Strength Training For Breathing [For Hikers]

In this episode, I discuss some potential benefits a hiker can gain from respiratory muscle training (i.e strength training for breathing) for their high altitude adventures.

Respiratory Muscle Training For Hikers

Episode Chapters:

0:12 
Welcome to Training for Trekking
0:41 
Strength Training for Breathing
13:11 
How to Train Your Respiratory Muscles For Hiking
14:54 
Comparing Respiratory Training Devices
17:02 
Final Thoughts on Respiratory Training
18:35 
Exploring Future Trends in Training

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Breathing Training For High Altitude 

Episode Transcript:

[0:07] Hey, my name is Rowan Smith, and I want to welcome you to the Training for Trekking podcast.

[0:12] Now, this is the world's very first podcast, which is entirely dedicated to helping you train, prepare, and conquer your upcoming hike, trek, or mountain adventure. So once a week, I'm going to be giving you quality and practical information on the subjects of physical preparation for trekking, dealing with attitude, and nutrition on the trail, so you can know everything you need to be doing to have the best chance of a safe, enjoyable, and successful adventure. So now you know what you're in for, let's get into today's episode.

[0:42] All right, hello, hello, guys. Today we're talking all about strength training for breathing. And specifically, we're going to be talking about what's known as respiratory muscle training and how that can potentially help any hiker, trekker, or mountaineer who are heading off on a high-altitude adventure.

[1:01] Now, previously, we've talked about this subject a little bit when we interviewed James Fletcher, who came on the podcast a few months ago and he gave us some really really fantastic information around this subject and today I want to dive into it a little bit deeper and specifically talk about high attitude adventurers because there's some really really interesting research on this subject to show that this type of training with strength training for breathing and respiratory muscle training can have some really incredible potential benefits for a high attitude hiker and so today I'm going to be diving into it a little bit, just exploring all of these potential benefits and how they may actually affect you up on the mountain. Now, I will say from the get-go, this is a subject I can't claim I'm an expert in. Now, it's something I've done a little bit of, I've done quite a bit of reading on, but I'm definitely not an expert in this subject. However, I have done a a lot of research in regards to this just so i knew what i was talking about when clients were talking to me and when i first heard about this type of training i got did get a little bit excited and spent quite a bit of time digging through many many research papers and different bits and pieces to get a good understanding so as i said not an expert but i'm just going to be laying out the results and laying out the stuff that i've found in sort of my searching around on this type of training.

[2:25] So essentially, respiratory muscle training, what is it? Well, essentially, it's a technique that aims to improve the function of your respiratory muscles through specific exercises. So with our normal strength training, we're looking at improving the function of whatever muscles we're trying to train. Respiratory muscle training is exactly the same. It's just our breathing muscles and we're trying to improve the function of them. Now, specifically what we're looking at with this type of training for improving high attitude performance and improving endurance performance is what's called inspiratory muscle training which is strengthening up the muscles responsible for inhaling as opposed to the ones exhaling and this has been shown to be relatively effective.

[3:09] Now the way that you go about this which I am going to be exploring further down the line is you do need to use something that's called a respiratory muscle trainer which is a particular device which adds a little bit of resistance a little bit of load into that inhaling breathing method but i'm going to explore that a little bit later but before we dive into that i want to just talk you through the potential benefits of this type of training for the high attitude adventurer so benefit number one is it has been shown to delay the onset of premature fatigue, So in a high-attitude environment, basically exercise-induced diaphragm fatigue is shown to be enhanced, meaning the muscles that work the diaphragm or the diaphragm itself, so muscles responsible for your breathing, have been shown to get tired. Pretty straightforward. And by strengthening up the inspiratory muscles, you can reduce the relative work of your breathing muscles, meaning that every breath you do is just easier, and delay that associated fatigue. Now that's pretty much straightforward and that's more or less what we're trying to do with our normal strength training anyway. If we can improve the relative strength in our muscles every single time they perform an action, they have to do less work, it gets easier and we delay our fatigue. So it's more or less the same with your breathing muscles there.

