Respiratory Muscle Strength For Mountaineers: A Follow-Up

​In this episode, we do a follow-up on the topic of respiratory muscle training for mountaineers. And we explore HOW a mountaineer can train to see benefits in this area, plus some commonly discussed training methods that probably won't lead to improvements in this specific area. 

Episode Chapters:

0:10 
Introduction to Respiratory Muscle Training
3:24 
Effective Methods of Strength Training
7:49 
Endurance Training for Breathing Muscles
11:37 
Not So Great Methods to Avoid
15:06 
Weak Methods with Little Evidence
20:41 
Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Episode Transcript:

[0:00] All right, hello, hello, ladies and gentlemen. So in today's episode, we are doing a little bit of a follow-up around improving respiratory muscle strength.

[0:11] Now, last week's episode, we talked about potential benefits of respiratory muscle training, specifically when we're looking at high-attitude mountaineering. And I talked through a few really cool potential benefits you can get out of this training, plus my recommendations around how you can apply it, like if you're looking at exploring this. But upon reflection and having to think about how I presented that episode, there is one area which I very much want to expand on a little bit, just so I can be 100% crystal clear and make sure you as a mountaineer do not get the wrong idea. And make sure you as a mountaineer who may be looking for an edge with your training, do not get led down the wrong path. Because when it comes down to this, as we sort of said in the last episode, there are definitely some cool potential benefits to this type of training. But what I've seen many times in the past, when this subject is brought up, and it's not a super common thing, it's not a super popular area of training, but I have seen it talked about before.

[1:21] But what will often happen is people will talk about high attitude or they'll talk about mountain or whatever it may be and they'll bring up this topic of respiratory muscle training and they'll say look this has all these potential benefits you can see x and y and z and this is really really useful and this will be something that you can add to your training and which will see great results on the mountain and they'll bring up all of these benefits and then they'll say look we want to improve the strength of our breathing muscles. But then in the next sentence...

[1:54] It kind of goes off track. And what people will say is like, well, if you want to improve your strength, you should go out and do this. You should go out and do this, or you should go out and do this. And the majority of the time I see people talking about this, they're kind of talking about methods which don't really line up with what we need for this type of training. And so they'll start with this really interesting area around evidence and science and quote papers and this and that, but then they'll just say, okay, if you want to get this, go and do this type of training, which is not talked about in these papers, or it doesn't have any evidence behind it, or whatever may be.

[2:31] And yeah, I've seen it a lot. So today, I just want to hone in on this a little bit. I want to be very, very crystal clear about the different types of training, which can potentially see these benefits that I talked about in the previous episode, which do have evidence behind them, which do have logic behind them. And I also want to clearly highlight the methods which you may come across online. Which often do get talked about in this space, but probably don't fall into this category. They probably don't have the evidence or the logic behind them to see these types of results or these types of potential results. So you can come at the end of hopefully last episode and this episode just being crystal clear around, this is what we're chasing. These are the options of how you can go about it. And these are the options which may not quite be right for you.

[3:25] So with that being said what i'm going to do is i'm going to cover two great methods of respiratory muscle training i'm going to cover one not so great method and then a bunch of just not good methods when it comes down to this respiratory muscle training so realistically when it comes down to great methods there's two methods which have a lot of evidence behind them and there are two methods that in that evidence I was talking about last episode, those two methods that kind of came out of these are the methods which can see these types of results.

[4:00] Now, method number one is what we call respiratory muscle strength training. And this is using an inspiratory muscle training device, which I mentioned last episode. Essentially, what this involves is getting a device which can load up our inspiratory breathing muscles and load them up with a significant amount of resistance so we can challenge them, we can force them to adapt, and we can create strength adaptations in those muscles. Now, how do we go about this? Well, the main key to respiratory muscle strength training is our breathing muscles are strong. And like any type of strength training, we need to, to see effective results, we need to load up with enough resistance for us to stimulate those muscles to actually get stronger. Because if we don't give enough resistance...

