POWERbreathe
At Breathing Works, we stock and sell a range of POWERbreathe products, including inspiratory muscle trainers, expiratory muscle trainers and mucus clearance devices.
Learn how POWERbreathe can help you.
Inspiratory and Expiratory Muscle Training Devices
Inspiratory muscle training (IMT) devices are designed to strengthen your breathing muscles, helping you to breathe more efficiently. The device creates a resistance to your inhale, which makes your breathing muscles (primarily the diaphragm) work harder. It works in the same way as you might use a weighted dumbbell to strengthen your biceps. Just as you would gradually increase the weight of your dumbbell over time as you get stronger, you can gradually increase the resistance on your POWERbreathe device to get progressive strengthening benefits to your diaphragm and other inspiratory muscles.
The release of POWERbreathe’s Expiratory Muscle Trainers is now allowing us to strengthen not only the inspiratory muscles but also the expiratory muscles required for forced expiratory efforts such as coughing, singing and playing musical instruments.
Who can benefit from training with POWERbreathe?
Sports hobbyists and professionals
Whether you exercise to keep fit or are a top-level athlete, improving the strength and endurance of your inspiratory muscles will benefit your performance. IMT has been scientifically proven to strengthen your breathing muscles to help them cope with the increased breathing demands during exercise and reduce whole-body effort, making exercise feel easier. This naturally allows you to increase your training intensity to enhance your performance further. Additionally, there is evidence to support the use of IMT for enhanced recovery post-training or competition.
For some people, expiratory muscle fatigue can also be a factor in reduced sporting performance. In these cases, Expiratory Muscle Training (EMT) would be prescribed to strengthen the relevant musculature.
Sufferers of asthma, high blood pressure and other conditions
A common cause of breathlessness can be a weakness of your breathing muscles. Our muscles can weaken because of poor breathing patterns, sedentary lifestyles, normal aging processes, or a medical condition. Below are a few of the specific health conditions where strengthening of the inspiratory muscles with IMT has proven effective:
- High blood pressure
- Asthma
- COPD
- Stroke
- Neuromuscular diseases
EMT has been indicated in people suffering from conditions that result in difficulty and weakness during expiratory efforts such as swallowing, speaking and coughing.
Evidence shows that EMT improves maximal expiratory pressure in the following conditions:
- Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD)
- Cough (such as chronic bronchitis)
- Multiple sclerosis
- Parkinson’s disease
- Spinal cord injury
- Stroke
Performers & musicians
If you are a singer-musician, actor/actress or dancer, developing better breath control can be achieved through both IMT and EMT programmes to optimise your performance.
How do you train with POWERbreathe?
To train with an inspiratory muscle training POWERbreathe device at home, you need to start at a resistance level and be in a position that enables you to perform the training with good technique. This may be lying, sitting or standing, depending on your baseline strength. A common mistake when using IMT is having the resistance set too high, and therefore, the body ends up compensating with the incorrect muscles. You will place the POWERbreathe IMT device in your mouth and breathe IN your mouth whilst ensuring you are recruiting the muscles in the lower ribcage, i.e. your diaphragm and intercostals muscles. You will then breathe out your nose to complete a full, relaxed exhale. If you are unsure how to get started, our team at Breathing Works can help you learn how to use your particular model to its greatest effect and make it a part of your lifestyle for improved strength and easier breathing.
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