Originally Posted by varian72
What does it mean when your lungs give out before anything? My legs were suffering, but not real bad and my heart rate never deviated more than 15bms or so my entire ride even on my 1000 climb. Only went from 155 to 169 during the climb even though I was pushing pretty hard. My lungs seemed to be what is holding me back. I suffered from exercise enduvced asthama as a kid. I've always felt that my breathing technique is perhaps at fault for keeping my performance lower than I want.
Do I just have small lungs or do I need to learn how to breath? Are there breathing techniques other than Yoga type exercises?
+1 to the previous responses.
It sounds like you are new to exercise. Your lactate threshold (LT) and maximum oxygen capacity (VO2Max) is that of a new exerciser. So it can be possible that your "idling" heart rate is close to your LT and not very far from your maximum heart rate (MHR) which approximates where your VO2Max is. But, IMHO, you didn't hit your VO2Max. Most new exercisers don't know how to suffer enough to get there.
As your body adapts to exercise, your stroke volume will increase which causes your "idling" (resting heart rate) to decrease. Also, your VO2Max and LT will increase. You will see these manifest themselves in a higher MHR and an LT that occurs at a higher heart rate then when you started exercising.
All of these changes will continue (as well as others in your "plumbing"--read: vascular system) until you hit your genetic limits or wherever you plateau training stress.