Same Method. Different Engine.
For decades, female athletes were underrepresented in breathing research. That is changing, and the data now coming through deserves every coach's attention.
The short version: the method works in women, the female respiratory system behaves differently under load, and a smart program accounts for both.
How the Female Respiratory System Differs
Women have smaller diameter airways than men, even when matched for lung size. That changes the cost of moving air at high intensity.
Dominelli and colleagues (2015) measured the oxygen cost of breathing in 18 healthy adults, 9 of them women. At maximal ventilation, the breathing muscles accounted for 13.8% of whole body oxygen uptake in women, compared with 9.4% in men.
In plain terms, when a female athlete is working flat out, a larger share of her oxygen goes to the job of breathing itself. That is oxygen not going to the legs.
There is another side to the story. Guenette et al. (2010) tested 38 endurance trained athletes, 19 men and 19 women, cycling to exhaustion at 90% of peak work rate.
Diaphragm fatigue occurred in 58% of the men and 42% of the women. The drop in diaphragm force was significantly smaller in the women at 10 and 30 minutes after exercise, and the authors concluded the female diaphragm is more resistant to exercise induced fatigue.
So women pay more per breath at high ventilation, but their main breathing muscle holds up better. Neither finding is a weakness. Both are reasons to train breathing deliberately rather than leave it to chance.
The Menstrual Cycle Changes Breathing
Ventilation is not fixed across the month. A 2025 meta analysis by Rattley et al. pooled 35 studies and 743 participants.
Minute ventilation was higher in the luteal phase than in the follicular phase, both at rest and during submaximal exercise up to 90% of VO2max. The rise in progesterone predicted the change in ventilation during submaximal work.
At maximal intensity the difference was small, and it disappeared once lower quality studies were removed. Variation between studies was high, so expect individual athletes to respond differently.
What this means at training: in the luteal phase, many athletes will breathe more at the same running speed. Extra breathlessness at a familiar workload in that window is physiology, not a sudden loss of fitness.
It also affects how you read breathing tests. Because resting ventilation shifts across the cycle, take BOLT readings in the same phase each month if you want a fair comparison. That is a practical precaution, not a tested finding; no study we know of has tracked BOLT across the cycle.
Keep BOLT in its lane. It is a useful self check of breathlessness and CO2 sensitivity. It is not a validated predictor of performance, so never select or drop an athlete on it.
Breath Hold Sprint Training Works in Women
The strongest female specific data comes from soccer. Ait Ali Braham et al. (2024) put 24 trained female players through 12 repeated sprint sessions over 6 weeks, in three groups of 8.
One group sprinted while holding the breath after a normal exhale, at low lung volume. One group held at high lung volume. One group breathed normally.
In a repeated sprint test to exhaustion, the low lung volume group went from 19.3 to 22.6 sprints, a 17% gain. The high lung volume group improved about 6%. The normal breathing group barely moved, from 19.4 to 19.5.
Only the low lung volume group improved mean sprint velocity and reduced sprint decrement, from 23.7% to 19.4%. Oxygen saturation at the end of training sprints averaged 92.1% in that group, against about 97% in the other two, which shows where the extra training stimulus came from.
That detail matters for coaching. Holding with full lungs is a different drill with a smaller effect. The hold starts at the bottom of a normal exhale.
The wider evidence points the same way. A 2025 meta analysis by Précart et al. pooled 10 studies with 199 trained athletes, 42 of them female. The method improved fatigue resistance across repeated sprints, with no effect on best sprint time.
So set expectations correctly. This is about holding your speed late in the game, not about a faster first step. And with only 42 women in the pooled data, the female evidence base is promising but still small.
Building It Into a Female Program
Start with the structure that has been tested. The soccer study used two sessions a week, with 2 to 3 sets of 8 to 9 sprints over 30 metres, 25 seconds between sprints and 5 minutes between sets.
That is roughly 20 minutes of work, twice a week, for six weeks. It fits inside a normal conditioning day.
Then adjust around the athlete.
Track the cycle where athletes are willing. Expect breathing at a given workload to feel harder in the luteal phase. Keep the session structure and let perceived effort guide total volume.
Build a nasal breathing base. Light, slow nasal breathing during warm ups and recovery is a low cost daily habit and a sensible foundation before breath hold sprints begin.
Coach the exhale. The effect in the soccer trial came from holding at low lung volume. Watch for athletes who sneak in a big breath before the hold.
Screen first. Pregnant athletes should not do breath hold training without medical clearance. The same applies to anyone with a heart, lung or blood pressure condition.
Safety note: never do breath holds in or near water, never while driving and never alone. Stop immediately if you feel dizzy.
FOR ELITE ATHLETES, THIS CAN HELP YOU
✔ Improve repeated sprint ability, as shown in trained female soccer players
✔ Reduce sprint decrement across a repeated sprint set
✔ Understand why breathing feels harder in the luteal phase at the same workload
✔ Train with a method tested in women, not just extrapolated from men
Performance takeawayFemale athletes respond to breath hold sprint training. The program simply needs to respect how female physiology works under load and across the month.
Control your breath. Control the result.
Want this in your program? Enquire about Vincere Protocol for your team.
