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By Wayne Goldsmith

Message to the Sports Science community - are you kidding?

Altitude training?

I thought the old approach to altitude training was done and dusted but to my amazement, nations continue to invest in one of the most questionable sports performance ”enhancement” methodologies in the business.

You can’t be serious!

Do a literature review on all the available research on altitude training and you know what you end up with………….

“Altitude training may help some athletes, in somesituations, sometimes“.

Think about this. The research pretty much says “altitude training is hit and miss”.

In spite of the thousands of pages of journal articles, hundreds of books and thousands of conference papers presented on altitude training since the mid 1960s, the best the sports science community can tell us is “it might work with some athletes from time to time”- followed by the ubiquitous “but further research is needed”.

Look at the holes in the logic:

1. The vast majority of papers of altitude training arephysiology based. Athletes arrive at the altitude camp. They have a blood test. Three weeks later they have another blood test and all the usual suspects - red blood cells, oxygen transport mechanisms and blood buffering capacity all have measured changes - therefore everyone taps each other on the back, congratulates each other for the great job done and for another successful altitude camp. The assumption is bordering on stupid because…..it assumes that all performance is dependent on physiological adaptations.
2. One of the basic principles of research is to control or allow for confounding variables. For some reason, this principle has been thrown out the window when it comes to altitude training. Look at a typical altitude training camp scenario:

Athlete A lives in his home town on one side of the nation. He trains hard in a squad of 30 athletes (with one coach), where he is the only national level athlete in the squad. He works part time in the local insurance company. He lives by himself and cooks, cleans and takes care of a small apartment. He gets a small amount of support from the government and uses the money for coaching fees and a weekly massage. Now let’s take him to altitude…………………..

• He is working with the best athletes and coaches in the country every day - (the “camp” effect”)
• There is a 1-3 coach athlete ratio.
• He does not have to work.
• The national team nutritionist manages all meals.
• He gets daily sports massage and recovery support.
• He has access to the national team sports psychologist.
• He gets additional quality coaching one on one from the national coach.
• He gets intense technical and tactical training from the national team biomechanics staff.
• AND……….he gets some nice adaptations in his blood and muscle biochemistry.

Two weeks later at national championships the athlete improves his personal best time by 0.3 of a second and the team physiologist yells - “See I told you altitude training works. His buffering capacity was enhanced by 16% and his red cell markers were significantly improved”.

You can’t be serious!

It’s a bit like taking sports supplements. Imagine you are working with an athlete who is training hard, getting plenty of rest and recovery and remains injury free for the entire preparation. AND in addition you introduce some creatine into their diet twice a week after gym training.

The athlete races and does a huge PB and you think,“hey -that creatine is great stuff!”.

All the altitude exposure in the world does not make up for inconsistent training, a compromised preparation due to injury or a poor attitude to completing training to the athlete’s full potential any more than taking creatine makes up for a lousy gym program.

3. A lot of the basic stuff is still being debated by the sports science community:

• how high to go?
• how much volume?
• what sort of intensity?
• how many sessions? 
• do we need changes in diet and supplementation?
• how long to stay at altitude?
• what is the right type of preparation / background training to do (volume, intensity, frequency) in the weeks leading up to training at altitude?
• how long prior to competition should we do altitude training?
• how long before the competition should we come down?
• And the big one……no one has demonstrated conclusively that it works for athletes competing at sea level.

C’mon - after 40 years studying this stuff - is this the best we can do?

In tough economic times, where it is difficult to find money to invest in the preparation and performance of elite athletes, why do we persist in spending so much money on something, that after 40 years of research, still has more holes in it than the proverbial sieve?

Surely someone will start looking at multiple performance factorsin altitude research and look at the physical, mental, technical, tactical and emotional changes in athletes during exposure to altitude - including the impact of the training environment on the attitude of the athlete to training and performance.

To borrow a term from the Thredbo High Altitude Training Centre in Australia…..Altitude with Attitude!

MacRitchie Reservoir is Singapore's first reservoir, built in 1867-68. The development of the Reservoir brought the forest devastation around the area to a halt. The forest around the reservoir was protected as a water catchment reserve.

Notice the switch from present to past tense. While the former fact would be arguably hard to deny or render false by any means, the latter seems to have succumbed to the evils of depreciation and a highly skewed sense of myopic pragmatism. In order to fight for something, one has to consider the most important ‘What’ and subsequently ‘Why’. What then, is a reservoir, and why is it here? Seeing as how technical definitions would not help, (A reservoir is, most broadly, a place or hollow vessel where fluid is kept in reserve, for later use) perhaps the ‘Why’ will enlighten. The first paragraph succinctly illustrates its fundamental purpose as a reserve. While often thrown about and perhaps even confused at times with its sugar laden condiment cousin that stands taller with a preceding ‘p’, the term still retains much meaning and significance. It is a bastion of hope in this jungle of a country on steroids. Primary, secondary, tertiary, heck, even plastic plants would do. Greenery is the point isn’t it? A tree is a tree is a tree. My argument is two-fold. One persuades against the subsequent demolition of the venue, and the second against the ambience.

