The pressure differences driving our ventilation are generated by respiratory muscles. Respiratory muscle weakness may sometimes explain dyspnoe and exercise intolerance, training of those muscles has shown to improve exercise performance in both healthy adults and in patients with chronic respiratory illnesses. Such training often asks to perform respiratory efforts against a pressure load equivalent to a certain percent of maximal respiratory pressures. Portable devices are available to measure those maximal pressures, but it can be highly dependent on participant effort. Our aim was to find out whether maximal inspiratory pressure (MIP) correlates with different flow-volume loop parameters in a group of college level rowers and to compare our data from athletes with published reference values. We studied fourteen 19-33 year-old rowers (two of them female) with mean (range) height 187 (173-202) cm. Flow-volume spirometry was performed according to the international guidelines (1) to determine forced vital capacity (FVC), forced expiratory volume in 1 second (FEV1), peak expiratory and inspiratory flows (PEF and PIF). In addition we made two forced inhalation maneuvers without previous forced expiration. Measurement of MIP was performed with a hand-held mouth pressure meter, during the forced inhalation from residual volume. The maximum average pressure sustained over a 1 second period was defined as a result, subjects repeated this test 3 times. All measured values were compared with reference data (2, 3) and correlations between MIP, lung function and anthropometric indices were expressed by Pearson correlation coefficients (r). Ethics committee approval was obtained and all participants gave informed consent. In comparison to reference population our young rowers had values of FVC and FEV1 mostly above average (97-130% of predicted), whereas PEF ranged from 85 to 120% of predicted. All 3 indices describing forced expiration correlated with height, the strongest correlation was found between FEV1 and height (r=0.89, p<0.01). Often only forced expiration is assessed to diagnose airway obstruction, therefore, the measurement and reference values for PIF are less standardized. In 11 subjects the highest PIF value was obtained from the forced inspiration without previous forced expiration. When using MIP reference values depending on age only, we obtained values in a range of 88-212% pred (absolute values 98-234 cm H2O). MIP correlated significantly only with PIF (r=0.53, p<0.05). High lung volumes and flows compared to the reference values from untrained persons indicate an increased functional capacity of respiratory system in studied rowers. We found a wide between-individual variability of MIP in healthy young subjects. MIP values did correlate with neither anthropometric nor spirometric indices (except for PIF).