Respiration

Respiration rate (breaths/min) measures the number of breaths taken per minute. During moderate exercise, respiration rate is normally 20 to 30 breaths per minute and may increase up to 60 breaths per minute in maximal exercise.

Respiration rate measurement is based on detection of the effects of breathing on cardiac activity*: heart rate increases during inhalation and decreases during exhalation.

* Respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA).

Heart beat derived respiration rate during a moderate intensity training session on a course with lots of uphills and downhills.

Ventilation (litres/min) describes how much air is breathed to meet the oxygen demand of the body. During light to moderate exercise, ventilation is between 30 and 75 liters/min but may even reach values that are higher than 150 liters/min during maximal exercise.

Heart beat derived ventilation during running training session with increasing pace.

Feedback of breathing parameters has several benefits:

• Get feedback on your respiration during exercise; learn to train for most economical breathing.
• Find out the suitable training intensity and discover metabolic thresholds: What intensity causes breathing to increase out of proportion?
• Monitor respiration, detect exercise phases as well as respiratory effort and patterns.
• Estimation is based on neural network modeling of the effects of respiration on cardiac activity.
• Mean absolute error value for respiration is only approximately 2 breaths/min and correlation coefficient with measured respiration rate 0.89. For ventilation mean absolute error is 6.7 liters/min with correlation of 0.95 between estimated and measured values.

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