is that the mouth piece thingy? I am curious too!

Try a balloon, it'll be a lot cheaper.

it's an specific inspiratory muscle training.....

with ballon will be Ignorance ....

I TRIED TO BUY BALLONS, THEY WERE OUT, THEY SAID "DAMN LUCKY THE CLOWN" BOUGHT THEM ALL UP!

Please explain cuz it looks like junk to me.

Change my mind about it.

jaretj

Inspiratory and expiratory muscle aids are devices and techniques that involve the manual or mechanical application of forces to the body or intermittent pressure changes to the airway to assist inspiratory or expiratory muscle function. The most important inspiratory aid is to receive air under pressure when one inhales (intermittent positive pressure ventilation or IPPV).

Sounds like a balloon forcing air into your lungs might work. Anyway, it was a joke. You asked for opinions. I just can't see any real gains from those things.



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One LBS here in San Diego sells them. The marketing for them on the package makes a good pitch. I will sit on the fence for this one!

okey it's was joke....

but don't say to use a ballon to:

It was researched and developed by SPORTS SCIENTISTS at Birmingham University (one of the UK’s leading Human Performance Research Universities) and Loughborough University

When was the last time you actually thought to yourself "I can't breath in hard enough"?

<Try a balloon, it'll be a lot cheaper. >

I prefer a hot water bottle.

OK, I'm glad it's OK with you to make a joke, but not to say balloon. You should try a condom.

BALLOON BALLOON

BALLOON BALLOON

BALLOON BALLOON

BALLOON BALLOON

Actually your comment is a good one. It has been shown that indeed, the ability to "inhale" can be a limiting factor in performance--although my guess is that its less so for trained individuals.

Interestingly, the academic literature also shows that respiratory muscle mechanics can be improved through training with a device like this. However, whether this translates into improved performance (Vo2max, etc) has been debated. Some earlier--and likely flawed--studies have shown that there is an improvement seen in untrained individuals and others have shown no impact whatsoever on trained individuals. The question is were these researchers measuring the right factors that could be expected to be improved by "lung training". There is a paper out there by Dr Alison McConnell that shows a 2% improvement in a group of rowers that is based on actual times. Her work also shows that blood lactate is lower at a given power output for cyclist after IMT. These two papers are enough to convince me that IMT is worthwhile and I will be adding this to my training this winter--looking at Powerlung.

VOLIANITIS S., McCONNELL A.K, KOUTEDAKIS Y, McNAUGHTON, L, BACKX K. & JONES D.A. (2001) The influence of inspiratory muscle training upon rowing performance in competitive rowers. Med. Sci. Sports Exerc. 33(5): 803-809 Impact = 2.60 McCONNELL AK & SHARPE GR. (2005) The effect of inspiratory muscle training upon maximum lactate steady-state and blood lactate concentration. Eur. J. Appl. Physiol. 94:277-284. Impact = 1.49. This is another recent paper: McCONNELL AK. & ROMER LM . (2004) Inspiratory muscle training in healthy humans: resolving the controversy. [Review]. Int. J. Sports Med. 25: 284-293. Impact = 1.37

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"I really wish you would post more often. You always have some good stuff to say. I copied it below just in case someone missed it." BarryP to Chainpin on 10/21/06

This is very similar to a product called the 'Spiro Tiger' which was developed by some swiss prof at the ETH University. Someone on slowtwitch actually reviewed it a few years ago....

http://www.slowtwitch.com/...ewproduct/spiro.html


Their homepage.

http://www.idiag.ch/index.php?id=11&L=1

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Searching for the bliss of ultimate exertion.

It all sounds fishy to me. The only situation where I could see inhalation as being a limiting factor on performance is if you can actually use all the O2 you're already able to inhale. In all sub-maximal efforts, couldn't one elicit the same results by simply breathing a bit deeper?

It all has to do with respiratory muscle fatigue, which is more of an issue for untrained people than for endurance trained athletes. At threshold it appears that respiratory fatigue is a limiter even for trained athletes: Boutellier U et al (Eur J Appl Physiol Occup Physiol 1992;65(4):347-53 The respiratory system as an exercise limiting factor in normal trained subjects.) I'm wondering how much of an adverse impact respiratory fatigue has on an athletes performance over the course of an ironman distance event, and how this can be improved with IMT? My guess is that for ultra-endurance athletes training the lungs is even more important, since we are out there for 10+ hours.

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"I really wish you would post more often. You always have some good stuff to say. I copied it below just in case someone missed it." BarryP to Chainpin on 10/21/06