[4:26] Benefit number two is, this is a bit of a mouthful, so get ready for it, but RMT has been shown to help with delaying respiratory muscle metaboreflex, if I can pronounce that, on set, and more favourable blood redistribution to locomotor muscles. Now, as I said, a bit of a mouthful, but that sounds straight out of the research. But essentially what that means is during maximal exercise of attitude, the oxygen cost of actually breathing can approach up to 30% of your total oxygen consumption. So when you're up at high altitude, if you're going all out, which admittedly is rare, but in the instances where you're a very high intensity.

[5:08] The actual cost of you breathing sometimes can take up to 30% of the total oxygen that you're taking in, which if you think about it is really, really huge. Now because of this in this situation if the breathing is needing so much oxygen to actually you know happen the blood can move away from the working muscles so from your legs and from your core or whatever it may be and limit their work output because the blood's trying to go to the breathing muscles to supply them with oxygen and there's not quite as much in the working muscles and that's obviously going to be impact performance that's going to lead to fatigue and a whole bunch of other things and basically there has been some studies to show that respiratory muscle training has been shown to effectively reduce the effect of this reflex so reduce that blood moving away from the working muscles at both maximal and sub-maximal exercise at attitude so that is pretty significant and if you can get more more blood and more oxygen into the working muscles while at exercise at attitude that's only going to be a good thing so that's another benefit there.

[6:11] Another cool one is, and there's been quite a few studies to show that RMT can potentially improve clearance and tolerance to anaerobic metabolite products. So basically, when you're up at high altitude, there's an increased reliance on anaerobic metabolism. So really, really basically, you know, our energy systems can be broken into two big categories. Aerobic metabolism, where the body produces energy in the presence of oxygen, and anaerobic metabolism when the body produces energy without the presence of oxygen so obviously when we're up at a high altitude we're in a bit more of a low oxygen environment and there's not quite as much oxygen available so more and more and more the body relies on this anaerobic metabolism but the issue with this well one of the issues with this is this anaerobic metabolism can create a number of waste byproducts so things like lactate and hydrogen ions which can cause fatigue and affect exercise performance. Now, what it's been shown in a few studies is that this type of respiratory muscle training has been shown to up-regulate both the removal of these waste products as well as the muscle's ability to effectively tolerate them, especially in the respiratory muscles. So when your body is producing these waste products, your body can get rid of it quicker, but also deal with the stuff that's floating around and it won't affect you quite as much, which is pretty significant.

[7:35] Now, the next benefit is actually super, super, super important and very, very relevant, a little bit less sciencey, but this is super interesting. Basically, RMT can decrease the perception of dysnopeia, if I said that right. So basically, dysnopeia is the technical name for uncomfortable breathlessness, which is obviously pretty common in a high-attitude environment. So when we're up on the mountain, all our breathing gets a little bit quicker, and it can get to the stage when we are breathing very very quick and it can get uncomfortable it can get stressful and it can get you know turn into something that's not good and in the worst case scenario when we start getting stressed and anxious about these things it can get worse and worse and worse the breathing get quicker and quicker and quicker and can lead into all these extra complicating things which we don't want now for a number of reasons respiratory muscle training can reduce this perception of breathlessness as well as it's delay its onset so this is incredibly incredibly important mentally because if you.

[8:37] Get a little bit anxious with that quick breathing or if it's constantly on your mind, it's going to affect you in many, many different ways. So, if you can reduce that perception, it's only going to be positive.

[8:47] Now, this is a really interesting one that I've seen with some of my clients who haven't so much gotten over to high attitude, but they struggle with huffing and puffing going up hills. And they've done a few weeks of this respiratory muscle training and they've noticed just their huffing and puffing has been pretty different pretty quickly within a few weeks and that's not to say you know we haven't judged their timing or judged their power output or anything like that but just the way they felt and the comfort they felt they have noticed a difference so that is pretty interesting there now a couple more and basically rmt has been shown to increase blood oxygen saturation levels so essentially oxygen saturation is a measurement of the percentage of how much of your hemoglobin in your body is saturated with oxygen now almost all shut when you go up to high attitude i should say basically as we know the higher you go the less that the lower that number goes down because there's less oxygen available so there's less saturation in the blood and that's what people generally use with those pulse oxymeters where they check their check their blood oxygen saturation to keep an eye on what's going on and as general consensus is if it rapidly drops then you know you're in a bit of trouble basically almost all studies that have shown and that have used rmt have shown an increase in blood oxygen saturation at altitude after respiratory.

