While a well-balanced program of exercise can improve your overall health and fitness, several specific exercises can improve the fitness of targeted body systems and regions. Exercises that target your respiratory system can result in improvements in the strength and endurance of your respiratory muscles, help maintain the flexibility of your ribcage, and contribute to the health of your lungs and respiratory passageways.
The Respiratory System
Your respiratory system delivers the life-sustaining oxygen to your bloodstream required by every living cell within your body and removes the toxic, waste carbon dioxide produced by cellular metabolism. As exercise activities raise the metabolic demands on your body, your respiratory system responds by delivering increased volumes of oxygen and removing increased volumes of carbon dioxide. This is accomplished by increasing both the rate and depth of your respiratory movements.
Mechanics of Respiration
During inhalation, oxygen-containing air is drawn deep into your lungs through respiratory passageways that include your trachea and bronchi. Driving this inflow of air is a powerful suction created when your respiratory muscles, primarily the diaphragm and external intercostals, contract and expand your chest. The expansion of your chest, and the lungs within, creates a negative pressure, or vacuum, that draws air into your lungs. As your diaphragm muscle relaxes and your internal intercostal muscles contract, your chest is compressed and air is forced out.
Exercises for the Respiratory System
As with any exercise, activities that can help develop your respiratory system must place your respiratory system under an increased workload, of sufficient demand and for a sufficient period of time. Aerobic exercise activities such as running, swimming and cycling which are demanding enough to raise the rate and depth of your breathing pattern will create sufficient workload to develop your respiratory system. According to the American College of Sports Medicine, aerobic exercises to develop your respiratory system should be of moderate to vigorous intensity, continue for 20 to 60 minutes, and take place three to five days per week.
Respiratory System Benefits
With a properly designed program of aerobic exercise training, your respiratory system will benefit through an increase in the strength and endurance of your respiratory muscles, maintaining the flexibility of the joints that allow your ribcage to expand and contract, and helping to maintain the health of your respiratory passageways and lung tissue.
