspiratory Training Device Recommendations
The good news is that you don’t need a super expensive respiratory muscle training device to strengthen your breathing muscles. I ordered this respiratory muscle trainer called the, Expand a Lung Respiratory Muscle Training Device (Amazon Affiliate Link) about a year ago. It’s very simple to use, and I’ve had great luck with it. You twist the end to adjust the pressure settings and the amount of breathing resistance you feel.
You can train both inhalation and exhalation with this device. As of this writing, it has over 2,000 positive reviews on Amazon, and it costs a little under $30. Given the performance boost you can expect, this is a good deal. Or you could order another lifting shirt, detailing how little you care for burpees. I’m sure that’ll increase your performance!
How Should You Use Your Inspiratory Training Device?
It’s not hard to use one of these training devices. The important thing is to use it consistently, with a reasonably hard setting on the valve. Use common sense here. You don’t need to blow a gasket trying to inhale through this. Moreover, you shouldn’t expect to receive much benefit if you barely feel anything when breathing through it. Here are some recommendations for a simple breathing program.
Inspiratory Muscle Training Protocol
7 Days Per Week
Weeks 1-2: 40 Breaths per day
Weeks 3-4: 50 Breaths per day
Weeks 5-6: 60 Breaths per day
Increase breathing difficulty every 2 weeks
You can do this breathing in one continuous set, or you can break it up into sets and reps, just like weight lifting. Either way, I recommend that you focus on training the inhalation side, and breath out slowly. Make sure to avoid hyperventilation.
In the research review, there was some indication that working out with moderate to light breathing resistance on the device provided a strong benefit to cyclists. You can experiment with this if you like. I would be curious to see how this would work on some assault bike WODs.
Final Thoughts
While this style of training isn’t free, it does provide a verifiable performance benefit for many endurance exercises. Breath training as a whole can be a great performance enhancer. If you recall, I wrote an article about hyperventilation training and it’s incredible benefit for strength training, and bodybuilding.
Even if you’re on the fence about this style of training, you really have nothing to lose. At worst you build some stronger breathing muscles, that are likely to help you recover better in the gym, and go faster in your endurance work. At best, you set new PRs, and make your local nemesis jealous.
If you have any questions or comments, put them below, and I’ll get you an answer. Now get out there and get training!
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