How lung capacity increases when doing consistent cardio and what happens anatomically?
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consistently engaging in cardio exercises, makes your lung capacity tend to increase as an adaptation to the increased demand for oxygen. Anatomically, several changes occur within your respiratory system to accommodate this need for more oxygen during aerobic activities.
Initially, your breathing rate increases to bring more air into your lungs. Over time, your respiratory muscles especially diaphragmatic breathing, become stronger and you become more efficient at air movement in and out of your lungs. Oxygen delivery to your bloodstream increases and removal of carbon dioxide likewise becomes more efficient, which gets produced during exercise. This by the way is why it’s important to train to “nose breathe”. On inhaling through your nose, you are creating a low pressure by the slight restriction. This in turn allows you to scrub more Carbon Dioxide, which is harder to release than Oxygen is to uptake. So while the restriction of nose breathing might reduce your Oxygen efficiency very slightly, it increases your ability to get rid of Carbon Dioxide to a much greater extent. counterintuitive I know, I would have arguments with my coach over this in my early years, until he proved it with a blood lactate test once the tech came along. it was (in me) a 15% difference, which is massive.
Anyway, slowly over time, your lungs undergo subtle changes at the alveolar level; those tiny air sacs where the gas exchange between your lungs and bloodstream takes place. With consistent cardio, the number of capillaries surrounding the alveoli increases, supporting greater oxygen exchange due to a larger surface area for diffusion. Improving lung capacity the ability to take in and utilize oxygen more effectively.
As mentioned before, your diaphragm, which is the primary muscle involved in respiration, becomes stronger through ongoing cardio exercises, helping to increase lung capacity by creating a larger space within the thoracic cavity for the lungs to expand. This enhancement, along with the strengthening of your intercostal muscles that assist in the breathing process, contributes to your overall increased lung capacity. High-performance athletes can sometimes achieve double the expiratory volume and reach oxygen efficiencies of 70+ on Vo2Max tests (a measure of oxygen transfer efficiency) of the average person (20-40 Vo2Max). Cross-country skiers for reasons I don’t even understand seem to be able to hit astounding levels, 80+ Vo2Max.
Through training aerobic exercise, (especially zone 2,3) increases cardiovascular performance, which, creates efficient oxygen delivery to your muscles and other tissues. This interconnected relationship between the respiratory and cardiovascular systems ensures that your body can more effectively meet the metabolic demands of exercise, allowing for better endurance and overall health. Also improper or too fast of a ramp-up from a detrained state can lead to some conditions where the heart’s ability to move blood can develop faster than the lungs can handle the blood flow, leading to high pulmonary pressure and edema. This can lead to fatal conditions such as SIPE (swimming-induced pulmonary edema) seen in some triathletes and competitive open-water swimmers. The combination of underdeveloped lung blood capacity coupled with the slightest pressure on the neck from a wetsuit, can mess with the vagus nerve and send pulmonary blood pressure skyrocketing as the heart ramps up to a steady aerobic state. I’ve seen it twice in my athletic career, and it’s not a good scene.
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