The TriDoc Podcast, triathlon and health in one place · Dr. Jeff Sankoff

Ep. 170: Respiratory Muscle Training device the Breather and Blank Labels, Big Dreams: The Rise of Blanks Nutrition

·1 hr 3 min·4 clips

Michael Arashida learned to swim at 18 and still earned a pro triathlon card in college.

Michael Arashida joins Jeff Zankoff with a resume that fits the conversation well. He has a pre-med background in biochemistry, an MBA focused on healthcare administration, and eight years of pro triathlon racing, along with sponsorship experience with Science & Sport. The episode starts there. Arashida and Zankoff use that path to trace his move from short-course racing into long-course triathlon and then into building Blanks Nutrition. Blanks comes across as a nutrition company with blank labels and a more interesting story inside than the packaging suggests. The host keeps things grounded in the athlete and business side of the sport instead of turning it into a glossy brand pitch. From there the discussion turns to respiratory muscle training. The episode digs into the Breather and the wider class of breathing devices that promise better strength or efficiency for athletes. Jeff leans on the evidence rather than the marketing. Older studies are framed as inconsistent, mostly because the devices and protocols varied too much to draw a clean conclusion. More recent work is less generous. The episode points to studies in cyclists, swimmers, runners, rowers, basketball players, track and field athletes, and even special forces that found no meaningful effect. One 2025 systematic review and meta-analysis gets particular attention. It covered 27 studies from 2000 to 2022, with 563 athletes, and found no statistically significant benefit in lung function or sport outcomes across swimming, cycling, rowing, basketball, and track and field. The Breather does not get a pass from that comparison. It keeps getting measured against the larger PowerBreathe device, which appears repeatedly in the research and the device landscape, but the conversation lands on the same practical question of whether any of this has measurable value for trained athletes. That skepticism drives the episode. The tone is not dismissive for its own sake; it is more interested in whether the claims hold up once the baseline group is already well trained. The episode leaves room for listener judgment. Even so, the practical message is hard to miss: the device may be portable, the labels may be blank, and the promises may be big, but the performance evidence is thin.

As heard by us

A founder story that ends with a hard look at breathing-device hype.

The episode moves neatly from Michael Arashida's athlete-to-founder path into a skeptical look at respiratory muscle training for endurance athletes.

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Why you'd press play

Triathlon founder lore plus a sober look at breathing trainers.

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