POWERbreathe – Improves Rowing Performance

• Improved rowing time trial performance by up to 2.2% which, equivalent to slashing 60m in a 2km race
• Increased strength of inspiratory muscles by 30 – 50%
• POWERbreathe warm-up significantly improves rowing performance and reduces breathlessness in competitive rowers

POWERbreathe Inspiratory Muscle Training & Rowing

During a race, breathing can reach maximal levels in excess of 250 litres per minute for a heavy-weight male rower - the average ‘man in the street’ would be hard pushed to achieve even half this value. With such a high demand placed upon breathing it is easy to see why rowing induces fatigue of the breathing muscles, even in international athletes.

Rowing requires the synchronisation of breathing and locomotion. This linkage pushes breathing to its limits. During a 2000m race, rowers are breathing twice per stroke; breathing out during the initial part of the drive (when the blade is in the water), taking a breath as they reach the end of the drive, breathing out again as they come forward and taking a small breath just before ‘the catch’. This small breath at the catch is very important in terms of allowing the optimal transmission of force from the various body segments through the blade and into the water; the muscles of the torso to brace against a partially inflated lung.

Somehow our bodies ‘know’ that this strategy is optimal. For example, if you were going to lift a heavy object, you intuitively breathe in and brace yourself by contracting the muscles of your torso against your inflated lungs’, explains sports scientists and respiratory physiologist Dr Alison McConnell. ‘The muscles of the torso include your breathing muscles, and its pretty difficult to brace the upper body and breathe at the same time, so you have to work your breathing in around the stroke rate.’

POWERbreathe training specifically targets the breathing muscles, strengthening them by around 30-50%, significantly improving rowing performance and helping to eliminate breathing fatigue.

Train smarter, not harder, to perform better.

Resources:

• How Training The Inspiratory Muscles Can Improve Rowing Performance
• Breathing During Rowing

• Rowing: POWERbreathe Training Protocols - COMING SOON!

Research:

Links to research papers, published in peer-reviewed, high quality scientific journals. As well as original studies, we have also included some articles that review IMT; these have been written by experts in this field of research.

Inspiratory Muscle Training

• Inspiratory muscle training enhances pulmonary O2 uptake kinetics and high-intensity exercise tolerance in humans
• The inspiratory muscle training in elite rowers.
• Inspiratory muscle training improves rowing performance.
• The influence of inspiratory and expiratory muscle training upon rowing performance.

Warm-up and Cool-down

• Inspiratory resistive loading after all-out exercise improves subsequent performance.
• Specific respiratory warm-up improves rowing performance and exertional dyspnoea.
• Blood lactate during recovery from intense exercise: impact of inspiratory loading.
• Inspiratory muscle training reduces blood lactate concentration during volitional hyperpnoea.

Exercise-induced Inspiratory Muscle Fatigue

• Inspiratory muscle training improves rowing performance.
• Influence of environmental temperature on exercise-induced inspiratory muscle fatigue.
• Aerobic fitness effects on exercise-induced low-frequency diaphragm fatigue.
• Exercise-induced diaphragmatic fatigue in healthy humans.
• A comparison of inspiratory muscle fatigue following maximal exercise in moderately trained males and females.

Miscellaneous

• Development of respiratory muscle contractile fatigue in the course of hyperpnoea.
• Inspiratory muscle training attenuates the human respiratory muscle metaboreflex.
• Development and evaluation of a pressure threshold inspiratory muscle trainer for use in the context of sports performance.
• Specificity and reversibility of inspiratory muscle training.
• Inspiratory muscle training: a simple cost-effective treatment for inspiratory stridor.

Review Articles

• Inspiratory muscle training and endurance: a central metabolic control perspective.
• Does training of respiratory muscles affect exercise performance in healthy subjects?
• Respiratory muscle energetics during exercise in healthy subjects and patients with COPD.
• Respiratory muscle training in healthy humans: resolving the controversy.