To open the lungs as much as possible before racing to maximize O2 intake.

The lungs consist of several lobes (the right, which is larger, has 3 lobes, while the left has 2). These are further divided into bronchopulmonary segments, bronchi, alveoli, etc. etc. You know the biology.

In normal breathing we don’t fully utilize our bronchopulmonary segments and hence we do not take in as much oxygen as we could – because we don’t need to. In exercise we often follow the same style of shallow breathing that we use in normal life, just speeded up.

Wind players, such as trombonists, saxophonists, etc., must make use of larger areas of their lungs in order to maximize both air volume and pressure to better perform. One way of doing this is to access all the bronchial lobes via abdominal breathing. The idea is that you fill your lungs in stages, beginning with the lower lobes and ending with the upper ones. We normally only fill a portion of them.

Warm up by practicing abdominal breathing (using the diaphragm). Place your hands on your kidney area and inhale, pushing out your abs and lower back. Make sure you can feel your lower abdomen expand as your diaphragm contracts. Do this a few times to make sure you are really filling those lungs and exercising the diaphragm. You may experience dizziness.

Once you can do this, here is the exercise.

Fill your lungs in three stages:

1) stomach and abdomen (via diaphragm): inhale on the count of 1.

2) the middle chest and upper chest: inhale on the count of 2. You should feel pretty full.

3) the upper chest: inhale on the count of 3 while raising your arms above your head and touching your palms together. Hold for 4 seconds. This should be difficult.

4) exhale and push all the air out of your lungs, starting from the top and ending at the bottom (the reverse of the inhale exercise).

Repeat this 5 times while warming up and before racing. You can also do a modified version on the bike (without raising the arms!).

Doing this should help you to open up the lungs, accessing the bronchopulmonary segments that are normally not or superficially used, and theoretically maximizing O2 intake.

At least that’s the idea. I’d draw a picture but a) I am a horrible artist and b) my word processor won’t let me.