POWERbreathe – Improves Swimming Performance

• Increased swimming performance by up to 3.5%
• Improved inspiratory muscle strength by 31.2%
• Improved inspiratory muscle endurance by 27.8%
• Reduced whole body effort during exercise
• IMT improves 100 & 200 m swimming performance¹

POWERbreathe Inspiratory Muscle Training & Swimming

Competitive swimming is one of the ultimate challenges for breathing, as swimmers have to inhale as much as possible in the shortest time possible, so that they can return their bodies to the optimal position for generating propulsive force. This creates an enormous strain on the inspiratory muscles (muscles used to inhale) and it is no surprise to find that swimmers experience significant fatigue of these muscles.

The situation is worsened by the fact that when you are lying horizontal in the water, your breathing muscles are up to 16% weaker than when you’re upright - this means that they are less able to generate the forces needed to breathe in quickly. Furthermore, research has shown that fatigue of the breathing muscles reduces blood flow to the other exercising muscles and this can slow you down by reducing the flow of oxygen to those muscles.

Research on rowers and cyclists has shown that if you make the inspiratory muscles stronger by training them, you reduce the extent of the fatigue that is induced during heavy exercise - in fact it almost disappears completely. This research also showed that the performance of rowers and swimmers increases by up to 3.5%!

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

Train smarter, not harder, to perform better.

Resources:

• Swimming: POWERbreathe Training Protocols - COMING SOON
• SwimForTri Tips for Improved Swim Performance

• How Training The Inspiratory Muscles Can Improve Swimming 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

• Inspiratory muscle training enhances pulmonary O2 uptake kinetics and high-intensity exercise tolerance in humans
• ¹Inspiratory muscle training improves 100 and 200 m swimming performance
• Respiratory muscle training improves swimming endurance in divers.
• Resistive respiratory muscle training improves and maintains endurance swimming performance in divers.
• Respiratory muscle training improves swimming endurance at depth.

Warm-up and Cool-down

• Inspiratory resistive loading after all-out exercise improves subsequent performance.
• Effect of specific inspiratory muscle warm-up on intense intermittent run to exhaustion.
• 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

• Alterations in maximal inspiratory mouth pressure during a 400-m maximum effort front-crawl swimming trial.
• Influence of different breathing frequencies on the severity of inspiratory muscle fatigue induced by high-intensity front crawl swimming.
• Inspiratory muscle fatigue in swimmers after a single 200 m swim.
• 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.
• The effect of exercise modality on respiratory muscle performance in triathletes.
• 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.
• Effects of concurrent inspiratory and expiratory muscle training on respiratory and exercise performance in competitive swimmers