How does exercise affect my breathing?

On your marks… get set… breathe is a group of experiments all about breathing and lung function.

Hi, I'm Professor Alison McConnell from Brunel University's Centre for Sports Medicine and Human Performance. We all know that breathing is vital for everyday life but these experiments will allow your students to explore their own lungs and breathing, as well as gain some insights into how breathing can affect sporting performance. They will measure their own breathing rate, peak flow, expiratory tidal volume, vital capacity, and arterial oxygen saturation, as well as pulse rate, using exciting scientific equipment. In my job, I study breathing in athletes, and I have researched the effects that breathing training can have on sporting performance.

Training breathing

Since ancient times, sports performers have exercised their muscles by lifting weights to help them to jump higher, run or swim faster, and throw further. Because breathing muscles are active all the time, it was always assumed that these muscles were at the peak off fitness. However, in the last 10 years athletes have found that training their breathing muscles also helps to improve their performance.

One of my research studies found that after 6 weeks of breathing muscle training, cyclists were able to improve the time it took to cycle 40 km by more than 2 minutes (4.6%)1. In competitive terms this is a huge advantage, so it’s worthwhile finding out more about our breathing and how it changes with exercise.

Asthma

One reason that some students may already know about their breathing is if they have asthma. They may not, however, know that asthma is more common in athletes than in ordinary people2. The reason for this is not fully understood, but it may be due to the amount of vigorous breathing that athletes undertake in training and competition. Asthma can be controlled extremely well with medication and is no barrier to performing well in sports.

Two of the fastest marathon runners of all time both have asthma: Paula Radcliffe and Haile Gebrselassie.

Breathing and sport

Breathing is also important in sports such as
archery where precision is crucial. Any type of
movement, including the act of breathing in and out,
can affect an archer’s aim and can mean the difference
between a winning and a losing shot.

Archers practise ‘Zen breathing’ where they learn slow
and deep breathing. Archers breathe in and take aim,
then release the arrow. They hold their breath to steady
their body as they do this and then let out their breath.

Consider how much harder this breath control is for
athletes competing in the sport of biathlon. They must
ski at full speed for prolonged periods, and must then
shoot a rifle at a tiny target, trying hard to control
their breathing as they do so! Another activity
where breathing can have a negative impact
on performance is dance. In dance, the
breathing muscles are involved in both
breathing and movements of the upper
body. This means that the dance
movements of the upper body. This
means that the dance movements can
interfere with breathing and vice versa,
so dancers must control their breathing
so that it is coordinated with their
movements.