Improve Your Cycling Performance with Respiratory Training?

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SUMMARY
Is respiratory muscle training the missing link in endurance performance? This deep dive breaks down new research on a 48-week protocol applied to elite cyclists, showing surprising improvements in VO2max, ventilatory efficiency, and power output—without adding hours to their training week. Learn how tools like the BreatheWay Better and PowerBreathe K4, combined with smart ventilatory strategies, transformed how these athletes breathe—and perform. Ideal for performance-focused athletes and evidence-driven coaches.

CHAPTERS
0:00 – Introduction
1:05 – The Study Setup: Who, What, and Why
3:15 – Why Respiratory Training Is Often Overlooked
5:00 – Tools Used: BreatheWay Better & PowerBreathe K4
8:10 – Variable Resistance vs. Linear Resistance
10:25 – Key Strategies for Ventilatory Efficiency
12:50 – Baseline Data of Elite Cyclists
15:05 – The Year-Long Training Protocol
17:30 – Pre vs. Post Results: VO2max and Breathing Metrics
20:45 – Diaphragm Strength and Volume Increases
23:00 – Linking Breathing Economy to Performance Gains
25:15 – Implications for Athletes and Coaches
26:30 – Where to Learn More & Final Thoughts

My chat with Cyril RICCI (in French, English Subs available): https://youtu.be/NyvFTy-qPi8
Cyril and Zian’s Paper: https://zenodo.org/records/15845403
Cyril’s Blog: https://www.hnsperformance.com/blog

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WHO IS SEAN?
Sean is an endurance specialist based in France. A generalist at heart with a keen interest in sports physiology, he specialises in endurance training and respiratory training for all sports. He has been coaching beginners and professional athletes for nearly 10 years, helping them improve their work capacity, recovery, and performance. He also teaches coaches, persoanl trainers, and physiotherapists through his content, seminars, and online courses.
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In this video, I’m going to share some really cool data with you regarding respiratory training or more specifically the training of the respiratory muscles and venty strategies when it comes to endurance performance. So, without further ado, let’s dive into this new paper that just got published and let’s look at what’s going on together. So, here you go. This uh paper was published just a few days ago by Siri who’s based in the south of France. He’s a good colleague of mine. We exchange almost daily and we have been for a few years now and Zen who is a master staff student at the University of Perpin and who helped Siri document this whole process. So the name of the study is effects of respatory muscle training and ventilatory strategies on the performance of professional cyclists a 48we longitudinal analysis in 10 elite endurance athletes. So, first and foremost, I am not a researcher. Uh, so if you want to read the study front to back, I highly recommend that you do so. Uh, so you can get make up your own mind. Uh, find the holes where you want to f find them. Uh, find the upsides where you want to find them. Share all that in the comments below. Uh, this video is meant to try and share and spread that information as wide as possible because in my estimation, uh, the training of the rest muscles and breathing in general has been downplayed a lot. Um some people appreciate the uh utility that it has but a lot of people have been downplaying it as well and uh this uh analysis shows some really interesting results that Siril was able to attain with his professional cyclists. So I will um let you read through all of this. Uh but essentially Siril has been working with high level cyclists and we’re talking uh grand tour riders I believe at this point out of the out of the 15. So there’s 10 in this study but now there’s more uh athletes that he works with that are kind of part of the cohort and continuing this training because he didn’t set up that study like you would set up an 8week training program study with a a control group. Uh those guys train those guys compete at the highest level. A few of them are in the to France as we speak right now. Uh and so you can’t just find a a group of professional cyclists that are just going to sit on the sidelines or not do the actual beneficial training for a whole season uh to to to to pump out some results on a on a study. Um so with those kind of groups, it’s really hard to do any kind of controls. It doesn’t mean you shouldn’t. it doesn’t mean that uh this study is a gold standard uh despite the fact that it doesn’t have a control group and it’s not randomized. Um so for the methodological part I’ll let you dig into the details. I’ll let you make up your own opinion. But uh I just find that the results that Sil got with his writers is is really impressive and and really cool to uh to try and put forward. So essentially uh the cyclists that he worked with uh did the training the reg regular training that they that they do over a season uh some with their team some in races some with seril and uh ser prescribed all the resty training uh for those athletes and I had an exchange with him. I actually uh posted it yesterday on my YouTube channel on the French YouTube channel. Uh I put the subtitles on so you should be able to watch