The Later Volumes of Freediving
Posted By Paul Kotik on 21 November 2004
Hypoxic tents have arrived in the freediving world. It’s no secret (is it ? I hope I’m not letting the cat out of the bag !) that a number of the world’s top competitors are sleeping at 3, 000 meters’ altitude or more, this in the comfort of their sea-level homes. Adaptation to an oxygen – poor environment: hemoglobin, RBC and hematocrit on the rise, neovascularization, myoglobin muscle mania. You pitch this tent in your house, see, and dial up an altitude. You close yourself inside, and the conditioning unit maintains the inside air at the equivalent density of the selected altitude. Even while you’re sleeping, you’re working out. Maintaining a positive altitude at all times.
Pretty hard-core.
It may even work. I don’t know how long one must sleep in a hypoxic tent in order to show the distinctive physiological and structural adaptations we observe in natives of the high Andes, but all the tenters I know are pretty keen about it. Hell, I’d sleep in one myself just because it’s so cool, if the price tag weren’t a sweet $US 7,500.
Me, I’ve always relied on my general sloth and distraction to provide me with the training benefits of a poor man’s hypoxic tent. I forget to breathe, and my automatic breather thingy doesn’t work so well anymore. Frequent use of public toilet facilities ( a generous characterization ) in the Middle East induces adaptations, too: an habitual, deep-rooted disinclination to breathe at all. Blue-Faced Apnea – the lesser of two evils.
Then there’s my old friend Zax – not his real name, for reasons which will become obvious anon.
You want hard core ? Zax, a graying, somewhat decrepit Carribbean freediver with a truly horrifying aquatic resume, caught wind of the hypoxic tent thing and came up with a highly original, unique method of inducing hypoxic adaptation.
Instead of reducing the amount of oxygen available in the air he breathes, Zax decided to reduce the amount he delivered to his bloodstream.
He came up with a drug that induces profound hemolytic anemia.
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