Inspiratory muscles strength training in recreational athletes

Introduction. - Respiratory muscles strength and endurance influence athletic performance. Besides conventional spirometry, sniff test, inspiratory and expiratory maximal pressures can directly assess respiratory muscle strength. Respiratory muscles can be train through a device offering inspiratory and expiratory resistance. Methods. - Nineteen subjects aged 18 to 30 years and practicing leisure sport trained inspiratory muscles on Powerbreathe (R) for eight weeks. Resistance was set at 85% of maximal inspiratory pressure determined during a preliminary session. Evaluation was made trough voluntary and non-invasive methods on Macro 5000 (R) (PI max, PE max and sniff test). Results. - An increase of 21.77% of the maximum inspiratory pressure, 17% of the maximum expiratory pressure and 18% of the sniff test are recorded after eight weeks of training. Conclusions. - A specific training of inspiratory muscles (Powerbreathe Sports performance) increases the power of these muscles (voluntary and non-invasive tests). (C) 2011 SPLF. Published by Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.