Altitude

You may have heard of altitude training and, while it’s not hard to guess what it is, you may wonder who does it and why. And more importantly, whether you should get in on the action…

Words Rachel Ifans

Training at high altitudes can cause body adaptations that benefit your running performance

On the face of it, altitude training (or hypoxic training) is not rocket science – you train up a hill, right? – but much more complicated and intriguing is why lots of top runners do it and what it does to their bodies to benefit their running. Always keen to push ourselves and experience new things as runners, it’s also fair to question whether we should be doing it too and, if we don’t live on top of a mountain, to wonder how can we replicate its benefits closer to home.

Doing sport or any physical exertion at altitude is much harder on the body, a fact that has been proved by scientific research over the years but also by real-world evidence. The Olympics in Mexico City in 1985 is a case in point; it was held at an altitude of 2,300m and was the first time an Olympics had been held that high – and probably the last. The reason for this is that it challenged the endurance athletes taking part to such an extent that they were much slower than ever in their careers before or after.

Altitudes of anything up to 2,000m above sea level don’t make much of a difference to the human body, but anything above that starts to be more of a challenge. The top of Everest, for instance, is well over 8,000m high and a very punishing environment for humans to be in, requiring pre-acclimatisation before setting out.

Always adapting

When you spend time at altitude, interesting changes start to happen in your body; because the lack of oxygen is tough at the outset, the body will start to make adaptations and adjustments which are beneficial rather than detrimental to sports performance. These changes take a few weeks to happen and the benefits will only be reaped after the fact, but it goes some way to explaining why people schedule altitude as part of their year-round training schedule.