POWERbreathe – Improves Racquet Sports' Performance

• Accelerated recovery during repeated sprints by up to 7%
• Improved inspiratory muscle strength by 31.2%
• Improved inspiratory muscle endurance by 27.8%
• Reduced whole body effort during exercise

POWERbreathe Inspiratory Muscle Training & Racquet Sports

The short intense bouts of running that characterise tennis and other racquet sports have much in common with other ‘repeated sprint sports’ such as football/soccer, rugby, basketball and hockey. “Following an intense bout of activity such as a sprint to reach a ball, breathing is driven to its highest levels, inducing extreme breathlessness. If players are to continue to play effectively and to maintain high levels of skill performance, they cannot afford to be debilitated by their breathing,” explains sports scientist and respiratory physiologist Dr Alison McConnell.

Avoiding the debilitating effect of breathlessness is not just a matter of improving fitness, as research showed that training the breathing muscles with POWERbreathe improved the rate of recovery during a repeated sprint test.

“The players that we studied took less time to recover and were ready to sprint maximally again more quickly after the training,” explains McConnell. Strengthening the inspiratory muscles also makes them less prone to fatigue.

Racquet sport involves using the breathing muscles of the torso to brace and twist during a racket stroke. Experienced tennis players use their inflated lungs to brace the impact of the ball and racket, controlling the release of air from their lungs and optimising the transmission of force. This control is impaired by inspiratory muscle fatigue but can be improved by inspiratory muscle strengthening.

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:

• How Training The Inspiratory Muscles Can Improve Tennis Performance 
• Racquet Sports: 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 effect of inspiratory muscle training on high-intensity, intermittent running performance to exhaustion.
• The influence of respiratory muscle training upon intermittent exercise performance.
• Effects of inspiratory muscle training upon recovery time during high intensity, repetitive sprint activity.
• The effect of inspiratory muscle training on high-intensity, intermittent running performance to exhaustion.

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.
• Specific inspiratory muscle warm-up enhances badminton footwork performance.
• 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

• 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.