Most of us are not elite athletes, therefore being a few seconds faster has no real significance whatsoever. What we do want, however, is to be able to carry out our day-to-day living without fatigue and with ease and enjoyment.
Elite athletes balancing precariously on the pinnacle of human achievement consider themselves lucky to increase performance by three per cent. The good news is that untrained people show an even more dramatic improvement in fitness, energy and endurance when given a course of IHT. In one study with healthy but untrained men, adaptation increased the total amount of work performed on an ergometer by 27 per cent; the maximal output of their heart increased by 15 per cent; their lung capacity increased by up to 40 per cent.