POWERbreathe, a hand-held inspiratory muscle trainer is a unique, simple-to-use, drug free product designed to help maximise sports performance, improve fitness and reduce breathlessness.

It uses the basic principles of resistance training, with adjustable load which caters for all capabilities and permits progressive training
'Dumb-bells for your diaphragm' - Just as you might use weights to strengthen your arm muscles, breathing in through POWERbreathe for a few minutes twice daily, makes your inspiratory muscles work harder - thereby increasing their strength and endurance.

It is an easy-to-use, drug-free, hand-held device with a comfortable mouthpiece. Within a few days your inspiratory muscles will feel stronger and within four weeks your lung function, and ultimately performance, will improve.

How POWERbreathe can help Asthma sufferers

Asthma is the most common chronic disease in the developed world

In the UK, around 3 million people have asthma

Asthma is responsible for the loss of 11 million working days every year

Asthma attacks are behind the hospitalisation of more than 100,000 Britons a yea

Asthma attacks cause the deaths of some 1,900 people annually - the equivalent of one person every four hours

One child in every ten suffers from asthma

POWERbreathe has been shown to reduce breathlessness and bring new-found freedom to people who, because of illness or advancing age, are restricted by shortness of breath.

Using the laboratory-proven POWERbreathe training system of 30 BREATHS TWICE A DAY, the strength of your breathing muscles will improve rapidly.

An easy-to-use, drug free, hand-held device, POWERbreathe has a controllable load for progressive exercise and is appropriate for people at all levels of fitness.

Relieves the symptoms of ASTHMA, POWERbreathe is great for asthmatics, or anyone who suffers from respiratory problems. Numerous research trials have already been conducted, examining breathlessness and respiratory muscle fatigue in many groups of people.

In randomised, controlled trials, on mild / moderate asthmatics, POWERbreathe increased inspiratory muscle strength by a mean of 11% in just 3 weeks (McConnell et al., 1998)

What the experts say

Dr Alison McConnell is a Reader in Sport & Exercise Physiology at Brunel University, where she is Head of the Centre for Sports Innovation. More than a decade ago, Alison recognised that breathing was a potentially limiting factor to athletic performance and is now a leading authority on breathing and exercise, working with some of the UK's top athletes on breathing-related issues. Her team of human performance scientists at Birmingham University researched and developed the POWERbreathe product.

Dr Alison McConnell's expert opinion…
Breathing is an often practised, but seldom mastered art. In the course of a normal day (24hrs) we take over 20,000 breaths. If you're physically active and walk to work, take the stairs, and go to the gym, this figure could be as high as 30,000. But even top athletes can fail to breathe optimally and recent research has shown that specific training of the breathing muscles can improve the performance of highly trained athletes.

In addition to their role in sucking the air in and out of our lungs, the breathing muscles (principally the diaphragm, the muscles of the rib cage and the abdominal muscles) play a vital role in stabilising and rotating the upper body. In sports such as rowing, boxing and racquet sports, this secondary function of the breathing muscles has obvious implications for an athlete who is also trying to breathe as hard a possible at the same time.

The demand upon the breathing muscles increases enormously above what is known as the 'lactate threshold'. This exercise domain is associated with short, intense bursts of activity and places the breathing muscles under sufficient strain that they show fatigue. Above the lactate threshold, breathing is driven to high levels because lactic acid stimulates it to increase as part of a compensatory strategy to overt fatigue of other muscles.

Wellness
Breathing problems due to illness, or simply getting older, can become a barrier to doing the things we used to enjoy. Our research has shown that using POWERbreathe restores breathing power and reduces breathlessness in those with conditions such as asthma or emphysema.

Fitness
My experience as a sport scientist and respiratory physiologist has demonstrated that good (comfortable) breathing technique is only possible if your breathing muscles are in good shape. Our research has shown that training with POWERbreathe gives breathing 'power and reserve', making a workout more comfortable and enjoyable.

Sports Performance
My research over the past decade has convinced me that the work associated with breathing limits athletic performance. Athletes who want to maximise their performance should address their breathing specifically, because their normal training fails to do so. Our research shows that training with POWERbreathe increases the power and endurance of breathing and improves athletic performance significantly.


