Analysis of co-ordination between breathing and exercise rhythms in man

1. The purpose of the present study was to analyse the incidence and type of coordination between breathing rhythm and leg movements during running and to assess the effect of co-ordination on the running efficiency, as well as to compare the results with those found during cycling. 2. The experiments were carried out on thirty-four untrained volunteers exercising at two work loads (60 and 80% of subject's physical work capacity 170) on a treadmill. In addition nineteen of the subjects exercised at the same two work loads on a bicycle ergometer. The subjects were running at both work loads in three different modes in randomized order: with normal arm movements, without arm movements and with breathing paced by an acoustic signal which was triggered by the leg movement. 3. Respiratory variables, oxygen uptake and leg movements were continuously recorded and evaluated on-line. The degree of co-ordination was expressed as a percentage of inspirations and/or expirations starting in the same phase of the step or pedalling cycle. 4. The average degree of co-ordination was higher during running (up to 40%) than during cycling (about 20%) during both work loads. The difference in the degree of co-ordination between running and cycling is probably not due to the lack of arm movements during cycling since the degree of co-ordination during running with and without arm movements was the same. 5. The degree of co-ordination during running increased slightly but not significantly with increasing work load and could be increased significantly by paced breathing. 6. The co-ordination between breathing and running rhythms occurred in three different patterns: (a) breathing was co-ordinated all the time with the same phase of step, (b) co-ordination switched suddenly from one phase of step to another and (c) co-ordination ensued alternatively once on the right and once on the left leg movement. During cycling the pattern described in (a) occurred almost exclusively. 7. During running with a high degree of co-ordination, oxygen uptake for a given work load was slightly but significantly lower than during running with weak co-ordination.