Hi there,

Im gonna spit out a really personal problem that I havent talked about to anyone since I was like 10.

Ive been plagued by very poor fitness my whole life, never been able to do proper sports.
Think it might be something to do with being in a serious fire when I was 3, which through lot of smoke inhalation I think harmed my lung capacity. I was given inhalers etc when I was 9-10 when it started to become clear I had problems . but I decided to rather harden the fuk up and binned em!

Many years of struggling through school sports later.. I got into other things like skateboarding, bmx etc which didnt have the pressure, and suited me a lot more. But eventually I quickly got to a limit were I could really progress due to lack of stamina etc.
The explosive "bursts" of energy required to do a big ollie or bunnyhop, is something I could never manage to improve upon. Making learning flip tricks a real challenge on a board (learnt heelflips though) and street riding on a bike difficult and dangerous (half arsed drops, grinds, jumps etc) so I never really got past the basics even though I kept at it for years.

Last year I bult up a 26" dirt jump kinda bike and hit 4x track, found it a lot safer than trying the same on a bmx. But still very much lacking the power and stamina to get around the track with speed and confidence (failing to even clear tables even though I know I can)

I feel my lung capacity & inability to put power out quick enough to do sprint/explosive power release type sports is really limiting me in all the things I want to do.

Its worse than just being "unfit" its was so bad I used get out of breath trying to walk with a group of people. Trying stuff like running really gets nowhere for me. I do have the ability to do extremely slow paced distance sports and keep at it for ages, but I have no patience for them!

I built a fixed wheel road/training bike last autumn which has been very slowly helping, as it provides a more fun way of sprinting yet nowhere near as strenous as running!

Im looking for some advice on improving my lung capacity & sprint/energy release abilities. I know theres some knowledgable folk here that know about sports science etc hopefully you can help me out.

Thankyou. 

Yeah, you should definitely get checked out by a doctor. Intense exercise may be dangerous if you have a severe condition.

You've probably got some form of asthma. Binning your inhalers probably didn't help you much. :p

Yeah first go see a doctor, preferably a sport specific one.

I have also heard good things about these - http://www.powerbreathe.com - they are designed to improve lung performance by providing resistance to normal breathing, hence training your diaphragm muscle (and maybe the intercostal muscles between your ribs). They're about £25 so well worth a try I think.

I don't know much about sport science but isn't yoga supposed to help with this kind of thing?

One of the best ways of improving sprint/power fitness is for a start, get on your road training bike you got and just pick a fairly flat steady route and while you ride it cruise for a while, then sprint for a while, cruise, sprint, cruise etc.  Don't go nuts at first coz it does hurt, initially i'd say cruise for 5 mins, sprint for a minute and then just increase you're sprinting time in relation to cruising so you end up cruising for around ten mins and sprinting/riding hard for 4 or 5 mins.  Do this a few times a week or even once a week and i reckon you'll be surprised by the results, it helps with everything really, aerobic, power and your max/min heart rate.  But like i said don't bust a gut doin it, get some advice off your doc n stuff n all.