it and read the subtitles in English. Uh Siril’s English unfortunately is uh not at the level where we can uh have an open exchange about all those uh technical concepts but uh it’s all there and I hope you can you can read the subtitles if you need to. And if you do go and watch that video, please leave me a comment below. So it’ll be good to know uh which portion of my English channel is so interested that they go and actually listen to something in French and read the uh subtitles in English. So we had a chat about this and he said that um those athletes dedicated about an hour and 15 minutes a week to resty training. So it was almost kind of a micro doing strategy and it was based around two main devices. the isocapnic breathway better which I’ve been using for some years now with my athletes and I find great benefit in them whether they’re cyclists I use I use it with a lot of crossfitters you know a lot of combat sport athletes uh I think it’s the best tool to start respiratory training um I am affiliated with them uh and I do promote their stuff uh because I think that it’s the best on the market at this point but again I’ll let you uh make up your own opinion about this uh the breathe way better and he also used the the power breathe. Um I’m not sure which model he uses in the K series 3, four or five, probably the five. Uh which has variable resistance. And the main difference uh we talked about this in the in the chat that we had. The main difference with a regular power breathe with the cheaper ones with the linear resistance, let’s call it. Uh the main difference is that it’s essentially going to drop resistance as you breathe in. And why that is interesting is that when you take a full inhale against a resistance, your uh tital volume or your accessible volume drops uh simply because when your lungs are full, you can’t apply enough pressure to put more air in. Uh and if you add a layer of resistance on top of the normal resistance of your lungs, it’s essentially going to shorten your range of motion when it comes to breathing. a little bit like a heavy bar on a beginner’s back would shorten their range of motion in the squat. Uh and contrary and u uh contrary to what you would see in trained athletes that can squat all the way down with a heavy load with breathing, you cannot take a full breath uh with a resistance. So the variable resistance device helps accommodate for this and helps you keep a full inhale in terms of volume while applying a resistance that is going to kind of gradually um go down as the inhale um is is happening. So those are the two primary devices that he used and then he applied a lot of ventilatory strategies during training that that is very important for him to or that’s something that he emphasized is that um the the respiratory training with the tools is great and it’s very important and the numbers that we’ll see after show how much progress you can actually do over a year if you’re diligent with it. Um, but more importantly, if you want that to transfer into performance outcomes on the field, you need to uh be be very precise with the ventilatory strategies that you use in training. Um, and to give you the most simple one is focus on your breathing when you train. Uh, and try to slow down your breathing and and make it deeper than what it usually is without thinking about it. breathe deeper, breathe slower. Those things will have a beneficial effect. We can come back on the details just after. And so he trained those guys uh and he just tracked the data for a year. And uh we see here some of the venty parameters before the protocol. Uh yes, it’s only 10 athletes, but that’s uh that’s already quite a few when you look at the level that they have. Um what was it here in terms of the results? Uh so you’re looking at 10. uh we’ll look at the but essentially 90 uh milliliters per kilo per minute of V2 on average for this group plus minus 5. So it’s I mean you don’t you can’t get much much higher than this. Uh so mean values FEV1 which is the first uh second exhale right so you could call it expiratory power uh 5.1 L F6 which is kind of the total expiratory volume uh in 6 seconds 6.1 L the ratio 83 the S index which is what you get from working with the power breathe uh device uh and it’s something that my colleague uh Tom Kowolski has documented quite a bit in recent times times. Uh he is out of uh Czech Republic if I’m not mistaken. I wanted to say Poland but I believe it’s Czech Republic. Um and if I’m mistaken to I’m really sorry. Um he has published quite a bit on respiratory training and he has published some interesting demographic uh averages uh or demographic how do you how would you call that? essentially the the the distribution of the lower, the middle, and the top of what he finds in different sports and for different levels uh within the the Olympic squads that he works with. I believe again, I hope I’m not getting any of this information wrong. I had him on the podcast a while back. Go check that out if you’re interested. Uh peak inspiratory flow, uh 8 L per second and inspiratory volume, that’s again on the inspiratory, 5.1 liters. So that’s uh the mean resty venttory parameters before they started. Um so yeah those guys have an average of 89.87 milliliters per kilo per minute plus – 3 milliliters. I was a