Respiratory Frequency

With races back in full swing, you may be eager to put all your training to the test. As important as the training itself, a well thought out racing strategy is key to a successful performance. There are many methods to consider when devising a race plan. Pacing is certainly popular and critical to staying on track, however it’s highly dependent on external factors e.g., weather, hills, etc. Racing within specific heart rate zones is yet another ubiquitous method used to guide efforts in endurance events. Similarly, external environments may affect heart rate making adaptations in the moment challenging.

Respiratory frequency is a metric that may have greater temporal sensitivity than heart rate, yet it’s capture in a real-world environment is elusive at this point. Until wearable technology grants this data accessible, there are other proxy measures to cogitate. Rate of Perceived Exertion (RPE), a subjective score an athlete would attribute to a given effort, is directly connected to respiratory frequency (Billat et al., 2022). As a race progresses, there is a likely systematic drift in RPE. Similar to that, respiratory frequency comparably increases linearly over time. In fact, respiratory frequency may be the best correlate of RPE during self-paced exercise ((Nicolo et al., 2015). Given such indexation with critical physiological parameters, RPE should be considered at a minimum adjunctively as another valuable means to a successful end.