The effects of breathing exercises in comparison with other exercise programs on cardiorespiratory fitness among healthy female college students.

Background: We wished to determine the effects of breathing exercises (BE) on endurance performance compared to those of different fitness training programmes.

Methods: Endurance was measured by the Cooper 12-minute Run Test and voluntary breath-holding time test before and after the training period. Altogether 69 healthy female college students were assigned into four groups. The first group (N.=15) participated in a breathing-exercise programme (BE). The 3 intensity training groups included constant-training (CT; N.=22), interval-training (IT; N.=17), and Fartlek-training groups (FT; (N.=15). All programmes were conducted for one hour twice a week for 7 weeks.

Results: The results of the Cooper test improved significantly in all four groups (P<0.01). The voluntary breath-holding time test showed significant increase in all groups but the CT group. In the BE group the rate of improvement was 9.23% (P=0.014). In the FT group the intensity was 75-85% of maximal heart rate (HRmax), the rate of improvement was 15.2% (P=0.011). In the IT group, the percentage of increase was 9.94% (P=0.039). Finally, the CT resulted in an improvement 8.45% (P=0.063).

Conclusions: Results derived from the present study suggest that BE may be an effective alternative to improve endurance performance in healthy female college students.