Respiratory Endurance Trainer

Congratulations Spriotiger Users:

Mountain Bike World Championship:
Nino Schurter 1st, Florian Vogel 3rd and Geoff Kabush 5th

Vuelta a Espagna:
Ryder Hesjedal wins Vuelta's Velefique mountain battle (Stage 12).
Ryder Hesjedal 2nd in Stage 10

Breathless Legs? Consider Training Your Respiration

The new generation SpiroTiger is now available

Compact, lightweight respiratory trainer for athletes that comes in two versions: GO for basic training and SMART for the more advanced, with a PC connection and software for sending training data to a computer. This makes it easy to monitor and keep track of your training on the computer.

Respiratory Endurance Training improves performance and endurance capabilities in sports!

Respiratory muscles fatigue during sports activities. This leads to a decrease in performance. Studies by Prof. U. Boutellier, sports physiologist at the Federal Institute of Technology (ETHZ) and the University of Zurich, prove this in a most impressive manner.

In the past, it was assumed that physical endurance and performance were primarily limited by the heart and the cardiovascular system; in part also by the muscular system. This is why it was believed that the respiratory system did not impair the functional capacity since it was assumed that it had sufficient reserves.

The targeted endurance training of the respiratory muscles, however, does substantially increase physical endurance, resulting in a relevant increase of functional capacity. This is true both for top athletes as well as popular sports.

Priorities in energy distribution (A respiratory metaboreflex that “steals” blood flow from locomotor muscles.)

The functions of vital organs such as the heart, the brain and respiration are maintained by the body as its top priority. Even under maximum stress, these organs are supplied with sufficient oxygen and energy. This happens at the expense of non-vital functions: Oxygen-supply to the legs and arms is reduced. The consequence is a substantial decrease in vitality and a quick build-up of hyperacidity due to H+ production. 

Endurance training of the respiratory muscles will remedy this problem. It reduces oxygen consumption by the breathing muscles. The oxygen supply is now available to the peripheral muscles. Legs and arms will fatigue later under stress and will produce less H+ at the same level of activity.

WHY USE THE SPIROTIGER?

There are other respiratory devices on the market but the SpiroTiger is the only one that exercises your respiratory muscles correctly. All other respiratory training devices (eg. Powerlung) are resistance training devices such as a leg press apparatus whereas the SpiroTiger is like a treadmill. With the Powerlung you are able to use it for 20 - 30 breaths, and after that you will have hyperventilated, and will become dizzy if you continue. This could be compared with a high intensity session that a marathon runner might do by running 400m as an all out sprint. If a marathon runner trains like this the effect would be to change his muscle fibre ability and produce a bad marathon runner and not a good 400m runner. If the runner was genetically good for endurance distances then it would decrease the ability of his STF to work and if he was not genetically predisposed (i.e. had higher percentage of FTF) then you could alter his muscle ‘make-up’ considerably. The diaphragm is predominantly STF as the respiratory system can be classed as having an endurance role. So using a system that tends to improve the efficiency of FTF is of no benefit.

SpiroTiger is the "LSD" training for the diaphragm - long slow endurance training with all the benefits of "overload" on a muscle that you normally can't work during regular training.

The SpiroTiger will train your respiratory system to increase air volume in and out of the lungs, to increase O2 intake with increased air distribution to the whole lung, as well as deep expiration with avoiding air entrapment to get rid of the CO2. Explosive and hard expiration as we see with the Powerlung never empties the lungs properly. Try it out; breathe out as hard as possible against resistance. Then relax the abdominal muscles after this hard contraction and then breathe more air out and you will feel and will be able to measure how much more is going out after the initial hard expiration.

Airflow, air speed, air pressure, air volume, proper diaphragm contraction, avoiding auxiliary activation and more will only be able to be improved and affected under control with SpiroTiger.

Design and Function

The unique endurance training device for respiratory training consists of a hand held unit with a respiratory pouch. The easy to operate monitoring electronics allow to train safely and in a specific manner. In case of regular training, measurable results will already be achieved in a few weeks.