APPROACHES TO ALTITUDE TRAINING

Following high altitude acclimatization horses experience enhanced oxygen delivering capacity during training and racing. There are two approaches to altitude training: you can train at altitude or you can reside at altitude and train at sea level. Beyond the practical limitations, one of the fundamental drawbacks to training at altitude (versus living at altitude) is that V02max (a measure of aerobic power output) decreases with increasing altitude, so horses that are trained at altitude cannot train as hard as they can at sea level. The result is that there is actually a "detraining" effect on sea level performance after training at altitude. In order to circumvent the detraining effects of high intensity altitude training - reductions in muscle mass, oxygen uptake, training intensity, and cardiac output - trainers have adopted the "live high, train low" approach to altitude training whereby the horses train in oxygen rich sea level elevations but sleep at higher altitudes.

The proven advantages of the "live high, train low" approach to altitude training are that horses can benefit from the physiological effects of altitude acclimatization without suffering the untoward effects of chronic altitude exposure. High-low training allows for the beneficial physiological adaptations from exposure to hypoxia with concurrent maintenance of high intensity exercise because of maximal oxygen flux during low altitude training.

Research has shown that in order to achieve the physiological benefits of altitude training sufficient exposure time is needed to allow the natural physiological adaptations of altitude simulation to occur. Whereas Intermittent Hypoxic Training purports to mimic the effects of altitude acclimatization by providing short bursts of severely hypoxic air, research has conclusively demonstrated that the length of exposure with IHT systems is too short to elicit the appropriate physiological adaptive responses. In clinical research trials which studied the length of hypoxic exposure necessary for physiological adaptation, a minimum of 8-10 hours of hypoxia per day, delivered consecutively for 25 days was needed before the beneficial effects of altitude acclimatization were demonstrated on athletic performance.

• History Of Altitude Training
• Approaches To Altitude Training
• Benefits Of High-Low
• Safety

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