[4:57] They're not going to have any reason to get stronger. Pretty simple. Essentially, from the evidence that I've seen, the general consensus around respiratory muscle strength training is we need to find a load of resistance, which is about 50 to 60% of your one repetition maximum. And when we're training this, we want to sustain this to the limit of tolerance. So what I mean by this is if you had a device, and you had a device with variable resistance, what you would do, or what you can do, is essentially your one repetition maximum would be the absolute heaviest amount of resistance you can use on that device while you can still get an effective breath in. This is a powerful, this is a strong breath, but it's an effective breath in. Your one repetition maximum would be if you can only do one breath, then you can't really do any more. And then 50% to 60% of that would be, well, half of that resistance. And essentially what this ends up being is about 50% of your 1RM ends up being you do 30 breaths. And after 30 breaths, that's your kind of limited tolerance. That is where you fatigue. And you're like, I can't really do any more effective. That's kind of been the training load. It's quite heavy. And if you've ever done this type of training, that is quite a bit of resistance. It feels difficult. It feels challenging. And by the end of the 30 breaths, you're like, yeah, that was a decent workout.

[6:23] Now, the interesting thing when it comes down to this, or one really, really interesting point when we're looking at respiratory muscle strength training, is there have been studies that have looked at this. And what they've done is they've looked at this heavy 50 to 60% 1RM, this heavy resistance, which you can do 30 breaths and fatigue up. They've looked at that compared to a placebo. And the placebo wasn't just doing nothing, but they got people to do the same type of workout. But what they used was 15, 1-5% of their 1RM. So they went 50 versus 15. Now, 15% still feels like resistance. It still has load on the breathing muscles. It still feels difficult. But what they found in this study when they compared the two was the 15% did not see significant changes. Now, this is really, really, really important to be aware of because if we are chasing this respiratory muscle strength training, that means we need to load it up heavy. And even if we're loading up in a way which feels difficult, if it's not enough resistance, it won't give us the results we want. So essentially, when we're doing this, we need a device which can load us up. We can also load this up in an effective way, which we can progress over time. So as we get stronger, we add more and more and more load, like any other type of strength training. So that's number one, inspiratory muscle training with a device.

[7:50] Now, a very effective method number two, and this is one I didn't mention in the last episode, but this is another effective method, and it is a bit of a mouthful, so bear with me. It is called ventilatory isocapneic hyponeia. Complete mouthful there. Essentially what this is, is this is doing respiratory muscle endurance training. So the previous method, we were talking about respiratory muscle strength training. This particular method is doing respiratory muscle endurance training. Essentially what this involves, it's in the name, we're kind of doing sustained efforts of endurance. And what we're doing here is we're doing about 15 to 30 minutes, depending on the training protocol, of sustained high ventilation, where we're breathing in and out quite strong, high ventilation for about 15 to 30 minutes. Now, the key to this is if you try to do this and just hyperventilate or just do really high and powerful breaths for 15 minutes, you will get really, really dizzy because hyperventilation leads to that. So this particular training method requires a specific device which will prevent your carbon dioxide dropping from that hyperventilation. So it kind of catches the carbon dioxide and we like rebreathe it and this and that. And essentially what you would do is you do a session where you've got 15 to 30 minutes, depending, of that sustained high ventilation doing that endurance training. So by the end, those breathing muscles have been fatigued.

[9:19] This is another perfectly legitimate way of respiratory muscle training. Both of these particular methods have a lot of evidence behind them. Both of these particular methods were associated with all that stuff I was talking about with high attitude before.

[9:35] My personal preference and what I always advocate for between these two is the first one. I always advocate for those inspiratory muscle strength training using one of those devices where we're looking heavier resistance, 30 breaths. Why? Well, for me, from my research and my knowledge, what I've read is this approach has been shown to have the widest range of benefits. Now, what that means is this is respiratory muscle strength training. This will improve your respiratory muscle strength, but will also have a carryover for improving your respiratory muscle endurance.

[10:16] Similar to normal strength training, if we just increase our maximal strength, this does have carryover for our endurance. On top of this, if this is done at the right tempo, the right speed, and the right force, because there's a very particular technique to do this type of stuff, it can also help improve the speed of contraction and the power output of our inspiratory breathing muscles, which are other qualities of respiratory muscle training. So it can have a really nice spread of benefits, not just strength, but a nice spread of things. On top of this, I really do believe this type of training protocol just seems a bit more time efficient and manageable in the sense of when we're looking at the strength side of things, 30 breaths at a time essentially involves three minutes. You do three minutes in the morning, three minutes in the evening for this type of training prescription, as opposed to doing 15 to 30 minutes of sustained breathing. It's still relatively time efficient, but if you're looking at six minutes a day versus 15 minutes a day, that kind of adds up. And practically just doing 30 breaths, much easier to do on days you're feeling a bit uninspired, much easier to do on days you're feeling a bit low energy, as opposed to that sustained. That's my personal preference of what I advocate for because I just think it's more practical and from what I've read it has that nice range of benefits. So those are two great methods of respiratory muscle training.

