Influence of a Single Slow-Paced Breathing Session on Cardiac Vagal Activity in Athletes

Abstract

Commented [EM1]: I'm unsure on the direct differences between these… I understand it's potentially the accompianing effects and the effects directly after but I think this wording is confusing I wonder if it would read better « during, imediately after and 60 mins after »

Emotional Intelligence Training: Influence of a Brief Slow-Paced Breathing Exercise on Psychophysiological Variables Linked to Emotion Regulation

“…Regarding CVA, our findings are in line with previous literature, given so far a robust increase in CVA has been systematically demonstrated during SPB, while returning to levels close to baseline when ceasing the SPB exercise [ 55 , 57 , 58 , 59 ]. This acute increase may occur due to the action of SPB on the baroreflex [ 41 ] and on pulmonary afferents [ 38 ], thus stimulating the vagus nerve [ 39 , 42 ].…”

“…Similar to previous research (e.g., [ 58 , 73 ]), SPB was conducted with a video showing a ball moving up and down at the rate of 6 cpm, based on the EZ-Air software (Thought Technology Ltd., Montreal, Canada). Participants were instructed to inhale continuously through the nose while the ball was going up, and exhale continuously through the mouth with pursed lips when the ball was going down.…”

“…Among the methods that can be used to enhance CVA [ 53 , 54 ], SPB has been shown to influence CVA in athletes [ 55 , 56 , 57 , 58 , 59 ]. Regarding its acute effects, although CVA appears to robustly increase during SPB, these effects seem to cease simultaneously with the termination of SPB exercises [ 41 , 55 , 57 , 58 , 59 ]. However, chronic increases in CVA can be found after long-term interventions [ 56 ].…”

Using Slow-Paced Breathing to Foster Endurance, Well-Being, and Sleep Quality in Athletes During the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…Slow-paced breathing has already been shown to enhance CVA (Wells et al, 2012;Laborde et al, 2019a;Lehrer et al, 2020), with evidence existing for acute (Laborde et al, 2016;You et al, 2021), and chronic (Laborde et al, 2019a) increases in CVA. In athletes, SPB acutely increased CVA even after one single SPB session (You et al, 2021). CVA has been used as a biofeedback marker for SPB training in the applied field (Lehrer and Gevirtz, 2014;Shaffer and Meehan, 2020).…”

“…Future studies on the effects of SPB on the variables discussed here should perform SPB either within a single testing session (Laborde et al, 2019b;You et al, 2021) or following a number of daily sessions, for instance over four to 8 weeks (Schumann et al, 2019;Laborde et al, 2019a). In both cases, the variables of interest should be measured before and directly after the intervention.…”