Home Fitness Tech The Airofit Pro: Can controlling your breathing really make you fitter?

The Airofit Pro: Can controlling your breathing really make you fitter?

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man using airofit pro

Health and fitness are on everyone’s minds. We’re all trying to be better, in our own way. But so many of us have trouble training something that we use literally every minute of every day.

Our breath.

Traditionally, training the cardiovascular system has meant hours of mind-numbing cardio training; sitting on a bike or pounding the treadmill.

That’s just inefficient. What if you could train your breathing directly, in your downtime, in just ten minutes per day?

You can, with breath training using the Airofit Pro.

So what is the Airofit Pro?

At first glance, the Airofit Pro is surprisingly simple. The device itself is a natty little gadget that fits snugly into your mouth and looks a little bit like a SCUBA gear breathing mask. It’s small, easily able to be held in one hand, and weighs only 45 grams, so it’s light and comfortable to hold for long periods between your teeth.

All of the training revolves around making the simple act of breathing harder, increasing the resistance and making it tougher to draw in air. This might sound a little strange, but it actually has a massive basis in real life, and the list of benefits is huge.

Initially, the Airofit Pro was designed for people with major breathing issues, including severe asthma and chronic pulmonary obstructive disorder (COPD.) The intent was to increase the strength of the muscles used in breathing, as well as bring awareness and control to breathing patterns, and give people who struggle with their breathing more control over the process.

Needless to say, it worked. Pretty quickly, people took notice. In the fitness world, altitude training (running at higher altitudes where the air is thinner, with less oxygen, like halfway up mountains) was already being used to boost cardiovascular fitness, and the ability to do that without having to fly to Switzerland is obviously pretty significant.

Now, the Airofit is used by thousands of people worldwide. From athletes to the elderly to classical singers, anyone can benefit from the intensive training and health benefits.

How the Airofit works

Airofit Pro -product

This all sounds well and good, you might be saying, but how does it actually work?

Like most fitness plans these days, everything is powered by the app. When you open the box, that’s going to be step one, and once that’s downloaded, you create your profile, log in, and get started.

With any good training plan, knowing exactly where you’re starting and what you’re working with is a big deal, as it lets you measure progress correctly. It’s reassuring that the Airofit starts by assessing where you are.

The initial Lung test only takes a few minutes. The most important thing the Airofit measures from you is your maximum outflow, ie, your maximum breathing force, which is a good general measure of your cardiovascular fitness level.

From there, you’ve got options. You can let the app do all of the hard work, acting as a virtual personal trainer that suggests training plans to improve your metrics.

Or, if you’ve got a specific goal in mind, take control of the app and choose from any of the impressively designed training programs, all of which monitor their statistics individually, so you know how you’re growing in each area.

The app and programs

First impressions on loading up the app are great. Everything is laid out well, is clear, simple, and easy to understand. It all seems professional and has clearly been designed with a lot of care and attention to detail.

Most people will start with the obvious option, and click the big button labelled Introduction, which will guide you through your starting tests, and let you know exactly how training with the Airofit works.

From there, you’re free to select from a huge variety of plans that focus on different things, including:

  • Anaerobic tolerance
  • Respiratory strength
  • Vital lung capacity
  • Relaxation
  • Instant performance
  • Or choose from a list of your favourite exercises

Once you’ve selected a program, you can set individual preferences, which are again, awesome. All of the exercises have three difficulties, which will instruct you to increase breathing resistance. This is all controlled using two large, easy to use dials, one on each side, that control the individual resistance of inspiration (breathing in) with the left dial, and expiration (breathing out) with the right dial.

The app also lets you adjust the total duration, which can make a real difference to how difficult an individual exercise is. Trust us, intensive, controlled breathing for only one minute is an entirely different beast to doing it for ten.

Once the program starts, your breathing is guided by the app, which shows you when and how to breathe, using a natty little visual interface that’s easy to understand and gives you up to the second updates as you train.

Airofit have also been smart enough to build in elements of gamification, including a cute little visual streak flame indicator that goes out when you break your streak, as well as predictive performance ratings, so you can compete, and try to beat, yourself, which is highly addictive.

What do the programs actually do?

Airofit Pro App

Introduction

Starter sessions are designed to get you used to training with Airofit, learning the process, and getting your initial results. Each one only takes a minute or two to run, and they’re a great way to ease into the groove and get started.

Anaerobic Threshold

Programs that teach you to work anaerobically (without oxygen) by working with breathwork and learning to hold your breath for longer.

Anaerobic training is great for constant performance at high intensity because it teaches your body to better deal with lactic acid, so your muscles can operate without oxygen for longer.

Respiratory Strength

Exercises are designed around building up the strength of your diaphragm and other breathing muscles. These training programs help you breathe deeper and harder, which is great for exercise, and also just for day to day life.

Vital Lung Capacity

Your vital lung capacity is how much air your lungs can actually hold. Most people don’t know that it’s even possible to train this, but increasing the flexibility of the muscles around your lungs allows them to expand further, letting you take in more overall air.

Single Exercises

Choose from single exercises to focus on, each with a specific purpose, including things like:

  • Lung capacity tests
  • Circular breathing patterns
  • Diamond breathing patterns

Advanced Training

Programs are built around improving performance in specific areas, with courses designed to improve running, endurance, football, and more.

Does it actually work?

Yes.

It’s as simple as that. All of the things that the Airofit does have been known for a while, and people have been training these things for years.

The Airofit just takes all of the knowledge, compresses it into a handy little app, and gives you the means to train effectively using the equipment itself.

This simple approach means that it’s incredibly easy to train your breathing, and so simple to follow that it’s basically impossible to get wrong. Most people who use the Airofit Pro see results in a week or two and continue to see improvement for months after that.

There’s a reason the Airofit is used across so many different spheres, by so many different types of people. In the next few years, we expect breath training to become a huge deal, as people realise just how much it can affect your health and well being. But the best time to start is now.

The bottom line

For anyone looking at training their cardiovascular health, endurance and performance, the Airofit Pro is one of the simplest and most effective ways to do that right now, and it’s more than worth the purchase.