little off before it’s not plus – 5. Uh with a VT1 around 53 milliliters per kilo per minute and a VT2 around 78. Uh we’ll look at what that corresponds to with the watts after. Uh and from a ventatory perspective uh they looked at they were at 2.6 L of tital volume at at the first threshold and 3.6 at the second threshold. Uh minute ventilation reached was 193 at V2 max. Um and measured at 173 at VT2 and 65 L per minute at VT1. Uh so those are the title volumes. uh V2 max was reached at 58 breaths per minute uh with a tital volume of 3.3 L. So those are things that we can come back to uh afterwards if we look at the uh pre-intervention numbers here. So yeah, 90.6 milliliters per kilo per minute uh cuz I was probably on a different test. Threshold 2 78.8 8 threshold one respiratory rates at V2 max, 58 breaths per minute, um 47 breaths per minute at VT2 and 25ish breaths per minute at VT1 with tital volumes uh going from 2.6 to 3.6 and then down to 3.3 uh at V2 max with the uh corresponding minute ventilation. In terms of mechanical performance, they were at a power output, maximum power output of 425 watts when they reached V2 max uh which is a 6.5 watt per kilo uh relative power uh and record the power at ventilatory thresholds were uh around 200 watts sorry 300 watts at VT1 and uh around 390 at VT2. Um so those are the pre-protocol numbers and we also have the relative powers here. Now we talked about the protocol uh again go read the paper go download it share it far and wide it’s really interesting uh the ventilatory performance pyramid uh which starts with ventilatory awareness mobility and coordination. So how are you going to be able to manipulate your your breathing and your bre your your respiratory system? Uh then you layer on ventilatory muscle strength and endurance with the power breathe with the K series uh from uh sorry the power breathe and the brea the and the breathe way better uh CO2 tolerance which you can train in in different ways. Then you integrate that or uh into training or into strategy sessions and then you can apply those uh competencies that you developed and those capacities into the competitive event. Um, and I told you about the so the the tools breathe way better. Um, the best restoratory tool on the market in my estimation at this point in time. Why? Because it allows you to maintain a full range of motion. It allows you to get tactile feedback with the the with the bag that you’re filling up. It allows you to uh maintain uh your isocapnic an isocaptic state meaning that your CO2 is not going to drop because you’re hyperventilating. Right? If you just sit here and hyperventilate after 10 15 seconds your head’s going to start to hurt. Uh and that’s your just your body’s way of letting you know that you’ve you’re dropping your CO2 levels too low and you need to stop and you need to just hold your breath and then CO2 levels goes back up and then the brain is happy and your head stops hurting. It’s simplified, but that’s kind of what what happens. So, if you hyperventilate, if you’re sitting down and you’re training your respiratory muscles with a, for example, the power breathe, you’ll see if you if you’ve ever used it, you can do it for 20 seconds, 30 seconds, but then it starts to get hard. And it’s mainly because your body is not happy with the fact that you’re essentially getting rid of more CO2 than you’re producing. Right? It’s fine to breathe hard when you’re exercising because you’re actually producing a lot of CO2 and that’s your body’s way of getting rid of it is breathing harder. But if you breathe harder but you’re not doing any mechanical work that’s creating that CO2, now you’re at a deficit. And so one of the main features of the isocapnic uh breathe better is that it will help you maintain uh a steady level of CO2 while you kind of target and train your respiratory muscles. And uh I actually have a whole training program based around the isocaptain device. I’ll obviously leave the link down in the description if you’re interested in starting this kind of training and and and kind of knowing what to do with it. Uh it’s still a very young field of training. There’s still lots to do in terms of structure of training application. Like I said, Sir does quite a bit of micro doing with it throughout the day with his athletes. Um but there’s there’s huge benefits on the health side, on the performance side, on the perceptive side. I think we often downplay the importance of perception and how you feel. But uh if you control your breathing better, you will feel more in control and you will perform better as a result of it. It’s it’s that straightforward. Uh and and for those that struggle with their breathing, I think it’s a great starting point. Uh so he used the breathway better. He also used here we go power breathe K4 with the variable resistance. Uh and I explained that uh before. He used a sperometer for the functional assessment namely for the FEV1 and the FEV6. Um and uh the K4 was used for the peak inspiratory flow, inspatory volume and the inspatory strength index uh the S index that we talked about just before. Um and again I recommend that you check all this out in detail. Here we can see the the chart, right? So it didn’t just pop out of nowhere. It actually has been gradually increasing throughout the the