natural or developped?

[runner]

I'm new to this stuff. I've heard different things and I'm wondering about this. Is lung capacity, I mean volume of air your lungs can hold, a genetic thing? or Can you actually increase the amount of air your lungs can hold? I've heard that you can't actually increase this, but that through training you can increase the flexibility of your lungs and strengthen your surrounding muscles, allowing you to better use your lungs. I know that training CAN increase the efficiency of your breathing and allow your blood to better absorb oxygen, but can your lungs capacity grow? If you can increase lung capacity, how? Does simply practicing apnea do this?

Andy

 

[Cabo Kid]

I don't know if you can actually increase the size of your lungs (if you are young, you probably can).
But you can certainly increase the oxygen exhange of your avioli. You can expand your rib cage size and span, thus taking deeper breaths, if you are a smoker, you could stop smoking and start experiencing greater lung capacity.
Whether or not you can increase some sort of abstract limit of the lungs themselves, you can certainly increase the amount of air you can hold (cross country runners and crew rowers do it, for sure).