I have now added a capnometer to my tools of bio-feedback. It is small and light enough to train with and it does not interfere with normal breathing, it seems to be stable enough in running and gym work. I now will have feed back on ETCO2 and breathing rate. Along side a oximeter, lactate analyser and heart rate, I can build a more complete picture of what is going on with my body.
The use of the capnometer for sport is still in its infancy stage, there is very little information available outside of critical care literature about the use of a capnometer with athletes, probably as there is only a handful of people using it as a training/testing tool. For now I will only play around with it to see what it is capable of e.g. It has problems in extreme cold weather with a accurate readings. Mounting it on the frot of my breathing trainer at the outlet rather than mouth piece gives a more reliable reading. As I have no capnograph I am looking at numbers only. For the next few weeks I will be finding base values and trends for different activities. Only once I have this data can I even begin to play around with breathing patterns and integration of ideas which before would have been foolish to play around with when I did not have the ETCO2 feedback.
In the very near future I will be combining a revolutionary NIRs device which will give some very interesting training data. For now this is just ideas but hopefully in the near future I can combine this so that I can train with physiological reactions rather than a numerical value based on distance and time.
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| Some ideas I am playing with where I can integrate information |
