Respiratory Muscle Training Meta-Analysis: 14 Studies on 375 Competitive Swimmers

Presenting a systematic review and meta-analysis of 14 studies involving 375 competitive swimmers, evaluating the effects of respiratory muscle training (RMT). It reports effect sizes for outcomes including maximal inspiratory pressure (MIP), forced expiratory volume (FEV1), and swimming performance metrics. The analysis was conducted by Yunji Chen and published in 2026.

Use Cases

• Analyze the standardized mean difference (SMD) for maximal inspiratory pressure (MIP) to quantify RMT's impact on respiratory muscle strength.
• Compare effect sizes for forced expiratory volume in 1 second (FEV1) and forced inspiratory volume in the 1st second (FIV1) to assess changes in dynamic pulmonary function.
• Evaluate the SMD for aerobic swimming performance against outcomes for 50m, 100m, and 200m freestyle times to understand RMT's differential effects.
• Assess study heterogeneity and confidence intervals (e.g., 95% CI) reported in the meta-analysis to interpret the robustness of findings for maximal expiratory pressure (MEP).

Strengths

• Aggregates data from 14 individual studies, providing a synthesized evidence base.
• Includes quantitative results for 375 competitive swimmer participants.
• Reports specific statistical measures including standardized mean differences (SMDs), p-values, and 95% confidence intervals for each outcome.

Limitations

• The underlying data is a PDF document (852.4 KB), not a structured tabular dataset, limiting direct computational analysis.
• High inter-study heterogeneity is noted for some outcomes, which may affect the generalizability of pooled results.
• The sample size of 375 swimmers across all included studies may be limited for detecting smaller effect sizes.

Provenance

Source

figshare, authored by Yunji Chen.

Collection Method

Systematic review and meta-analysis of eight databases from inception to September 26, 2025.

Time Range

Studies from database inception to September 2025.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-20.