[10:09] Muscle training program which is pretty significant now the reason behind this it's not really understood they don't really know what's going on kind of the general reasoning and that they sort of theorize is that the efficiency of the entire ventricular system and the entire entire breathing system is just improved and the body simply just doesn't need to work as hard to maintain a certain blood oxygen saturation level. But, you know, they don't really understand even the guys doing all these studies, but that's sort of what's theorized. And then the last one that's pretty interesting as well.

[10:41] Um is rmt can improve processing speed and working memory during exercise up at attitude so you know it's pretty most people pretty aware who've been up to high attitude there will come a point when you get higher and higher you start to experience that sort of spaciness and you start to experience you know it's tough to really think um through complex problems it's tough to make decisions if you're getting too fatigued and if you're up high attitude it you guys can kind of be an issue now for the everyday hiker if you're going with a group or if you're going with a tour this might not be the biggest issue in the world because you've got experienced people with you to look after you and to keep you in line but if you're going on solo hikes or if you're a bit more of a mountaineer who's got to go up into you know higher and higher and make decisions around weather and safety and all of that this is pretty significant and some studies have shown that rmt can improve both processing speed and working memory during exercise at altitude. So, you know, it might be pretty relevant in certain situations.

[11:41] Which basically means that spaciness that I just mentioned, often associated with exercise at high altitude, can be somewhat reduced. And obviously it's not gonna disappear, but it can be somewhat reduced. So there are six pretty big potential benefits of this type of training for anyone going up to high altitude. You can delay fatigue, you can keep blood in the working muscles, you can improve clearance and tolerance to all those waste products, you can make your breathing feel a little bit more comfortable you can increase your blood oxygen saturation and you can improve your processing speed and working memory now that's not to say you're going to do all of those things automatically if you do this type of training this all this research on these areas is relatively new but it is potential benefits you could get so how do you go about actually getting these benefits well how do you actually go about respiratory muscle training or strength training for breathing.

[12:39] So essentially what you need in this situation is a specific thing called a respiratory muscle trainer. Basically the way that you have to, the prescription you have to follow to actually get these benefits is you need some type of device which can give you a resistance in your inspiration. So in your inhale of over 30% of your one repetition maximum, which kind of means if you, it's pretty much the same as weights.

[13:06] Like a one repetition maximum is the maximum amount of force you can produce in one repetition. And then 30% of that is you need that or over or heavier to see these results with a.

[13:23] Breathing through a straw or doing breathing through their nose or whatever it may be, there's different breathing techniques. That may be beneficial in certain situations, but when we're talking about this strength training for breathing or this respiratory muscle training for high attitude, it doesn't really add up. Essentially, you need to go out and purchase some type of device. There's a couple of things like the PowerBreathe. They've got a bunch of different models, and that's where most of these studies have been done on something called a PowerBreathe respiratory muscle trainer. There's a few others out there like an aerofit and a few others you can literally look online and they do cost a bit of money and that's why it's sort of not something i would say most people should go should purchase straight away because there's a lot other easier wins and cheaper wins and just general training and they will cost you 200 300 400 bucks so you know they are expensive but if you do purchase it the actual use of it is pretty straightforward so essentially instead of it taking up any of your major training sessions or affecting your other workouts or anything like that.

