Increasing lung capacity

i took a few bikram yoga classes and it changed my breathing completely. i never realized how shallow my breath was before and now i'm aware of how i'm breathing and when. it's helped a lot with everything from going to sleep to intense cardio workouts.

Honestly, just do aerobic exercise. I found when I started running regularly (every day at least two miles) my lungs started to become very, very efficient. Doing aerobic exercise will definitely help for both lung and heart efficiency. Swimming also has the same effect, and may help your lung capacity because of the necessity to hold your breath.

Aerobic capacity isn't usually limited by ventilation except in extreme cases (very high altitudes, respiratory tract inflammation from asthma or infections, emphysema, pneumonia, etc.)

Lung capacity won't help a whole lot. Greater pulmonary efficiency will help a lot more for rowing and running. The body will naturally adapt the efficiency over time, and the best way to adapt is to force the nervous system to take over control of the lungs as during intense exercise. In other words, keep rowing and running.

Capillary density increases around the alveoli (the 'working' part of the lungs that allow for gas exchange) will improve oxygen intake more than anything else, I'd imagine. This is something that adapts with the stresses placed on the cardiopulmonary system during aerobic exercise.

Stronger intercostals will allow for greater expansion of the lungs and this will only really be accomplished with intense rowing and running where the rib cage needs to expand. Keep in mind that these deeper, heavier breaths are not a function of increased lung capacity -- they increase the surface area of the lungs, allowing the alveoli to take in more oxygen at once. They are also inherently more tiring than shallower breaths because the energy used to expand the rib cage does not transfer directly into work produced by the legs, arms, or torso during rowing.

Just relax your throat muscles.

How can this thread go so far without a fellatio joke?

swimming is the best way to increase lung capacity.

Take up the trombone. nojoke

also asthmatic, and when I was a kid, basically the first thing that they would do was toss you in a swimming pool to increase your lung capacity. Warning - old wives tales follow: I was told as a kid that the humid air right above the surface of the water helps to expand the lungs more than 'normal' air. I am sure some science dude will flame me for this, but that's what I was told as a kid. Incidentally, having spent 8 yrs in the tropics now, I suffer from far less asthma than I do in drier climates, so there may well be something to that. To some extent this is just me naturally growing out of the asthma, but at the same time, well into adulthood I would have to run with my Ventolin, now, no need.... *shrug* Either way, get your ass to a pool. Breathe on every fourth stroke until you tire, then every third, every second til you hit the wall.

<===8

instead of ing why not answer the question.

i'm curious what an md has to say (i think you're an md, but then again what if you're an interweb md)

oookay... increasing lung capacity has to do with sequestering more blood vessel usage in the different levels and areas of the lungs. so actually doing aerobic exercise will increase the diffusion areas where O2 is transferred from the atmosphere to your blood stream. it takes a while to actually increase it though at least 15min of good aerobic exercise to utilize the higher areas of the lungs. so even just walking or something not too traumatic at first will help. the swimming thing and running thing is good to force onto kids because the decreased oxygen over chronic periods of time can affect their growth, but these days overzelous parents are afraid of serious asthma attacks and sometimes just let them sit around. swimming even more so because you're already in a lying down position where blood is already distributed to the upper areas of the lungs due to gravity. hence the "humidity effect" that someone mentioned earlier, but its actually just the distribution directly to the upper parts of the lungs. basically anything to increase aerobic activity for over 15min a time will in effect increase lunch capacity. over long periods of time you'll be able to do this faster and longer.

hey, told you old wives tales and flaming would follow, i just work on what worked for me. Years ago when I was swimming (from when I was about 6 til well into my teens I was swimming at least weekly) I was told to push myself by basically taking bigger breaths and only breathing on every fourth stroke, then, as I tired 2/3 of the way down the pool, breathing more frequently. Eventually i was swimming the full 50 breathing on 4th stroke, then up and back, and so on. Again, I'm no expert, but that would seem to me to be a sign of increased lung capacity. That little blower thing that I had to use every morning to test it seemed to agree with me too, it went up over time. Hit the wall wasn't a metaphor by the way. I meant the wall at the end of the pool

cardio. I would mix up all types of cardio activities such as rowing, swimming, running sprints, longer distances, etc.