We are interested in understanding breathing during exercise. While many runners experience respiratory limitations, few attempts have been made to address this directly during exercise. Locomotive respiratory coupling is one such breathing technique that could help, although it is rather difficult to learn.
Digital solutions such as smartphone applications could potentially enable this. Breathing strategies might help to alleviate respiratory pathologies and dysfunction as well as improve performance. However, altering highly automated processes such as breathing are likely to be acutely ineffective.
Therefore, habitation and practice is necessary to realize such benefits. Mobile low-friction tools such as smartphone apps have the potential to provide such benefits in a more accessible and user friendly manner. We've previously demonstrated that step synchronized sound guidance can effectively support coupling in novice runners within only one or two sessions.
Furthermore, while lab studies have shown mixed results for the benefits of coupling, we were the first to report that coupling in free running conditions is associated with increases in running speed as well as decreased ventilatory variability. Run rhythm differs from previous solutions since it utilizes generic smartphone and headphones, making it easy accessible for longitudinal studies. And furthermore, it uses easily understandable sound feedback, which was optimized throughout various user studies.
Clever solutions such as music integration and temporality improved their user experience during the run. The creation of the application and the related studies paved a way for new research questions such as how can runners be dynamically supported with these breathing techniques during the run? And how can these breathing techniques be enhanced and integrated in run trainings programs such as interval training?
