Phase Relations Between Rhythmical Movements and Breathing in Wind Instrument Players

In humans, the coupling of breathing and limb movements during a lot of different activities has been reported. Relations between particular phases of rhythmical forearm movements and breathing have been measured and may be called coordination in the sense of von Holst (Holst 1939). This coordination occurred in healthy persons in restricted entrainment bands to some degree at different rates. A small percentage of “good” coordinators revealing a high level of fixed-phase relations within a movement rate range was distinguished from the majority of “poor” coordinators showing only a small percentage of fixed phase relations (Ebert et al. 2000). The reason for this difference has not yet been established. In both a group of untrained subjects (controls) and a group of well-trained pianists with a high level of sensorimotor capability, a similar distribution of many poor and few good coordinators has been described (Ebert et al. 2002). In these investigations it was striking that good coordinators were more experienced in controlling their breathing voluntarily, for instance by practicing singing or yoga breathing. The present study has been carried out to prove the hypothesis that the degree of coordination (coupling strength) may depend on the effect of training on the breathing motor apparatus.