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Okay, I'm getting older and starting to feel it. I've actually even joined a gym w/ my youngest son as support. The question is? After several years of hiatus from a gym, what would be a good exercise to incorporate with the rest of the pain and sweat,which could possibly increase, my now average lung capacity. And, No, I don't even know how many liters it is at this time, so their is no base line available. (Side bar, I've had a knee replacement already, so impact activities is limited, the elliptical machines are fine.) Other ideas?

Thanks

Swimming is an EXCELLENT workout for someone of any age. It is low impact, works all muscles, your core, and will help with breath support. My fiance works in the athletic training field and would also recommend this.

You hardly can expand your lung capacity, but you can optimize the efficiency of what you have got and thereby maybe even slow down the age related decrease in capacity.

Swimming is said to a very efficient way of training lungs. I don’t swim myself due to the chlorine indoors and to the biological contents of sea water.

Long notes are also said to increase lung control. According to my experience the training effect only happens in the very last end of the note, where wobbling begins. As I find long notes very boring, I let flexibility or tonguing work end on longer notes, when the air is almost used. Then I work with the sound quality and the stability of pitch at the point where it hurts the most.

The great British brass band guru Geoffrey Brand once told the basses of a band, where I back then played baritone, that they should continue blowing the long notes, even when they ran out of air. Sounds like nonsense, but it isn’t. The other side of efficient lungs is an efficient embouchure. If one trains the ability to keep the sound going, when air runs low, then the consumption of air eventually will be lower, so that in the long run one will be able to play longer notes and phrases with ones given lung capacity. GB’s and mine wordings are different, but the content is the same.

If collaboration is good in a tuba section, it is possible to plan staggered breathing, which will make the section sound like having monster lungs.

Klaus

Simple answer, AEROBIC excercise !!! Complicated by the knee surgery- SWIM , walk, ellipitical trainers, anything to get the heart rate up.Check with your MD- determine your max heart rate. Train and excercise with a heart rate monitor . Ask the Doc to help you determine what range to get the heart rate into for max. benefit. Slowly expand the amount of time you workout in " the zone" .
Try YOGA- , I know, sounds wimpy, but it will help in core conditioning , posture, diaphram and abdominal strength-It will make you stronger all around- , you"ll live longer, feel better and likely be in the market for a BAT in no time at all !!!

jamsav wrote: Try YOGA- , I know, sounds wimpy, but it will help in core conditioning , posture, diaphram and abdominal strength-It will make you stronger all around- , you"ll live longer, feel better and likely be in the market for a BAT in no time at all !!!

We can't know due to not working directly with the OP, but I can imagine that yoga would put a HUGE amount of stress on the knee. I know that Yoga requires a lot of stretching and aerobic technique, which may be too difficult with knee issues. Or it may not be...who knows.

I LOVE yoga, fyi. Combine it with aerobics and you can get an umatched exercise.

How I start the day on BBb. The fermata notes are important and shall be held till exhaustion.

There is a shift in pattern, where I no longer can make the low pedals speak. Below E fingerings on most non-compensating BBb tubas will not give the notes written. Doesn’t matter, as getting air moved and lips buzzed in the extreme low range are the main objects.

Klaus

Hi All,

imperialbari writes "you can hardly expect to increase your lung capacity . . . " but is this really true?
I have heard players talk about increasing their lung capacity by increasing their ability to expand
the rib cage. In addition, if you increase your hemoglobin, I would expect that you could add more oxygen.

Anybody got the medical skinny on this?

Of course you have to learn to breath in even deeper (=more air and more lung capacity in terms of liters.) There you come to an end, that's your true capacity which probably cannot be increased. But in playing, it is about using your capacity. A lot of people use only small amounts of the capacitiy they could take in .
I recommend the book "breathing gym" by Pilafian. The story about decreasing capacity with getting older is just statistic. You can keep you lungs in shape, just stop smoking and do exercises. There may be a slight age-related loss of flexibility in the tissue, but training is the way to go. Obviously it is possible to play until really high age, as long as you are in healthy overall condition. As with other aspects of physical (and mental) fitness it is all about "use it or loose it".

the second thing, hemoglobin. More hemoglobin would be useful for sports, because of transporting more oxygen to the muscles. thus we see EPO-doping, blood doping etc. But for brass playing there is no benefit. We do not need more oxygen. The oxygen doesn't make the sound. The amount of oxygen supplied by air is just right

Gerd

EPO - ask a cyclist !!

Klaus is right on this topic.

