High Altitude Is The Perfect Solution

The altitude training has been effectively used by athletes to enhance their fitness and potential at sea level. Novel overloads have been tried with the endurance training athletes.

Elite cyclists undergo training in three camps before entering the competitions. Lucia et al in the year 2001 have noted that professional road cyclists rode their cycles as high as 35,000 kilometers every year for training purposes and compete in as many as 90 sport events per annum. Their racing starts during March and end up in October when the World Championships are regularly held. Isn’t it a season long enough for a cyclist? National and professional participants improve in overall fitness within three months of base training and cross many fitness plateaus. Coaches have to be smart enough to induce their students in altitude training after three weeks of resistance training before six weeks of base training. They should end up doing three weeks of high-intensity training before participating in racing.

Altitude training is divided into two options. In the first option, which is named ‘live high, train high’, the cyclist takes on altitude training camp for 4 weeks at 1500 to 2700 meters after resistance training. Here, he tries a novel overload. Though the cyclist would have adapted to the challenge of the resistance training, more challenges encounter him at altitude training. At high altitudes, the cyclist can exhibit lower power output for getting high cardiovascular response. More rigorous schedules can be arranged at the early-season altitude training sessions.

In the year 2000, Brosnan et al did extensive research on the enormous stress produced during altitude training and monitored the physiological changes observed in the team of Australian National female road cyclists. The participants were required to perform at the normobaric and hypoxic simulated altitude chambers that produced environments of 2100 meters above sea level.

Cyclists were asked to decrease power output at the threshold intervals and reduce their high-intensity intervals by 6% of their intensity at sea level conditions. It is interesting to note that the heart rate, blood lactate and cardio-vascular response were identical in both conditions of high altitude and sea level trainings. It was difficult to decipher effects of altitude training for longer periods to equate sea-level power outputs. Such adaptation may be ideal to achieve but reports of cyclists and swimmers reaching great training intensities at high altitudes that is the same as achieved at sea level.

Coaches take interest in altitude training camps for enhancing the training volume and intensity early in the season. National team coaches in different types of sports like swimming, rowing and cycling constitute aggressive training schedules for accomplishing very big training volumes accumulated during the year. In the year 1998, Gore et al observed that the Australian track cycling team used very high distances combined with frequent high intensity work for their competitors.