POWERbreathe ?

[Cukoo]

Anyone ever tried this?


IT claims:
"a hand-held inspiratory muscle trainer, which is a unique, easy-to-use, drug free product designed to help reduce breathlessness, improve fitness and maximise sports performance. "

Does it actually strenthen the lung and improve breathing/proformance in sports?

[Cheetah]

A thread was made about that thing already. Search around

[Ajaxus]

general cardio and a smoke free life also work quite well

[will-work4ANDRO]

There were no significant differences in spirometry either between the two groups or when comparing the post- to pre-training results within each group.

source:
Edwards AM, Cooke CB. Related Articles, Links
Oxygen uptake kinetics and maximal aerobic power are unaffected by inspiratory muscle training in healthy subjects where time to exhaustion is extended.
Eur J Appl Physiol. 2004 Oct;93(1-2):139-44. Epub 2004 Aug 19.


However. no significant difference was observed between the groups in any other parameter. In particular the deltaTw Pdi was not different between groups (mean 'advantage' 0.7 cmH2O, 95% CI- 7.0+/-5.5 cmH2O, P=0.8). The continued sale and use of the Powerbreathe device is not justified by our data.

souce:
Hart N, Sylvester K, Ward S, Cramer D, Moxham J, Polkey MI.
Evaluation of an inspiratory muscle trainer in healthy humans.
Respir Med. 2001 Jun;95(6):526-31.

[Robb_P]

Some professional soccer teams in England use them when their players are injured. Couln't voach for them myself though.

[jamesahrens]

Ok, I've used this extensively in training, and was involved in a group that was tested by the company.
Used it for around 3 years.

While the claims of 5% improvements are exagerrated (this was for a few sports with races in the 5-6 min duration), I definitely found this helpful.

The logic is that you are only able to stress the muscles involved in inhaling at an overload level, when at high workout or race intensity.
This means that you train the muscles very rarely.

The workout they recommend does need developing to your specific sport. the 3x20 inhales is very basic.
I benefited from doing simulation races periodically with the powerbreathe, and especially using it in warm up before races or performance tests, as it helped reduce the breathlessness you hit, after the start of a race when you start hitting the aerobic zone.

This in turn helped fractionally with maintaining technique in a certain period of a performance test or race.

I didn't find any evidence of the physiological improvement of lower lactic acid production due to better trained inspiratory muscles.

I did find a spirometry improvement in the percantage of total lung capacity that I could inhale in the first second of inhallation, which is relevant to performance.

Having said all this, its not a magic device that will suddenly boost performance but, if i was training for competition again, I would use it. depends possibly what sport you are in.

[Robb_P]

Ok, I've used this extensively in training, and was involved in a group that was tested by the company.
Used it for around 3 years.

While the claims of 5% improvements are exagerrated (this was for a few sports with races in the 5-6 min duration), I definitely found this helpful.

The logic is that you are only able to stress the muscles involved in inhaling at an overload level, when at high workout or race intensity.
This means that you train the muscles very rarely.

The workout they recommend does need developing to your specific sport. the 3x20 inhales is very basic.
I benefited from doing simulation races periodically with the powerbreathe, and especially using it in warm up before races or performance tests, as it helped reduce the breathlessness you hit, after the start of a race when you start hitting the aerobic zone.

This in turn helped fractionally with maintaining technique in a certain period of a performance test or race.

I didn't find any evidence of the physiological improvement of lower lactic acid production due to better trained inspiratory muscles.

I did find a spirometry improvement in the percantage of total lung capacity that I could inhale in the first second of inhallation, which is relevant to performance.

Having said all this, its not a magic device that will suddenly boost performance but, if i was training for competition again, I would use it. depends possibly what sport you are in.

This is really interesting, thanks for posting that.

I think the lactic acid thing is just common sense really, if you have a basic understanding of biology. Basically, when glucose is burnt without the presence of oxygen, lactic acid is formed (anerobic respiration).

Hope I haven't made a fool of myself with that....