Training The Respiratory Limited Athlete

This article is a companion piece to my previous article titled, Training The Delivery Limited Athlete.

As with training delivery limited athletes, we can also sub-categorize respiratory limited athletes training into a handful of classifications including foundations, tier one energy system training interventions, and tier two energy system training interventions.

When I think about the foundations for improving a respiratory limited athlete's performance, the first things that come to mind are structural foundations. The reason when anatomy and physiology are traditionally paired together in higher education curricula is that anatomical structures dictate physiological functions. The four primary structural points I’m concerned with for respiratory limited athletes are the position of the pelvis, the position of the thoracic spine, the orientation of the ribcage, and the width of the infrasternal angle of the ribcage. Addressing the structural foundations need not be overly complic…