Breathing

How to Increase Lung Capacity: What Works and What Doesn't

By Cheng Xu · Updated November 11, 2026 · 5 min read

You can't make healthy adult lungs much bigger: total lung capacity is set mostly by your body size and the shape of your chest. What you can change is how well you use it. Regular aerobic exercise, slow diaphragmatic breathing, not smoking and, for some people, breathing-muscle training make breathing feel easier and help protect lung function as you age.

How to improve your lung capacity, step by step

1. Move most days. Brisk walking, cycling, swimming or dancing that makes you breathe harder trains your heart, your muscles and your breathing muscles together. Build up gradually towards the common target of about 150 minutes a week.
2. Practise slow belly breathing. A few minutes of deep belly breathing helps you use the lower lungs and the diaphragm instead of breathing high in the chest. The timer above paces an easy rhythm of about 5.5 seconds in and 5.5 seconds out.
3. Lengthen the exhale. Breathing out slowly through softly pursed lips, as if cooling soup, keeps the airways open a little longer and makes room for the next breath.
4. Stand and sit tall. A slumped posture squeezes the lower ribs. When you notice it, sit back, let your shoulders drop and take two slow breaths into the sides of your ribcage.
5. Protect what you have. Avoid tobacco smoke and vaping, limit time in heavy traffic fumes and smoke, keep your vaccinations up to date, and keep a healthy weight, which gives the diaphragm more room to move.
6. Consider breathing-muscle training only with guidance. Small handheld devices that make breathing in harder can strengthen the inspiratory muscles. They are well studied in athletes and in some lung conditions, but ask a clinician before using one if you have a heart or lung condition.

Breath-holding challenges and "lung stretching" tricks do not grow lung tissue, and long breath holds can make you faint. They are not part of this list for that reason.

Lung capacity is not the same as fitness

Two different things are often called lung capacity. Total lung capacity is how much air your lungs hold when completely full. In healthy adults it depends mainly on height, sex and age, and exercise does not noticeably change it. Breathing efficiency is how easily you move air and how well your heart and muscles use the oxygen it brings. This is what improves with training, and it is why a walk up the stairs gets easier after a few weeks of regular exercise even though your lungs are the same size.

Lung function also declines slowly with age, starting in the mid-thirties, even in healthy non-smokers. Staying active and not smoking slow that decline; nothing reverses it.

When to use it

• As part of your day: Two or three minutes of slow belly breathing after a walk, or before bed, is an easy habit to keep. The breathing exercises guide compares other patterns.
• When you are returning to exercise: Start with short, comfortable sessions and let your breathing settle between them. Slow breathing between efforts can make the recovery feel more controlled.
• When your chest feels tight with stress: Slow breathing with a longer exhale, or coherent breathing, is a gentle option. If stress keeps you breathing fast and shallow, a short 5-4-3-2-1 grounding exercise is another way to settle.

Who should be careful

Stop any breathing exercise if you feel dizzy, lightheaded, tingly or short of breath, and breathe normally until it passes. Breathing exercises are not a substitute for diagnosis or care. If you have asthma, COPD, another lung condition, a heart condition, or are pregnant, ask your doctor or a respiratory physiotherapist before starting breathing-muscle training or a new exercise plan; pulmonary rehabilitation programmes teach these skills safely.

See a doctor promptly for breathlessness that is new, getting worse, or happens at rest; a cough that lasts more than three weeks; chest pain; coughing up blood; or wheezing. Breathing that feels worse is a reason to be checked, not a reason to train harder. A lung function test called spirometry is how your capacity is actually measured.

Why it works: what the research says

Respiratory muscle training does improve exercise performance in healthy people. A meta-analysis of 46 studies found that training the breathing muscles improved endurance performance, with larger effects in longer tests and in less fit people than in highly trained athletes. A separate meta-analysis in athletes found improvements in time trials and endurance time. These studies measure performance and breathing-muscle strength, not lung size.

The American Lung Association notes that total lung capacity is largely set by the chest wall, the diaphragm and body size, that lung function declines gradually with age, and that aerobic activity and breathing training help you make the most of the lungs you have. That matches the approach on this page: train the system that moves the air, and protect the lungs themselves.

References

• Illi SK, Held U, Frank I, Spengler CM. Effect of respiratory muscle training on exercise performance in healthy individuals: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Sports Medicine. 2012. PubMed
• HajGhanbari B, Yamabayashi C, Buna TR, et al. Effects of respiratory muscle training on performance in athletes: a systematic review with meta-analyses. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research. 2013. PubMed
• American Lung Association. Lung capacity and aging. Patient information. lung.org