The harder you exercise, the more oxygen your body requires. To maintain this over a period of time, your body attempts to pull in more oxygen via respiration. This means that the longer you exercise, the more air you need to take in to maintain exercise intensity. Consult your physician before beginning any diet or exercise program.
Aerobic Exercise
Aerobic exercise literally means exercise that requires oxygen, or air, and is used to improve your body's oxygen system. Long distance running, swimming and cycling are all examples of aerobic activities. This term was first used by Dr. Kenneth Cooper in 1968 when he was conducting physical fitness tests for the U.S. Air Force. Aerobic exercise strengthens the heart and lungs, and improves circulation throughout your body. This primarily occurs by increases in the rate at which your lungs process air and your heart pumps blood.
Anerobic Exercise
Anerobic exercise means "without oxygen," though this is technically incorrect, as your body still processes oxygen. While activities like weightlifting and sprinting are often referred to as anaerobic, you still breathe quite heavily if you are practicing them at any degree of intensity. There are multiple energy systems at work when you perform any sort of activity, and your circulatory system transports both blood and oxygen to working muscle tissues. When the easily available supply of both is depleted, your respiration accelerates to compensate for this.
Improving Respiration
To process oxygen better, you must perform aerobic training. Commonly referred to as cardiovascular exercise, it is not designed to burn fat, though this does happen as a side effect. Performed properly, aerobic training improves the amount of oxygen you can quickly process, known as the VO2max. A simple method of improving VO2max involves training at slightly lower intensities for longer periods of time. For example, run for five minutes and record your distance, then run the same distance in six minutes, rest 30 seconds and repeat. Interval training significantly increases your VO2max and decreases your struggle to breathe when training at lower intensities.
Factors Affecting Respiration
While training intensity and duration both have a direct affect on how hard you are breathing, numerous other factors affect VO2max. Your age and gender play a significant role, as women have a slightly lower VO2max than men, and as you age your VO2max drops slightly every year secondary to a decrease in the stroke volume of your heart. Aerobic exercise can help offset this, which is why you should be breathing hard during exercise.
References
- "Aerobics"; Kenneth H. Cooper, M.D., M.P.H.; 1968
- "Physiology of Sport and Exercise: 3rd Edition"; Wilmore and Costill; 2005
- "Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport"; Effects of High-intensity Interval Training on the Vo2 Response During Severe Exercise; R. Duffield, et al.; June 2006
