Altitude Training | Hypoxic Training

AN atmospheric chamber at a Rossendale gym that helps elite sportspeople recover from injuries quicker, is attracting some of rugby’s top names.

Premiership club Sale Sharks have become the first side to sign a deal to use the hypoxic chamber at the Perform Centre, in Bacup Road, Waterfoot.

And bosses at the multi-million pound centre, opened by Lord Sebastian Coe in June, are this week trying to sign up Super League clubs who are competing in the end-of-season play-offs this weekend.

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Shallow water blackout - sometimes called hypoxic blackout - results from an insufficient amount of carbon dioxide to activate the body’s natural impulse to breathe.

According to USA-based Aquatic Safety Research Group, by rapidly breathing deeply prior to submersion, swimmers blow off an excessive amount of carbon dioxide.

When the oxygen level in the blood runs low before the carbon dioxide level rises to the point that triggers the breathing reflex, the swimmer loses consciousness.

The swimmer never actually feels as though a breath is needed, the group says.

To climb the remaining 800 metres to the mountain’s summit and return to camp before hypoxia - oxygen deficiency - takes its lethal toll, it is necessary to start out after 10pm. That way, the downward section, when exhaustion has set in, is completed in the relative safety of daylight. The slow-motion ascent can take up to 12 hours; just over a metre a minute. Along the way, somewhere out in the darkness, on either side of a narrow ridge, are sheer drops of between 2,500 and 3,500 metres. It’s a journey that is completed by as many as 50 people a year these days, but it is still a daunting challenge.

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improvement in performance could also be explained by other mechanisms involving muscular, hormonal or respiratory parameters as improvement in locomotion economy, muscle buffering capacity, or ventilatory efficiency. Indeed, the expert scientists in the field have recently been debating whether or not the benefits of altitude training are mediated primarily by an increased RBC (4).

Physiological adaptations to altitude

Altitude induces hypoxia (an inadequate supply of oxygen to body tissues) and arises as a result of a reduction in the inspired oxygen pressure (PiO2). PiO2 decreases with increasing altitude; at sea level PiO2 is 149mmHg, but PIO2 is only about 50mmHg on the top of the Mount Everest – ie each lungful of air contains only around a third of the oxygen compared to sea level.

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Section 4. Genetic and Molecular Aspects of Intermittent Hypoxia; The Role of HIF-1 and ROS in Cellular and Systemic Responses to Intermittent Hypoxia; Genetic Selection for Tolerance and Adaptation to Hypoxia; Mitochondrial Signaling in Formation of Body Resistance to Hypoxia; HIF1a, HIF2a, HIF3a and HIF1β mRNA Expression Changes in Different Tissues under Intermittent Hypoxic Training; Hypoxia and Stem Cells;