"You cannot increase your lung capacity, you can only increase the efficiency of your use of them."
(paraphrasing - it was a while ago)
Dr. Robert Bartlett, physician
-Former Head of the Critical Care Unit, University of Michigan Medical Center
-Inventor, ECMO (you might have heard it mentioned on ER and other hospital-type shows - Extra-Corporeal Membrane Oxygenation)
-Inventor, the incentive spirometer

Bob played bass in an orchestra of which I was the music director (it also happened that his unit at the hospital saved my life), which is how I came to know him. I arranged for him to speak to Fritz Kaenzig's studio class, as he's probably the most-informed person on lung function you'll ever meet. During the class, I believe it was (might have been a personal discussion, as I once experienced a reduction in vital capacity from 5.2l to 1.7l literally overnight), the question of increasing capacity came up and he addressed the misconception of increasing capacity. Your lungs are like any balloon - they fill as much as you fill them. If you only blow in a little air, it will be small; if you blow in lots, it will be bigger. The muscles responsible for inspiration are like any other muscles in your body; they will rise to the demand placed on them, or atrophy if the demands decrease.

(The incentive spirometer, while I've seen a lot of people believe they're using it to increase capacity, was designed merely to be a visualizer. It was the end-product of a study Bartlett co-authored which sought the answer to the high rate of post-operative pneumonia at the time, especially as proved fatal. The study found that many surgeries affecting the patients mobility, but, in particular, the affect thoracic surgeries had on the patients' ability and comfort for deep inspiration. While recuperating, most patients were usually lying on their backs, remaining in bed for an extended period of time. The thoracic surgery and/or pain at taking a deep breath left them breathing shallowly most of the time. When we remain idle and take shallow breaths, the alveoli in our lungs (those broccoli-looking branches) will actually collapse. If you've ever been sitting at a desk for an extended period of time, or reading a book for a long time, and find yourself suddenly taking a deep breath, it serves the purpose of reinflating those alveoli. Without those deep breaths, the alveoli remain collapsed for longer periods, and it's this condition that allows for fluid to begin to collect in the lungs, often leading to bacterial pneumonia. The incentive spirometer was designed to give people a visual aid so they could see just how deep a breath they were taking, and what progress was being made at restoring more "normal" or pre-operative levels. The device, when given in hospitals, is often accompanied by the orders to use it (x) many times per hour. This is to be sure the patient is getting those deep, or as deep as possible, breaths to reinflate any collapsed alveoli. The resistance in the device, depending on the variation of design, may provide a little training for weakened muscles, but is usually not anything that's going to provide noticeable improvement for an otherwise healthy person.)

Not just aerobic activity but exercising the muscles responsible for inspiration is my recommendation, also. Most people do not reach their peak capacity in one breath. Don't believe me? Take in a deep breath, hold it, and see if you can inhale any more on top of it. Even if it's just a little, I'll bet you can, and probably more than once. At the other end, inhale, then exhale to the point you naturally stop exhaling. Then exhale more. I can play a solid four measures, often more, from that "natural end" of the exhale, but I've spoken with lots of people who've never explored that. Granted, if you do it a lot, you'll black out. Your lungs are designed to keep a reserve you don't become hypoxic every time you exhale.

I've never seen the "Breathing Gym" stuff, but I know a lot of people here have sung its praises. It's not the lungs that need help (unless you have a pulmonary disorder/COPD) as much as the muscles.

Thanks for all the input, I appreciate all your comments, and Bloke it's a good thing the MAYO is in my backyard if necessary. I do agree, just a general increase in my overall fitness will help considerably. Roger Lewis had also once mentioned of taking in a short, quck second breath, on top of your first breath, to stretch the muscles of the rib cage. Sort of enlarging the lung cavity also.

As Klaus said and Mitch confirmed, your vital capacity is limited by your skeleton and the flexibility of your lungs. It is what it is.

But there are two things you can learn, one physiological and the other musical. Physiologically, you can learn to take in air faster. I was watching Carol Jantsch perform at the Army Conference, and I had a view from the side. Her inhalation could only be described as explosive--I've never seen anybody expand a chest cavity that fast.

That helps with the musical strategy, which is to learn how to breathe more often, with the strategy of keeping the air topped up rather than trying to fill up from dead empty to completely full in a few milliseconds. Arnold Jacobs described the lung capacity as being equivalent to the length of a bassist's bow. In describing himself, he said, "I have a short bow. But that's okay--I change it often." The trick is learning to do that musically.

The notion of aerobic health comes up from time to time. Here's my story: Over the last 20 years, my size and fitness has ranged from a 285-pound slab o'fat years ago to a 205-pound (8% bodyfat) finisher of an Ironman triathlon. I'm currently sort of in the middle. During that period, my best tuba playing occurred during two periods: 1992, when I weighed 260 and got out of breath climbing one flight of stairs, and played a season at Fiesta Texas with the TubaMeisters. And now. My tuba playing was at a low point when I was aerobically super-fit. Why? I rarely if ever took full breaths during training. (Swimming was the exception--it teaches taking full breaths. But the chlorine caused my sinuses to swell and I use my nose to supplement my air intake while tuba playing.) But the main reason was because I was spending 15 hours a week training instead of practicing the damn tuba.