[11:37] Next up is a method which often gets promoted. There is a little bit of evidence behind it, but I still do not consider it a particularly great method. I would sort of say it's a not so great method. And that's using an elevation mask. Now, elevation masks, if you haven't come across them before, they're kind of those big masks which you put on your face which restrict your breathing. They used to be marketed as like an altitude mask, but then that got completely disproven as being an altitude training device. and people would call them elevation masks now. Now, people will often talk about these, using these to improve your respiratory muscle strength or using this for respiratory muscle training. And essentially where this is coming from is when there was studies looking into the whole idea of attitude. And they sort of like a lot of people market this as an attitude training device. Studies looked into this and sort of said, hey, you know what? All of these studies you looked at, didn't really see a massive change here, didn't really see a massive change here. But one change we did see from some studies was there's some improvements to respiratory muscle parameters. I can't remember the exact ones, but there were some changes. And essentially, this study or this review of studies said, look, it could be treated as a respiratory training device.

[12:50] When you wear one of these, if you've ever used them before, you will notice pretty quickly there is significant or does feel like significant load on your breathing muscles. When you're doing intervals or whatever, it feels really, really, really, really tough. Now, there is some evidence to show this may be a respiratory training device, but I definitely do not consider this a great method of respiratory muscle training. Because when we kind of look at this, number one, there is a ton more evidence on those other areas that I mentioned before, as opposed to these masks, first and foremost. Number two, when we look at things logically, if we're looking at respiratory muscle strength training, on the strength side of things, we saw in the studies before that we do need that significant load. And even if we're using a load which feels difficult, but it isn't enough, it's not going to be amazing for strength. So these masks, I would say on the strength side of things, probably falls into that. And then on the endurance side of things, when we're looking at specifically improving endurance, it may, you know, some people say, okay, we're doing high sustained breathing in here will kind of catch our carbon dioxide in here, and then that'll help us do more hyperventilation, yada, yada. And that's probably true, but that compared to a specific device designed to help you do that hyperventilation, that sustained heavy breathing, and actually specifically catch the carbon dioxide, it's not really the same thing.

[14:16] So I would sort of say, logically, you know, there may be some benefits, but I don't know. I feel like there's other things that probably are going to do a better job. And probably the biggest drawback to this, in my personal opinion, is to use these, you have to wear it during training. And this can significantly impact your other training. Because if you're using this on your long, steady, easy runs or whatever it may be, well, your breathing is going to be harder, but you're going to be limited in other areas. If you're doing this in your interval training, yeah, your breathing is going to be harder, but you're probably not going to have as much output in other areas. So it ends up being a little bit limiting. So yeah, I would sort of say there is some evidence for it. You may see some benefits, but when we look at things that have a lot more evidence and a lot more logic and probably see stronger results, I'd probably lean towards them.

[15:06] Next up, I want to talk about not great methods. That was not so great. These ones are stuff that I've seen commonly recommended and see people talk about it, but in all honesty, I don't think there's any evidence or there's just such weak evidence around it.

[15:23] First one I want to talk about is breath holds. I did a whole episode on this the other day, so I'm not going to go into too much detail, but we often see people talk about respiratory muscle strength, and then they say, look, breath hold training has been proven to do this. Realistically, I've only ever seen one study that has seen a change or a significant change to respiratory muscle strength from breath holds. So there isn't a huge amount of evidence. Number two, when you look at that study, the training protocol is just not practical for most people. They had people doing high intensity efforts on a treadmill two or three times a week for 40 minutes doing breath holds. And on top of that, they had specific measuring to make sure people were hitting specific targets of building up different changes in the blood. No one's going to have that. That's not practical. It's not realistic. And layering on, I think, three 40-minute high-intensity sessions just to improve your breathing strength or other benefits, I'm sure people will say, but it's not really practical for most mountaineers. And again, there's only one study I've ever seen that looks at that. So I wouldn't really see that's very effective. Next one, diaphragmatic breathing or abdominal breathing or belly breathing, however you want to phrase it. Now, I love this. I strongly recommend people practice and train diaphragmatic breathing. It is a very, very, very useful technique to use for training and also relaxation recovery.