Product descriptions

Most people assume breathing is controlled automatically, like our heartbeat, but the truth is that we need to learn how to breathe well.

New research has shown that exercising and strengthening the muscles we use to breathe in - the inspiratory muscles - can help reduce breathlessness and can also alleviate the symptoms of asthma.

POWERbreathe has been shown to reduce breathlessness and bring new-found freedom to people who, because of illness or advancing age, are restricted by shortness of breath. Using the laboratory-proven.

POWERbreathe training system of 30 BREATHS TWICE A DAY, the strength of your breathing muscles will improve rapidly. An easy-to-use, drug free, hand-held device, POWERbreathe has a controllable load for progressive exercise and is appropriate for people at all levels of fitness.

Relieves the symptoms of ASTHMA

POWERbreathe is great for asthmatics, or anyone who suffers from respiratory problems. Numerous research trials have already been conducted, examining breathlessness and respiratory muscle fatigue in many groups of people. In randomised, controlled trials, on mild / moderate asthmatics, POWERbreathe increased inspiratory muscle strength by a mean of 11% in just 3 weeks (McConnell et al., 1998)
Inspiratory muscle training has improved inspiratory muscle function in the following conditions:
• Spinal cord injury (Huldtgren et al., 1980, Gross et al., 1980)
• Cystic fibrosis (Sawyer et al., 1993)
• Chronic heart failure (Cahalin et al., 1997, Mancini et al., 1995)
• Neuromuscular diseases including MS (Foglio et al., 1994), Duchenne muscular dystrophy (Wanke et al., 1994)
• Heart-lung transplant patients (Ambrosino et al., 1996)

Buy the product

How many of us work out in the gym, trying to get fit, tone up or lose weight? And how many of us have stopped to think about how we can improve one of the most important aspects of our fitness - our breathing?

Exercising and strengthening the muscles we use to breathe in - the inspiratory muscles - can help alleviate breathlessness and can also make exercise feel easier.

New research has shown that training these muscles can improve all-round fitness and even maximise the effectiveness of other muscles used in exercise.

To get the most from your body you need to pay attention to all aspects of your fitness. Most people assume breathing is controlled automatically, like our heartbeat, but the truth is that we need to learn how to breathe well. Using the laboratory-proven POWERbreathe training system of 30 BREATHS TWICE A DAY, your strength and endurance will increase rapidly. An easy-to-use, drug-free, hand held device, POWERbreathe has a controllable load for progressive training and is appropriate for people at all levels of fitness.

It's unique, adjustable valve system means that as your breathing improves, you can step up your POWERbreathe training, allowing you to progress to peak inspiratory muscle fitness. Within a few days, inspiratory muscles will feel stronger and within four weeks lung function will improve. As a result, any exercise or fitness activity carried out will feel easier, enabling you to get more out of it.

Buy the product

Exercising and strengthening the muscles we use to breathe in - the inspiratory muscles - can help boost performance. New research has shown that training these muscles can improve all-round fitness and even maximise the effectiveness of other muscles used in sport.

Using the laboratory-proven POWERbreathe training system of 30 breaths twice a day, an athlete's strength and endurance will increase rapidly. POWERbreathe - an easy-to-use, drug-free, hand held device, has a controllable load for progressive training and is appropriate for athletes in all types of sports.

Research has shown that the inspiratory muscles have such a huge task to perform that they can 'steal' blood from our exercising limbs to supplement their work (Harms et al., 1998). The effect of this is to limit the performance of those limb muscles - making exercise feel harder and impairing performance. New research has now shown that specific inspiratory muscle training (IMT) improves the efficiency of the inspiratory muscles (Sharpe & McConnell, 1998), with the consequence that performance in laboratory controlled trials is improved by almost 30% (Caine & McConnell, 1998).

Studies have shown that time trial performance improves in elite rowers (Voliantis et al., 2001a) and cyclists (Romer et al., 2001a) by as much as 4.6%! That slashes almost 3 minutes off a 40km cycling time trial, and gives a winning margin of more than 60m in a 2000m rowing race!

Buy the product