The Party of the Big Tent
Posted By Paul Kotik on 31 January 2005
Altitude training has for some years now been widely practiced in the upper echelons of sport, and has developed a considerable interest in the scientific community. There are scholarly papers published in peer-reviewed journals, and even international conferences. Uncontrolled, anecdotal studies date back to the early 1960’s ( e.g., Saltin, 1967 ) and controlled studies appear to have been pioneered by Adams et al., 1975. Ironically, the Saltin study reported a decline in the performances of 7 of his 9 subjects, all describe as ‘elite athletes’ in a variety of sports.
The basic idea is simple: training in the hypoxic conditions of high altitude, real or simulated, is thought to induce performance-enhancing adaptations in activities wherein performance is closely correlated with oxygen exploitation. Put the athlete in an environment where oxygen is scarce, and his body will adapt, becoming more efficient at exploiting what oxygen is available. Then, when you set the athlete to compete in a sea-level, or normoxic environment, he’s supercharged by his altitude adaptations.
For a while, the practice of ‘blood-doping’ made headlines when it came to light that Olympic athletes were training at high altitudes, thus raising their RBC counts and hemoglobin, drawing their own blood, storing it and then re-infusing it into their own bodies just before the low-altitude competition. Seemed sort of kosher: no steroids, no hormones of the sort that produced East German womens teams consisting of Arnold Shwarzenegger clones, and it seemed to work. Seemed to work so well, in fact, that the US Cycling team got the brilliant notion to give it a try at the 1984 Olympics. Only trouble was, their logistical plan didn’t allow for a period of altitude training during which to sex up the team members’ red-bloodedness. Not to be deterred, somebody came up with the ingenious idea of buying some nice hi-octane juice from high-altitude relatives, friends and frank strangers with matching blood types. It worked ! The team brought home a record 9 gold medals. Oh, yes, and a similar number of hepatitis cases.
Blood doping , for a variety of unwholesome reasons, is now a thing of the past, but, nobody any longer seriously doubts the effectiveness of altitude training in the O2 intensive sports. There is some controversy along the fault line separating the Live Low/Train High camp and the Live High/Train Low faction, and the puzzle of the pioneering but counterintuitive Saltin study seems to have been solved.
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