Could training (biking, running, swimming, ect.) while holding your breath possibly be a good training tool for races, in the same way as exercising at high elevations with thin air?
What are effects during and after training of doing this?
Has this concept been applied by any notable trainers?
I don’t mean running until you are blue in the face, but doing reasonable sequences of holding and then releasing, or intermittent phases of holding, or any variation of this idea. Obviously you don’t want to damage your brain just to shave a few seconds off your personal best…
I dont’ know about holding your breath (I seriously doubt you could do it consistently enough for it to be effective) but here’s a product that might be relevant. It’s a device that provides beathing resistance to supposedly improve lung capacity and endurance. At one point they were gonna sponsor my crew team (when I was rowing at the University of Texas) but the deal feel though and I’ve never tired it. Looks interesting tho’…
Training while holding your breath is what swimming is all about.
But, more specifically, there are things called hypoxic drills (ladders) which accomplish what you are asking. As one of my swim coaches told me, depriving the body of oxygen through hypoxic drills is a fast and (relatively) easy way to speed up conditioning. Your heart doesn’t know you’re holding your breath. All it knows is that the muscles are calling for more oxygen, so it pumps faster to try to compensate. Short distance hypoxic (anaerobic) workouts = long distance aerobic workouts (although I don’t think really good swimmers do much aerobic conditioning anyway).