protocol that he that he set up. Started in April last year, ended in April this year. And you can see the FEV6, which is the total volume, uh started around 6.1 and ended up uh upwards of 6.5 uh for uh the for the year of monitoring that he did with those athletes. And keep in mind that this analysis is over 11 uh 11 11 months, 48 weeks. But he’s still doing that stuff, right? Since April, he’s continued training those guys. He’s still seeing them for training camps. He’s still monitoring them. They’re still doing the ventatory stuff every day. He was even telling me that uh and that was the first time last year. uh he already had some of the guys that he trained uh in the tour to France and he was going to uh he was going to actually stop some of the resto training during the the Grand Tour uh during the tour to France uh to try and um spare them a little bit and not get them to exert too much energy obviously cuz it’s kind of a warrition of war it’s kind of a war of attrition out there when it comes to just maintaining enough energy so that you can do the work and survive the 3 weeks of uh of competition. But he was saying that the athlete said, “No, no, no, no, no. Don’t take this away from me. I need this. I want to do my morning uh routine with the Breatheway better. Uh I want to I want to maintain it. I I don’t care if you have to shorten it or modify it, but figure out a way so that I can keep doing it.” Uh so the guys really feel a benefit from using the breaway better, from getting their breathing going in the morning. uh they have specific strategies depending on the nature of the stage depending if if it’s a time trial. They have sessions that they do after competition um after the race on race day. So those guys are actually using those tools uh daily, right? They they’re using it daily and so significant increase in their lung capacity here as you see uh over over a year.5 liters. That’s that’s really tremendous. Um I think he said about plus 8% here compared to baseline if I’m on the right metric. Uh that’s on the FEV1 but I believe the FVC6 was about the same. Yeah 8.3%. Uh and then the ratio has uh we’ll leave the ratio side for now but if we look at the FEV1 like we saw before measured in April of 2024 was 5.1 and uh it reached 5.5 uh so it gained.41 L so about 8%. Yeah. And he gained about this they gained about the same 8% in uh lung volume right uh which is something that we commonly hear can’t be trained it can be trained uh and if you don’t believe it here’s here’s the data to support it um inspiratory ventilatory parameters uh super interesting as well you can look at the peak inspiratory flow uh so how many liters per second they can move on the inspiratory side they started around eight uh and they ended up close to 10. That is that is huge. Um that is that is really really a big a big increase. And then if you look at the inspiratory volume they went five from 5.1 to 6.2. Uh so again a very very drastic increase. And we even have there’s no graph here but if we look at the S index which is essentially the strength that your diaphragm can generate. They went from 145 centimeters of H2O to 187. And he’s showed me the data since April and it keeps on climbing. I think they’re closer to they’re almost at 200 now. Uh they’re in the 190s. So, and that’s already a 30% increase in diaphragm strength uh over a year, which is which is crazy. Um peak inspirator flow went up 24%. uh the max inspirate volume went up 23%. So all those are are significant improvements, right? This is this is really really cool to see. Uh and you can see them all uh here in the in the table. Uh and I wanted to go to the physiological values because those have moved as well. Uh V2 max has gone up. Uh believe it or not, you can actually increase your V2 max when you’re at 90. Uh VT2 has gone up. VT1 has gone up. I’ll show you the watts after. Uh respiratory frequency. That is super interesting. Look at this. Uh respiratory frequency at VT1 first threshold they went from 25 breaths a minute to 15 breaths a minute. Uh and at VT2 they went from 47 to 38. And at V2 max they went from 58 to 51. So they were able to drop their their frequency tremendously. And obviously on the other side they increased the volume tremendously. They went from 2.6 L uh per breath to over four lers per breath. Uh close to 4.4 L per breath at uh threshold 2. Uh from 3.6 up to 4.4 and up from 3.3 to 3.9 L at V2 max. Uh what’s interesting is if you look at the v the minute ventilation it decreased at VT1 it decreased at VT2 and it increased slightly at V2 max which just shows uh that how much you can change how you breathe. And then uh if we look at performance uh if we just look at the before and after power at V2 max has gone up about 25 watts. Power at VT1 has gone up 20 almost 30 watts and power at VT2 has gone up uh who 35 watts. Um and again this is these are numbers that are yeah tremendous for already I mean they already had an incredible level to begin with but to see that in a year they can increase that much is is actually amazing. And no you cannot attribute this change directly to respiratory training alone. We would need uh a parallel universe with the exact same people doing the exact same training except for the respatory training all other things uh the same to be able to say this is