why can’t we just breath faster when we run so we’re not out of breath, and when we do breath faster we pass out

Question

why can’t we just breath faster when we run so we’re not out of breath, and when we do breath faster we pass out

In: 20

Answer 1

Breathing may or may not be the bottleneck, if it is, then breathing faster *will* help.

We can actually measure how effective our lungs are, with a unit called *VO2 max* which basically says how much oxygen we can use in a given time period.

But breathing is one thing, it *gives* us oxygen, but we also have to *use* the oxygen (convert it to energy). Depending on who you are, how old you are, how (un)fit you are and lots of other factors, your bottleneck might either be getting the oxygen, or using the oxygen.