Originally Posted by
Iride01
I read that pro cyclist have a very fast respiration rate on the bike. Somewhere on the order of 60 breathes per minute. But I only saw that once. Don't know if I was mistaken nor have I searched further for more info. Anyone else know about that?
That is super interesting to me. I do pulmonary function testing for a living and would be interested to see how long a pro cyclist could keep up that respiratory rate. I would not think for very long. There are physiological limitations above and beyond muscular ability that would prevent a persons MVV (maximum voluntary ventilation) from being abnormally high. l I doubt (although am not sure) that they reach a muscular threshold when it comes to the maximum amount of air that the lung can move.How much higher than a regular Joe is the question.
As a pro cyclist is an elite endurance athlete they should be able to produce a higher MVV than a non elite endurance athlete for sure and would think that their ability to maintain a higher than average minute ventilation would be impressive. That being said a resp rate of 60 is very difficult to pull off. I would be surprised and impressed if even a pro cyclist could maintain that RR for very long. One thing that makes me think it is unlikely is the overall cardiovascular conditioning may render RR's that high unnecessary.
As I said before I could be totally wrong but taking a big breath of air every second for minutes on end is very taxing.