Back in 2015, NBA player Paul George was spotted during practice wearing a Training Mask. Reporters got a chance to talk to him for a couple of minutes and we were thrilled to find out what his experience with using Training Mask has been like.
Paul George has been nominated three times to the All-NBA Team and NBA All-Defensive Team and is a four-time NBA All-Star. He definitely knows how to stay on top of his conditioning to perform at an elite level.
“It just makes it tougher. I tried to use it during practice, tried to improve my endurance and stamina, and it worked. I was able to practice hard and go forward longer today.”
NBA players and coaches are always trying out different workout routines and ways of developing the endurance and stamina, so that they can go harder for longer periods during the match. Adding in a little bit of respiratory training during their practice has been proven to be very effective as Paul, and other NBA players, have declared during their interviews.
The Training Mask will make practice tougher, but it will make the games easier.
“This will definitely help, it will make games easier, and it is making practice easier so I know that will translate into the game.”
Basketball is sport which blends aerobic and anaerobic type of movements. There is a lot of running going on during a match, but there are also really fast sprints and explosives jumps. All this is happening super-fast, so as a player if you are able to recover faster you will be able to go forward longer and overall perform better throughout the game.
Professional players that are using the Trainig Mask have confirmed this, but we also had an actual study done using basketball players confirming this.
The Jerzy Kuckuczka Academy of Physical Education in Katowice, Poland took 12 male basketball players and put them to the test. The players followed their normal workouts and in addition to that they did 6 respiratory resistance training sessions per week.
These respiratory exercises consisted of doing 4-5 sets of super high intensity activities. Each set lasted for 4 minutes with 4 minutes of rest between the sets.
The basketball players were tested just 3 weeks after the start of the research and the results were pretty impressive to say the least. On average the athletes showed an 8% increase in VO2 max, compared to the baseline of their aerobic capacity.
With guys such as Paul George using the Trainig Mask throughout his entire pre-season prep, imagine how much more significant his improvement can be.
“I’ve used this during the summers for years now, but I just started back today. It gives you that, being in Colorado feel.”
Basketball players and many other performance athletes for that matter are often going to the mountains to train and just live there for up to several weeks are months. It is a well-known fact that training and living at high altitudes will make you perform better once you return to sea level.
It’s interesting to see Paul George make this parallel between altitude training and using the Training Mask in his pre-season. It’s definitely a more convenient way of training rather than getting up at high altitude and staying there long enough to actually see some results.
Paul George was coming off a pretty bad injury before this interview, and him using the Training Mask to help his post-injury recovery is just another nod of approval from a professional athlete in favor of the results from the Training Mask.
Watch the full video below:
