At rest we breathe as little as 8-12 litres of air per minute. Breathing involves using our diaphragm and chest wall muscles (Respiratory muscles). These muscles act together like a mattress foot pump or a bellow, to create air flow in and out of our body.
To inhale, these muscles contract to expand the chest cavity, stretching our coastal cartilage, creating a drop in pressure to cause the air to flow inwards. To exhale, our respiratory muscles relax, causing our coastal cartilage to pull back into a relaxed position, forcing air out of our lungs.
During exercise our abdominal muscles support our respiratory muscles as we exhale. This is why when we are short of breath, we struggle to breathe in, but we can exhale more effectively. Our abdominal muscles are always working to help us walk, keep balance and sit; causing them to be more alert and efficient when helping us to breathe. During exercise we can burn as much as 150 litres of oxygen per minute and for elite male athletes, even up to 240 litres per minute.
This huge work load is why our breathing efficiency improves. This is the same as our efficiency rate improves when we do something more repetitive and it will continue to improve if we do something more repeatedly. For example, a chef will be able to chop 100 carrots more effectively and efficiently than we will, simply because the human body naturally adapts to repetitive movement.
Therefore breathing from exercise will improve, if we exercise more regularly. Also our inspiratory muscles will grow stronger from the increased resistance, promoting a trend of increasing breathing efficiency.
To improve the rate of our efficiency, we need to focus on inhaling as much air as possible. This will improve the strength of our respiratory muscles; thus allowing us to get more oxygen to the working muscles a lot more effectively. Overall our fitness will improve, getting us one step closer to our potential.
Cheers, Xenus Fitness
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