• Improved cycling time trial performance by 4.6% - equivalent to slashing 3-minutes off a 40k time trial
• Enabled participants to cycle for 33% longer and with lower sense of effort
• Increased strength of inspiratory muscles by 30 – 50%

POWERbreathe Inspiratory Muscle Training & Cycling

The hunched position adopted during cycling can create breathing problems. The contents of your abdomen (mainly your liver and gut) become compressed and pushed up against your main breathing muscle, the diaphragm. This restricts its normal movement and can make breathing feel much harder.

Research has shown that cycling as little as 20km at race pace induces significant fatigue of the inspiratory muscles (breathing muscles).

POWERbreathe reduces breathing fatigue, improves cycling time trial performance and has a huge ergogenic effect after just six weeks of training.

Train smarter, not harder, to perform better.

Resources:

• How Training The Inspiratory Muscles Can Improve Cycling Performance

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

• Effects of inspiratory muscle training upon time trial performance in trained cyclists.
• Inspiratory muscle fatigue in trained cyclists: effects of inspiratory muscle training.
• Inspiratory muscle training improves cycling time-trial performance and anaerobic work capacity but not critical power.
• Effect of high-intensity inspiratory muscle training on lung volumes, diaphragm thickness, and exercise capacity in subjects who are healthy.
• The effects of different inspiratory muscle training intensities on exercising heart rate and perceived exertion.
• Inspiratory resistive loading improves cycling capacity: a placebo controlled trial.
• Effects of Inspiratory Muscle Training on Whole Body Exercise Performance in Males.

Warm-up and Cool-down

• Inspiratory resistive loading after all-out exercise improves subsequent performance.
• Blood lactate during recovery from intense exercise: impact of inspiratory loading.
• Inspiratory muscle training reduces blood lactate concentration during volitional hyperpnoea.
• Effect of specific inspiratory muscle warm-up on intense intermittent run to exhaustion.

Exercise-induced Inspiratory Muscle Fatigue

• Contribution of respiratory muscle blood flow to exercise-induced diaphragmatic fatigue in trained cyclists.
• Inspiratory muscle fatigue in trained cyclists: effects of inspiratory muscle training.
• 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.
• Inspiratory muscles experience fatigue faster than the calf muscles during treadmill marching.

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.