Training our lungs will help us to improve our physical performance

When we do physical exercise, our muscles work harder, the body consumes more oxygen and produces more carbon dioxide. Thus, our breathing increases from 15 to 40-60 breaths per minute.

Fortunately, we can learn to control and train our breathing in order to receive more oxygen (and more efficiently), which will improve our physical performance.

Breathing exercises

There are some exercises that can help us to increase our lung capacity by 15% in just a few weeks:

– Yoga: with the Pranayama technique we can get more oxygen in our blood, greater resistance and increased capacity for recovery.

– Take long, conscious and deep breaths.

– Exhale in a slow and controlled manner, trying to exhale for longer than the inhale.

Repeat these exercises for a few minutes.

– Apnoea: this consists of holding your breath for a few seconds when doing physical exercise.

– Breathe in and feel how your lungs expand.

– Hold in all of the air that you can for as long as you can.

– Exhale softly.

– Intervals technique: this model is recommended for runners who have been practising running for a while and feel stuck.

– Run for 10 minutes at an intense and constant pace.

– Reduce the intensity to recovery, until your heart rate drops to 120 beats per minute (bpm)

Carry out this exercise for 3 series.

– Inflate balloons: this is a simple exercise, that can be done anywhere at any time.

– Blow up a balloon with complete, deep breaths.

– Let the balloon deflate.

Repeat this exercise 30 times. We recommend dividing the 30 repetitions into two different times of day.

Not smoking and getting some exercise every day are two keys to having healthy lungs.

This post is also available in: Portuguese (Portugal)