When we have landslides and waterlogged areas after the rain, well, that just won’t do. People get angry. Shoes get muddy. Running becomes a lot harder. Sure, landslides are dangerous, and everyone would clearly accept lending a hand to the environment (which is completely out of whack because of our initial interference in the first place) to correct faulty terrain. We can’t have landslides after every storm, so the landscape needs tweaking. And that’s precisely what happened last year to a significant portion of the running route near the Ranger’s station. But what more? It seems recently another portion of the route was resurfaced, for no crime greater than being a little muddy. I am referring to the portion just before the Boardwalk. Where, then, do we draw the line? But more importantly, let’s go back to the ‘Whats’ and ‘Whys’. What is the purpose of these ‘improvements’? Landslide prevention would most probably be socially and economically accepted, falling under the category of safety. But when it comes to making the route ‘more efficient’ for runners, I dearly hope I am not the only one who notices the vulgar paradox. We are damaging nature for the sake of running in an increasingly artificial environment that was instituted in the first place with the aim of preserving nature. Perhaps the problem lay not in the helpless soil, continually trampled upon to the point of sterility, but in the fickle and confused ‘runner’ who has made a miscalculated choice in his running venue.

It is also becoming clear that the monkeys in Macritchie are becoming increasingly well behaved. However, I am sad to report that their rise in hierarchy is only made possibly by a displacement that shifts the mean down. While it has been established that Macritchie is a reserve, when we regard the venue as an attraction, redefinitions are in order, as we source for new ones that incorporate the human ‘consumers’. My underlying assumption here is that everyone ‘owns’ Macritchie equally, and hence no one can be denied use or command more authority over others. That I accept, and it is in this humble stance that I conduct my argument.

Formerly regarded as a training ground for enthusiastic runners, equally attracted and intimidated by the challenging slopes and difficult terrain, the social scene has now ‘evolved’ into something vastly more complex, with a significantly more diverse clientele. Recently, the venue of the canoeing nationals shifted to Macritchie, and canoeists from schools all over the country now frequent the site. Furthermore, with the advent of sites such as the ‘tree-top walk’, casual nature enthusiasts are now drawn to the locality as well, commonly identified by their big back packs, water supply that draws envy from Macritchie itself, and a multi-purpose umbrella that remains open ‘just in case’. They march in file of typically twos or threes, perhaps a vestige of their army days. Their pace usually ranges from the bus inching towards its depot in a cunning bid to arrive ‘on time’, to the disillusioned tortoise that never quite beat the hare.

So is it a case of Runners vs Canoeists vs Social visitors? Or can we all co-exist with a simple ‘keep left’ rule? And who has priority? My premise earlier renders the latter an invalid query, for the socialist nature of the reserve means it is equally accepting to all visitors. As are our roads, all drivers are equal, but we have still invented mechanisms such as ‘right of way’ and ‘keep left unless overtaking’, solace providing pillars without which it seems our most pragmatic society would just break down. Perhaps such institutions need to be introduced to Macritchie users as well, thereby setting their cost benefit calculations right.

As a runner whom frequents the locality every week, I find that constantly getting blocked by ‘walkers’ and ambitious canoeists who carry multiple vessels at once, complete with flailing oars, disrupts my workout and necessitates the seemingly unnecessary verbal ‘keep lefts’ at inordinate intervals (to which individuals respond in a most unhelpful manner, e.g. by keeping still in the centre, if at all.) I’m equally certain their day would be rendered less ideal with a sweaty, noisy, runner shouting out at them to keep to the side, and on occasion bumping into them when their ear-brain-body network fails them. I attribute their actions to either ignorance (which education, what I am proposing, will ideally solve) or apathy (perhaps with malicious intent, i.e. people whom bear an unexplainable, inexplicable grudge against all runners, or just people moving at a pace faster than them, and will do everything in their power to destroy their workouts). I prefer to remain optimistic, blindly awarding the benefit of the doubt, herding all to the former category. In this scenario, then, perhaps we should follow the all powerful law of the road, encouraging ‘slow moving vehicles’ to keep to the left (when the question of which left arises, perhaps a more comprehensive scheme of education should be made available) and priority should be given to ‘faster moving vehicles’. Stopping short of drawing double yellow lines along the whole route and yellow boxes (no, smokers, dream on, I refer to the much neglected ‘give way’ boxes that function as little more than carpets on our well tarred roads), perhaps a ‘system’ should be established and propagated, be it on the information boards or on a huge balloon that towers above the car park (I am a dreamer). With the renovations coming up I fear the influx of visitors will exacerbate the existing problem, and hence as a pre-emptive manoeuvre with current education, we will build up a cohort of role models whom will propagate the positive behaviour that will yield a most efficient utilisation of Macritchie. Let’s borrow a leaf from the Monkeys, barring their water bottle stealing tendencies. If they can do it, so can we.

By Devathas

“A close brush with a distracted driver is enough to intimidate the most avid bikers from riding at night. The problem isn’t just about visibility, as safety lights are effective at capturing the attention of a driver. However, these lights are typically constrained to the bike frame, which highlights only a fraction of the bike’s envelope. Bike lanes have proven to be an effective method of protecting cyclists on congested roads. One key is that the lane establishes a well defined boundary beyond the envelope of the bicycle, providing a greater margin of safety between the car and the cyclist. Yet, only a small fraction of streets have dedicated bike lanes, and with an installation cost of $5,000 to $50,000 per mile, we shouldn’t expect to find them everywhere anytime soon. Instead of adapting cycling to established bike lanes, the bike lane should adapt to the cyclists. This is the idea behind the LightLane. Our system projects a crisply defined virtual bike lane onto pavement, using a laser, providing the driver with a familiar boundary to avoid. With a wider margin of safety, bikers will regain their confidence to ride at night, making the bike a more viable commuting alternative.”

http://dustbowl.wordpress.com/2009/01/09/light-lane-concept-from-altitudes-alex-tee-and-evan-gant/