Good health and fitness is good. Core strength keeps tuba playing from causing back problems. Reasonable aerobic fitness makes it a lot easier to carry the tuba six blocks from a parking place to the gig, and it makes it easier to do everything else, too. Those who wheeze their way through life find it hard to do anything, including tuba playing. But you do not need extreme aerobic efficiency to improve your ability to take in air and play musically.

Rick "learning to inhale quickly and completely before straying into the red zone" Denney

There are a lot of good replies to this question.

Tuba playing is vigorous enough to warrant all the recommendations for athletic preparations. If you are 50, govern yourself accordingly; My training "goal" is to not get hurt.

Lose weight to allow for unrestricted contraction of the diaphram. (applies to lower lungs)

Do stretching exercises for increase flexibility of the upper torso.(upper lungs)

Study infant inspiration (sleeping is the best time) and copy.(brain)

Avoid tension which induces constriction while playing.(application)

Send me $100 for hard-leaned advice. This will only work if you send me the money.

This is what worked for me...
1) use a stand to hold your tuba while playing. This allows your upper and lower back muscles to relax so there is less restriction when inhaling.
2) thoughtful study of Arnold Jacob's writings/recordings plus diligent application of the exercises in Roger Bobo's "Mastering the Tuba" especially the basic warmup. (unlike most exercise books, Bobo focuses like a laser on moving wind in and out of your lungs)
While 1 and 2 probably won't increase your lung capacity, they will let you use what you've got to its fullest potential. Tuba playing relies on a system that includes the physical elements of the abdomen and face. Daily work on exercises designed to move air in and out (abdomen) across a broad range of pitches and dynamics (face) will increase the efficiency of that system. All of us are limited to choosing only two of Low, Loud or Long but we can change our personal definitions of the 3 L's.

Bob Sadler

we've mentioned fitness Haemaglobin exercies etc, but for a tuba player at 50, the most important thing has to be keeping your weight below 190lbs. the reason most middle aged people lose breath and endurance is a big tummy that restricts the downward movement of the diaphragm. Yes there is a loss of lung compliance as you get older, but for most middle aged men, it is body weight.

Being in the latter half of my 5th decade, I can relate to all your suggestions and desires to have better breath control and capacity. I am realizing, with my tuba, to properly start a note I can not sneak onto it with a pianissimo breath, at least not yet. I need to attack the note with a good flow of air for the note to start properly. When I am playing runs that go below the bass clef staff, I seriously run out of air after a measure or so. I may not be able to increase capacity, but the ideas of a quick inhale makes sense to me. It is more about breath control and figuring out musically where best to take a quick breath. Another good skill to improve breath control is to sing a lot of J.S. Bach. The man wrote for keyboard and strings; they don't have to use breath to produce music.

Most of the lung expansion is below the ribcage, also. Depending only on rib expansion will accomplish nothing.
Capacity is fixed...efficiency can be improved. But, capacity can easily decrease thru lack of use, possibly recoverable but not definitely. Pollution, smoking or second hand smoke exposure, and general poor fitness will hinder capacity also.

goodgigs wrote:Go to the gas station, get the tire inflation hose, stick it in your mouth, press the button.

One never shall dismiss a good joke, but this advice would be fatal if followed. And very painful.

Klaus

The stuff Sam Pilafian teaches has you "sipping" air after you think your lungs are full, until you think you will explode. That is a useful exercise.

Another exercise I ran into at ITEC was this:
1. Make two full inhalations, followed by full exhalations (without instrument, this is a breathing exercise)
2. On the third inhalation/exhalation, stop when you are empty and just sit there for ten to fifteen seconds, but without tensing your throat/glottis/etc
3. When the ten-to-fifteen seconds is up, inhale. You should notice that your chest moves, and your inhale may be more relaxed than what you were doing before. When you tense those muscles to avoid inhaling, they will automatically relax and you will get much more of a full inhalation, using the capacity that you have.

This was part of Dave Vining's excellent talk about focal dystonia; he was taught, as many were, to use "belly breathing" by his band director back when, with the lying on the floor with a book on his stomach and moving the book up and down. He demonstrated that he could move his belly in and out a large amount while he was talking normally, proving that this belly action really had nothing to do with breathing, since if it did it would have interfered with his talking during it if belly motion were essential or even applicable to breathing.

MA