Powebreathe equipment
|
I have had a bright pink POWERBreathe Iron Girl Plus on test
since early August and it is time to let you know what I thought of it.
What does it do?
It is an inspiratory muscle training device that works on the muscles you use to inhale. Over time it should make breathing easier during exercise, such that you can train harder for less effort and recover your breathing more quickly after a workout.
How do you use it?
The POWERbreathe allows you to adjust the resistance at which you train your inspriatory muscles and before I could start using it I had to find the level at which I could only just manage 30 breaths. The resistance is dialled up from the base of the unit and ranges from zero to 10. I started on level 2 and did not get beyond 2.75, even after 2 months.
Training: My training commitment was just 30 breaths, twice a day, for 6 weeks and then twice a day every other day. I have kept it by my computer, so I use it while my computer is warming up and again when I switch it off, or sometimes when I am travelling in the car (only when someone else is driving of course!). It is important to breathe in fully and forcefully and I look pretty silly at times, but that never stopped me doing something that would make me faster!
Warming up: I have also used it when warming up for a race. The logic being that I warm up my legs, why not my lungs? For warm up, I reduce the training load by 20%, for me that meant reducing it from say 2 to 1.5 or 2.75 to 2, and then taking two sets of 30 breaths with two minutes rest between them, about 5 minutes before I race.
Scratch Podium: Silver-Birkmyre, Gold-Cullen, Bronze-Curtis
|
Does it work?
It is of course impossible to completely isolate the effect of the POWERbreathe from everything else that I have done this season to improve my performance. However, I have often thought that my breathing was letting me down and that if I could work on it this, it could be an area that would be particularly beneficial to me.
I came to cycling relatively late in life at 35. Whether it is that, or the years of hard partying that came before, I don't know, but there is no doubt that I seem to be breathing harder than those around me in a race.
Any athlete will work on recovery, for me it is so that I can perform repeated sprints in a points race, or simply to be able to react to changes in pace in a criterium or scratch race, or perhaps after a climb on the road. However, before POWERbreathe I focussed only on the recovery in my legs. Now I have something that will work specifically on my lungs.
Have I noticed a difference?
Yes, is the straight answer and I will continue with the POWERBreathe training over the winter and into next year.
The bottom line is that if you can recover more quickly, you can push harder in training or racing. So you don't necessarily feel any better, but because you are able to do that, it is your results and times that really do the talking. For me, I have improved my 2k pursuit time by over 3 seconds and collected a silver medal at the National Track Champs. In that race, there were several 'go hard or go home' moments and by half distance, after a crazy lone break, I honestly thought I had given too much. But I was able to recover enough to contest the sprint.
Add to this a silver at the World Masters road race, on a course with some proper climbs, that should have seen a track rider like me out of the back of the bunch and never to recover and I think there is evidence enough that it has been a useful training tool.
Would I recommend it to other cyclists?
Yes, definitely. If you are looking for an edge or if you would like to be able to recover your breathing more quickly, this is for you.
Pootle 
