How can altitude training benefit you?

How can altitude training benefit you?

On this edition of the Ask Coach Parry Cycling podcast we chat to our cycling coach Devlin Eyden about the benefits of altitude training.  We find out if this is beneficial to everybody and what is involved in altitude training.  We look at what height you would need to train at to see those benefits?

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Transcript

David Katz:          Thanks for joining us on the Ask Coach Parry Cycling podcast once again, I’m Mr Active, David Katz, joined by Devlin Eyden and with the Tour de France ending just recently, a couple of weeks ago, a week ago, just over a week ago, I wanted to look at altitude training because we’ve had some queries about that.

We see these Tour de France contenders, it becomes part of their regime almost to go train at altitude, but for everyone it’s not so easy, there’s all these altitude chambers that are popping up in the coastal areas around the world, I know in Cape Town and Durban they all have these.

Basically Devlin, what I want to know is what is the benefit of altitude training and at what height would you need to train to see those benefits?

Devlin Eyden:      David, so this is a question that’s popping up a lot more these days with the various amounts of altitude training masks that are on market and as you mentioned with altitude chambers.

Altitude training - does it work or not?

Just to touch firstly on the theory of altitude and the oxygen side and how the body works. The human body requires oxygen to function, especially for any endurance sport. Anything longer than a couple of second sprint starts to require oxygen and the red blood cells rich with haemoglobin, the haemoglobin is actually what transports the oxygen around the body, to the vital organs, to your muscles, to the cells and so on.

The fundamental theory of altitude training is that by exposing the body or the athlete to a no oxygen rich environment, the body gets put under stress because now it’s having to adapt as to how efficiently to make use and transport oxygen around the body. Over a period of time, it adapts, you can go back down to train in a low altitude in a high oxygen rich environment. You can imagine how there’s so much oxygen around, the body is now efficient in transporting that oxygen around, so now you’ve got rich haemoglobin blood flowing around and you can perform a lot better.

It’s the same if you think of yourself as a motor vehicle and being at altitude, driving around your car tends to perform a lot better at sea level when you’ve got more oxygen to function with as well. That’s the theory as to how it benefits. More questions that come in and there’s been research over the couple of decades as to what best works in terms of the altitude training but there’s a little bit more of a grey area and the answer to the question isn’t really black and white.

It’s not really whether a case of does altitude training work or not, it’s more a case of what is the best and most effective application of the method and that’s where there’s many different theories as to how it would work. Coming to part two when we start talking of your question, where you start talking about what height and what altitude you get the best benefits from, that’s very tricky to answer because individuals will respond differently to different altitudes.

It is key to have your coach or your trainer know you as an athlete and how your body responds to various workloads, various altitudes and make sure that the program that you’re on is individualised to you. No two people will respond the same to altitude training and then the side of it where we start talking about the application again comes in with how much training needs to be done and at what altitude and what type of intensity as well.

There has been a study that has shown some athletes have done a three week training camp at altitude, so they live at altitude, they train at altitude, hoping to get the benefits, but because you’re training at altitude, you’re not able to put out the same intensities as what you would do if you were training at sea level and you normally live at sea level.

For example, if you’re typically riding at a threshold of 300 watts, when you get to altitude, that might become 200 or 250 watts, whatever it might be. You’re not necessarily training at the same intensity you’re used to. In the study particularly, if you guys came from a three week training camp, and actually de-trained over that period of time, not because of the altitude necessarily, well, it is directly related to the altitude but more a case of, they haven’t been able to work at the right intensity necessary.

Know your body and how it responds to altitude

That’s where it also comes into, you need to know how you respond and at what altitude you can get the most out of the training. A couple of questions that then do come up is frequency, so how often and more to, if you’re using an altitude mask or you’re in an altitude chamber, how often should you be training at various intensities, at altitude and for what duration should you be training as well. There comes now where a couple of theories come in, there’s the live high, train high, so that’s living and training at altitude, versus the live low, train high and the one that seems to have the most benefit is living high and training is low and the reason there being that you’re spending the majority of your time and in a resting state, at altitude.

For us to train once or twice a week for a 45 minute session or an hour session in an altitude chamber doesn’t really show as much benefit as it would if you were spending vast amounts of time at altitude.

Again, for us guys up here in Gauteng for instance and we train up here and we’re used to training up at altitude, we get down to the coast, we probably see a little bit more benefit than what the guys training down at the coast would see when they’re up at altitude, but keeping in mind that when we are talking serious altitude training as well, we’re talking probably anything higher than about 2500 – 3 000m feet above sea level.

Up in Gauteng we’re sitting, I think at about 1 400m above sea level. Again, it comes down to the type of athlete you are, so if you’re more the elite level athlete, if you’re right at the top of the game, you are going to notice those differences a lot more than what the average weekend warrior would because that would come down to your conditioning itself versus the altitude as well.

There’s a couple of things that unfortunately it isn’t a black and white answer but it comes down to making sure that the frequency is right, the amount of training you’re doing is right and again, how you’re responding to that below altitude training.

DK:         Devlin, you sound like a doctor giving us a grey matter answer there, but very valid points you make. I’m glad you mentioned living in Gauteng and up on the Highveld because I know a lot of the guys from the coast, they give us a hard time, but at least there’s a benefit to living up here and Brad Brown is one of the worst, the guys who used to live up here and move there! So, thanks for just making us feel a little bit better on the Highveld.

Thanks for joining us as well on another edition of the Ask Coach Parry Cycling podcast, we’ll be back again in another couple of days’ time, but if you do want to win a lifetime membership to the Ask Coach Parry Cycling Community, do go to  iTunes and rate us, we’d really appreciate that and that’s a fantastic prize there up for you.

From myself, Mr Active, David Katz and Devlin Eyden, we’ll catch up with you again next time.

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