Originally Posted by
jgadamski
Thanks for putting things in perspective on the smoking. I am not alone, and of course, all activity improves things. I probably wasn't clear in my initial post, but I was curious as to whether there were specific ways to improve lung function- do sprints help things more than steady riding at set pace for longer periods of time? Specific exercises or Physical Therapies to improve lung function? The electronic tracking makes it easier to see where things are working or not. Analyzing distance, elevation,speed, heart rate,cadence, etc make it apparent hills are my particular bugaboo, and the heart rate suggests I am not getting sufficient air. Just praying for a majick bullet!
Conventional wisdom is simply aerobic exercise is the way to recover from smoking, more is better. Beyond that, I'd expect that normal training regimes are applicable equally to ex-smokers and people who have never smoked.
After a fairly short period - months - we cough out enough tar and have healed enough that the amount of degradation with respect to age is the same as with someone who has never smoked. Recovery begins almost immediately, in a matter of days. But we've already been damaged some during those years of smoking.
The problem is that nobody has taken non-smokers, measured their lung functions, had them then smoke for years damaging themselves, quit and then measure again. The violation of ethics would make that impossible. So it's not precisely known. Although we can find claims that complete recovery is possible, the most credible information that I've come across suggests that at best we can expect around 95% of the lung function that we'd have had, had we never smoked at all.