[14:25] Literally all you have to do with this type of training is you do 30 breaths in the morning, then 30 breaths in the evening, and you do that for four to six weeks before a trip or before an expedition. That's literally it. So you wake up in the morning, first thing before you roll out of bed, 30 breaths, that will take you five minutes, 30 breaths in the evening, that will take you five minutes, or maybe it will take you two and a half minutes or whatever. And that's literally it. So it's pretty straightforward. You literally just

[14:50] need one of these devices and you really will only do it like four to six weeks before a trip. And after that, the benefits tend to, you can maintain the benefits, but they don't tend to increase so much more.

[15:02] Now, you're probably thinking right now, it's like if you've gone through all that, you're like, you know what, Rowan, that sounds pretty cool. Maybe I might want to get around that. You're probably thinking about these elevation masks that you've seen people use on the internet, which are those sort of big black masks which you put over your face and you go about doing your training sessions. And we've done an episode on this before, but I'll briefly go through it. Essentially...

[15:25] These elevation masks or these altitude masks, they're not the same thing as what I've just been talking about. Essentially, they don't do any changes to the blood and when you're wearing those types of things. So there's not really doing any type of altitude training or anything like that. But essentially, specifically to what we're talking about today is they just don't produce enough resistance to be considered true respiratory muscle training. As I said before, you've got to be 30% or more of your one repetition maximum of this breathing. And with these masks is just nowhere, nowhere, nowhere near that type of intensity.

[16:00] And essentially what you need to do with these masks to get any type of benefits is you need to wear them during your exercise sessions, which can be a major pain because if you're doing a run, if you're doing a cycle, if you're doing a hike and you're wearing it, it can significantly reduce your performance, it can reduce your enjoyment and it can get in the way. So as opposed to the respiratory muscle trainers where you literally do 30 breaths in the morning, 30 breaths in the evening, these type of masks you need to wear during exercise and even then the benefits they don't line up with what we were just talking about so they're not really going to be an amazing purchase for high attitude hiker if you're looking for these particular types of benefits some people argue that they're great for creating mental toughness but again there's a lot of better ways in my opinion of creating mental toughness which aren't going to affect your workouts like that so i would say don't worry about these elevation masks, if you were interested in RMT or breathing training, purchase one of those respiratory muscle trainers, like a power breathe or an aero fit or something like that.

[17:02] Saying all this, this is definitely not something that any hiker, you know, I would say every single hiker needs or anything like that. It's definitely that one of those things that's just going to give you those final percentages in performance. So it's not going to be this magic pill where it's going to improve all of these things and make you feel absolutely amazing. But it's going to be one of these final things that you sort of tick off after you're covering all your foundations and all your basics. So generally what I recommend is if you're make sure you've got to be nailing your aerobic fitness and your strength training to start. They're the first two any high-attitude hiker needs to be nailing. Then you need to make sure you're on top of your nutrition and your hydration. So if you're tossing up between a consultation with a dietician or one of these respiratory muscle trainers, I'm always going to recommend you spend that money on a consultation with a dietician. After that, you will need to have practiced and mastered abdominal breathing and just gotten that basic breathing technique down. And then if you've done all those so you're doing your aerobic fitness you're doing your strength training you're nailing nutrition nailing your hydration you're fully confident and fully proficient at abdominal breathing then you may consider respiratory muscle training and you might go out and purchase one of those things now if you did want to learn more about this or how to.

[18:16] I'm not an amazing expert when it comes to this. I'm just presenting the facts as they've come to me, but there are some interesting experts out there. So, feel free to reach out to me and I can put you in contact with some people who can potentially help you there. Or if you're interested in just learning a little bit more of just the basics

[18:32] that I was talking about, feel free to reach out and let me know. But it is a very, very interesting subject and I just thought I'd explore it today for you guys because it's a very, I think probably in the next 10 years or so, we're going to see more and more and more of this type of stuff becoming popularized in the high attitude world. And I think it's very interesting, these potential benefits for people and the actual process of getting these benefits doesn't seem like it's super complicated aside from buying one of these devices. So food for thought there, pretty interesting subject. I do hope you've enjoyed that and you've dealt with me getting a little bit deeper into some of the science today, But I hope you've enjoyed it. Hope you got a little bit out of it. And we will talk to you very, very soon.

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