Define Total Lung Capacity

The total lung capacity refers to the maximum amount of air a person’s lungs can hold (wisegeek.org, 2014). Breathing occurs in a cyclic manner due to the movements of the chest wall and the lungs. The resulting changes in pressure, causing changes in lung volume and lung capacity (humanphysiology.hubpages.com, 2014). An average human’s lung capacity can hold 4-6 liters, but only ⅓ of your lung capacity is used during normal activity, but this fraction increases during strenuous activity when the body requires more oxygen such as jogging, playing sports, etc. On average males have a 20-25% higher lung capacity than females and taller individuals rather than smaller people. Respiration is the exchange between oxygen and carbon dioxide (wisegeek.org, …show more content…
All of us have two lungs that are located in our left and right chest, and an average person has a lung capacity of approximately 4000 to 6000 cm. The capacity of human lungs can be said to be overbuilt when it is compared against our respiratory needs, since we only use about one third of our lung capacity (all-science-fair-projects.com, 2013). The lung capacity of a person usually depends on his or her gender, height, weight and …show more content…
The average score of the athletes for vital capacity was significantly higher than the mean for the non-athletes, but insignificant differences existed between the two groups in MBC and MBC/VC. It is suggested that the difference in VC is due to increased development of the respiratory musculature incidental to regular physical training (jap.physiology.org, 2014). The correlation between MBC/VC is definitely connected between athletes and nonathletes and it would appear that the differences had to do with the presence of absence of obstructive ventilatory defects that are unaffected by physical training (jap.physiology.org,