[16:47] But to be clear, it is not going to be an effective thing to improve your respiratory muscle strength. People often say, okay, you want to improve your strength, and then let's just do some diaphragmatic breathing. And it just doesn't make any sense. There are some studies to show that diaphragmatic breathing can improve strength, but it's only on some people who have legitimate medical conditions which affects their breathing. People with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or people who have been on ventilators, as a generally healthy and hopefully trained mountaineer, no way is this going to be enough resistance to see a change in strength. Now, the next step is people often say, okay, well, what about weighted diaphragmatic breathing? Some people are like, okay, well, let's do this and just put a weights plate on our belly, or let's wear a belt around us and do some slightly resistant. And again, there's probably some really good benefits from that type of thing. But when we're talking specifically about respiratory muscle strength, and which can therefore lead to some specific benefits of attitude? No, there's just no evidence behind it. And it doesn't make logical sense when you look at the real training prescriptions that we've seen. So diaphragm-made breathing, great. Advocate for it, love it. Is it going to change your respiratory muscle strength or respiratory muscle endurance even? Probably not. Next up, nose breathing. I've seen some people say breathing through your nose is enough of resistance to load up those breathing muscles to see changes in your strength. There's zero evidence behind that. Logically, it doesn't make any sense.

[18:17] Straw breathing. I've seen people say, okay, if we want to load up the breathing muscles, let's just breathe in through a straw. Again, yes, that will add some resistance. Is it enough resistance? Very doubtful. And on top of that, even if it is, you're using a straw and at first it is enough resistance for you. Like any type of strength training, for us to see improvements, we need progressive overload. We need to continually add resistance as we get stronger to stimulate the muscles to get stronger. Straws, not going to do that. I've seen people talk about purse-slip breathing. Another great technique for high attitude. Look into it if you haven't before. Is it enough resistance? Probably not. Does it have any type of progressive overload? Definitely not. One-nostril breathing. Again, I've seen people sort of say, hey, if you just do strong inhales with one nostril closed and breathe through the other nostril through your nose, that will be enough. Again, is it enough resistance? No. Is there any progression? No. And fist breathing. I have seen some people use that. And fist breathing is an interesting one where you have a closed fist and you breathe in and you feel that. And this is a really interesting one because a lot of people use this to demonstrate the kind of feeling it comes from this inspiratory muscle training and feeling that type of resistance. And people use that and say, when they're talking about this subject, they're like, hey, give this a go and people can practice this right away. As a teaching tool, yeah, great. As an example, yeah, great. As a training tool, probably not because we don't know how much we're loading it up. We don't have any progressions.

[19:46] Yeah not great and then finally swimming like swimming really really really really good great for breathing in a bunch of different ways is just swimming in general going to be enough for this probably not realistically when it comes down to respiratory muscle training there is a lot of evidence and a lot of studies out there that have looked at this looked at different methods of developing this and different methods of acquiring these adaptations and there is a small amount of evidence to show that there are some cool potential benefits up at high attitude. But if you're trying to go down this route and you're trying to get these specific benefits and get this edge, please make sure you are doing the right things. Use the methods that have evidence behind them. Use the methods that make logical sense and don't get led down the trap of just thinking you're doing something, which may be good for one reason or another, but it's not really giving you exactly what you need here.

[20:41] Do the right training for the right results. So with that being said, I think I'm going to wrap up here. I spent two episodes talking about this subject. I'm going to give it a bit of a rest now. I hope this makes sense. If anyone does have any particular questions of this, please reach out. If it's something I can cover and I can help, I will help out. If not, I can pass you on to someone else who's a bit more of a specialist in this area and you can have a chat with them. But with that being said, thank you for listening. I hope you've enjoyed the last couple of episodes. I hope it's been insightful. I hope it's been useful and we'll talk to you soon. Have a lovely day. We'll talk next week. Bye.

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