the cause of or this is uh directly caused yeah this is there is a causal relationship between the rest training and the power output but one thing is for sure if you account for the economy in breathing right if we look here if if you’re able to go drop your ventilation from 25 to 15 breaths per minute. If you’re able to drop your ventilation from 58 to 51 breaths per minute at high intensity, right, when they’re at V2 max here, well, the respatory metabol reflex, sorry, no different different route. The ventilatory system, the ventilatory muscles use upwards of 20% of your V2 at high intensity. So if and and we know that by training your respiratory muscles you make them more efficient like any muscle. So if I make my respatory muscles more efficient uh they’ll be more economical. They will consume less oxygen for the same output because they’ve increased mitochondrial density capillary density uh contractile ability all all those things. And this is what Siril attributes those uh improvements to mainly is essentially an economy factor. And they were essentially able to save some energy on the breathing side by training those resp muscles and getting them to such a such a high level. And as a result of making their respatory muscles more economical and cost less, they were able to kind of redirect that oxygen, redirect that energy towards the mechanical output that they were producing. At least that’s how I understand it and and it makes sense. And if you look at this and how they were able to drop their breathing rate significantly and as such probably also in addition to the uh metabolic uh uh economy there’s a mechanical economy as well uh by simply reducing how many reps you do in a in a minute. Um this will have a direct impact uh and we could see the impact on the on the power output. Um, and again, if you ask those guys what they think, uh, the the writers, they all say, “Why have we not done this before?” And everybody should actually be doing this. Um, I heard that. No, I’m not going to say it. There’s some things that we can talk about, some things that we can’t yet. Uh but Siri is convinced that uh within a few years some uh some job will be uh will have or some person in a cycling team staff will be fully dedicated to respatory training and strategy. This is what he believes. This is what he sees happening. Um so it’ll be interesting to see what happens in the in the in the coming uh in the coming years. uh about this. And what’s cool too is that Sir told me this is not this is not the only study that they’re going to publish. They have lots more data on hand. And Sil posts regularly on his blog. It’s all in French, but you could probably translate it pretty easily online. Uh he publishes a lot. I’ll put his blog down in the description. I highly recommend that you follow this guy. He’s been at the forefront of respatory training with elite cyclists and triathletes for years now. and he’s actually sharing all that stuff openly, which is absolutely bonkers. Uh I mean, I would do the same, but I find it bonkers that other people do this as well. Uh but it’s such a cool thing that we’re able to access that information and we can see that it actually works. Um and we can actually measure the difference in such highle athletes and that opens the door for uh you know sub elites, that opens the door for health and fitness even, right? You work with someone and they have they really feel a limitation in their breathing and that limits their ability to go upstairs, limits their ability to to train longer, to train more frequently. Well, what if you could just address that with some respiratory training and then open the door to more training for them, more opportunities, more performance, more potential? Um, I mean, this this topic is endless. I love talking about this and I hope you enjoy this video. I highly recommend if you want to get started, uh, pick up my training program. It’s a great way to learn something, to get better at respiratory training, uh, to get better at breathing during your activity, and also to support all the work that I do here on the on the channel and everywhere else on the internet, if you follow the podcast, if you follow the channel, uh, that would be a great way for you to support me. And I also have an advanced respiratory system course, uh, but it’s only in French right now. if you’re interested about it in English. It’s something I’m going to translate in the coming months. Uh so make sure you drop a comment if you’re interested. Uh I’m going to leave it at that. Uh so thanks a lot for watching this video. I hope you learned some stuff. Um again, I’m not asking you to just believe it outright. Download the study. It’s linked below. Uh read the study, criticize the study, send an email to Zion and to if you have questions, but have an open mind. It’s uh it’s still a young field. There’s lots of things to do. Um so thanks to Sil, thanks to Zion Zan, thanks a lot to Andrew uh and Luke as well at Isocapnik. I’ve been in contact with those guys for years now and working with their gear is is really uh really really awesome cuz again it’s the best that I know at least. Uh and I highly recommend that you use their Breathe Better if you want to get into Resto training. Um thanks again for watching. I’ll see you in the next video.