Would you like to double the results from your cardio workout?

Of course the answer to this question is “yes”. Every rider who is reading this would love to get better results from their cardio workouts and being able to double your results would be pretty wild.

Better yet, what if I told you that you didn’t have to buy anything or workout longer? All that you had to do was simply improve your breathing.

Well, this is exactly what happened in a study I came across looking at what would happen if you supplemented a cardio training program with specific breathing drills. In the study, two groups of people went through the same cardio training program with the only difference being that one group just did the cardio program and the other group added in some breathwork.

In this case they were taught the Buteyko Method, which consists of breathing drills to help you take fewer breaths per minute and using breath hold exercises. And what they found was pretty impressive.

At the end of the study they found that while both groups improved their VO2Max, the group that did the breathwork almost doubled their results compared to the group that didn’t (13.1% vs. 7.2%). 

But when you dig into the numbers the results from the breathwork group were even more impressive (You can see the paper from the study by clicking here.). 

– The largest gain in the study was 31.1% and came from the breathwork group.

– The top 3 improvements came from this group, as well as 8 of the top 10 improvements. 

– The smallest gain seen in the breathwork group was 5.6%, while the smallest gain seen in the cardio-only group was only 1.6%. 

– The largest gain from the cardio only group was 7.1%, which is what the average was for the breathwork group.

When you see the results from the breathwork group compared to the cardio-only group you wouldn’t think that the only difference between them was the inclusion of the breathing drills and exercises. It looks like the breathwork group was on some sort of performance enhancing supplement or drug.

I mean, if a supplement could boast results like this it would be the most popular supplement on the market. People pay a lot of money for supplements that don’t deliver close to those kinds of results…and breathwork is free to use and do.

This is one of the best things to me about breathwork – you can use it with whatever workout program you are following to get even better results. You don’t have to follow something new, just add something that will help you get even more from your time and effort.

So if you’re going to be doing any sort of cardio training to improve your riding then you owe it to yourself to make sure you are getting the best results possible. Don’t make the mistake so many other people do and assume that your breathing is fine and you don’t need to worry about it. Odds are pretty high that you could benefit from some breathwork training.

Until next time…

Ride Strong,

James Wilson