Airofit FirstLook

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The untrained (aka regular) person can typically hold their breath for between 30 and 60 seconds. With training, though, many people can do it for longer. Two minutes, anyone? Three? Five? You won’t know until you train for it. Yes, training your lungs to work more efficiently is a thing.

Breath-training is not new, even if it might be new to you. Martial arts partitioners have known for centuries about its importance to power generation, endurance, and performance.

The hard part about exercising the breathing muscles, though, has always been figuring out how to gradually increase resistance while still being able able to take a breath—you gotta breathe in order to breathe, you know?

Today, we are taking a look at a device which has been designed to train the lungs (and their attendant muscles) to increase their capacity and efficiency.

Airofit Breathing Trainer

The Airofit generates resistance on the respiratory muscles (primarily the diaphragm and intercostal muscles). By stressing those muscles over time, they will, just like all the other muscles, get stronger and be more efficient. While this is something totally new for us, the idea of exercising the muscles you breathe with, we are totally game for it!

The Airofit works by creating airflow resistance on both the in and the out breaths, making the breathing muscles work harder in both directions. The non-Airofit way that humans try to increase lung capacity is to breathe in, hold it, and then when they’re about to pass out release it all in one swoosh. But that means they (you, me, all of us) are missing the contraction part of muscle conditioning. The Airofit makes the lungs work to intake the air and expel the air. Nifty, huh?

FirstLook:

What’s in the box:

• Airofit trainer (E-Unit, Resistance wheel, Mouth piece)
• Spare mouth piece
• USB charging cable
• Quick Start manual
• Storage bag

Airofit’s E-unit contains pressure sensors and a Bluetooth transmitter. This allows the device to measure the breathing patterns, send them to the smartphone, and track them via an app. The E-unit is mounted directly to the Resistance wheel’s body.

The mouth piece fits onto the Resistance wheel so the user can comfortably “bite” onto it during the exercises.

The in and the out ports each have their own resistance dials, allowing for a large combinations of training settings, depending on the goals and physical capabilities of the user.

The Airofit is very compact and portable, so daily training is possible even if one is constantly on the move. It comes with a travel pouch, but there is also a semi-hard case available.

Airofit Training App

The Airofit, like most devices today, is actively coupled (via Bluetooth) with a smartphone for training and data tracking.

The app gives real-time feedback, ensures that the exercises are performed properly, and tracks a person’s gains over time.

If you’ve never followed your own progress before, you might not appreciate what tracking does for you: it lets you “see” where you started, where you are, and where you’re going. It is an amazing (an amazing) motivator to continue what you’re doing: one of us—not a member of RainyDaySports team—recently discovered the joys of tracking when she started weight training. We’ll say no more, but let’s just say that RainyDay’s copyeditor can take you down in four seconds (from never) if she has to, and is working on making it three…and the RainyDayInterns are both “excited” and a little bit “concerned.”

We’ll have a FirstUse writeup by the end of the Summer and also an update with our performance and progress after completing some the Airofit programs. Look for them in the Fall!

Links to items mentioned:

• Airofit Breathing Trainer