NOTEBOOK. How Altitude Increases...or Hinders Athletic Performance
NOTEBOOK. This is the 4th episode of the "scientific notebook" of Expedition 5300. These articles are written by the team of researchers and mountaineers who must stay in La Rinconada, the highest city in the world, located in the heights of Peru , at an altitude of 5300 meters...
It's 6:00 in the morning. The sun rises over Puno and reveals an ever more majestic Lake Titicaca. Magnificent spectacle in parallel with the carnival, popular and ancestral festival which is in full swing in the heart of the city. With part of the team having made the effort to wake up, we decided to go for a run in order to "breathe". This will also allow us to secrete endorphin and dopamine, hormones of well-being, pleasure and alertness.
When altitude hinders athletic performance
After thirty minutes of effort, we reach 4000 meters of altitude. Dominated by the ridges, we discover another, wilder Puno. But not a word in the group. However, we are all sporty and used to running in our Grenoble region. Funny feeling. My heart beats, accelerated version. I feel like I can't regulate my breathing. I'm hyperventilating. My head also hits hard, would it like to get out of its place?... My calves? They're burning like I can't get enough oxygen through them.
Trail in the mountains in Peru. Credits: Expedition 5300/ Axel Pittet
I look up and see the course taking shape in the distance. A furtive look at my GPS watch which measures my heart rate: 186 beats per minute, where initially I oscillate between 155 and 165. It's not possible, there must be a bug. I'm almost in the red. Tumbling on our left, a Peruvian. He doesn't seem the sportiest. However, an effective style with its pair of sandals, firmly tied to the feet. Our eyes meet. A smile. A "vamos" and we see him moving away, quietly unrolling the kilometers without effort. He will be waiting for us at the top to take a picture and congratulate us. Moment of sharing.
But there you are, even after 5 days at 3800 meters above sea level, the slightest effort is still just as difficult for us Europeans, more accustomed to flirting with altitudes close to sea level. However, acclimatization is going well: the nights are better, food too. The effects of acute mountain sickness seem to have faded. In the descent that brings us back to breakfast before another day in the laboratory to carry out evaluations, I wonder: is training at altitude ultimately relevant when you see how difficult it is? What differentiates us from these 140 million inhabitants who live above 2500 meters of altitude?
At altitude, the body produces more red blood cells to compensate for the lack of oxygen
The breakfast swallowed in the house where we live on the heights of Puno, I immerse myself in research on training in hypoxic conditions, relying on the team of scientists present. It is a preparation technique widely used by athletes in many disciplines, such as athletics, cycling, swimming and team sports. This also makes me think that the French football team goes very regularly to Tignes for a pre-competition preparation course. Not always conclusive.
Be that as it may, training at altitude seems to allow interesting physiological adaptations. The best known is that a course at altitude (>2000m) would improve the maximum consumption of oxygen during exercise, in other words the VO 2 max. Basically, the higher your VO 2 max, the more energy you can produce for your muscles. It is to the athlete what power is to the engine.
Samuel Vergès, researcher, leader of Expedition 5300 and mountaineer, talks about the effects of altitude on sports performance. Credits: Expedition 5300/ Axel Pittet
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Also, after a period of acclimatization - usually tens of days - our body begins to produce more red blood cells to compensate for the lack of oxygen. We speak of erythropoiesis (regulated by erythropoietin, EPO). What we see here, among the inhabitants at 3800 meters above sea level, is that the level of hematocrit, in other words the percentage of red blood cells in the whole blood, reaches incredible values! For us, this rate oscillates around 40% when for the inhabitants of Puno they oscillate around 60%...
Amazed by what Samuel Vergès, the expedition leader, told me, I dare not imagine the values that will be measured at La Rinconada, the highest city in the world to which we are going soon.
A Peruvian living in Puno, nearly 4,000 meters above sea level, is taking tests to assess his resistance mechanisms to lack of oxygen. Credits: Expedition 5300/ Axel Pittet
This discussion brings me to another question: can I catch up with my "delay" in relation to these inhabitants who live at an altitude of 3800m? Theoretically, no… The genetic and physiological expression of this population can only change over several generations: a heart and lungs capable of sending more blood and oxygen to the muscles, a vascular function ensuring better blood circulation, more efficient mitochondria (elements of cells that create energy)… Too bad for me! One of the members of the Expedition explains to me that I too can greatly improve my physiological capacities to use oxygen and to adapt to this hypoxic environment. And training might be the beginning of an answer...
Training at altitude to increase your performance on the plain is risky
Talking to Samuel Vergès, who is also a high-level athlete who grew up in Font Romeu (in the Pyrénées-Orientales), I understand that training at altitude remains difficult to define. I cling to understand.
The most historic of the "Living High - Training High" methods involves training at altitude and living at altitude. What the inhabitants of Puno who live at 3800m altitude but permanently do. It is therefore not surprising to have seen during the evaluations carried out masses of red blood cells and dioxygen transport capacities much higher than ours. But as often, science is not black or white. For us, inhabitants of the plain, training too much at altitude can also be accompanied by constraints. Indeed, when we go up in altitude, our VO 2 max decreases (by 0.5 to 1.5% per 100m of elevation above 1000m altitude) and therefore our ability to train properly could suffer. I thought I would come back in great shape in France… By digging a little deeper into this method, I read that it is necessary to adapt the intensity of training over a period of 7 to 10 days and that the good compromise between altitude and performance is to stay around 2500m altitude.
A Peruvian living in Puno, nearly 4,000 meters above sea level, is taking tests to assess his resistance mechanisms to lack of oxygen. Credits: Expedition 5300/ Axel Pittet
Samuel, who is familiar with the themes of training through his research, explains to me that in the 1990s, a new training method appeared consisting of sleeping at altitude and training in the plain (Living High, Training Low) . If I summarize, we take advantage of the altitude when we sleep and rest without seeing our training intensities decrease since we always train at sea level. It's decided, when I return, I'm going to live at 2500m altitude!
After a little reflection, I tell myself that the constraints must be important. Aurélien Pichon, Doctor specializing in physiological adaptations to hypoxia and training, jokes that I buy a hypoxic tent. What is this barbaric tool again! He explains to me that these systems are capable of reproducing the effects of altitude without having to move to real altitude... The performance gain could then be around 4% for high-level athletes or even more for occasional athletes! Samuel suggests that I remain cautious, in particular because this method can “impact the quality of sleep, weaken the immune defenses and induce a relative increase in the risk of infection”.
Hypoxia, a sportsman's fantasy?
The quest for performance goes further. Sports halls are even emerging to simulate training at altitude by inhaling a hypoxic gas mixture.
Anyway, the use of hypoxia for training is therefore to be taken with a grain of salt. It depends on the physiological characteristics of each. And an ability to plan and schedule its objectives. Moreover, the physiological changes induced by hypoxia only persist 10 to 15 days after the descent. So I have 15 days to do a competition on my return. Finally, for us Europeans, it would take whole generations for us to catch up on this "delay" on the genetic and physiological level if we wanted to evolve at high altitude in the same way as these Peruvians.
Next step now, the highest city in the world, La Rinconada, at an altitude of 5300m where we will not be advised to play sports for several days at the risk of accentuating altitude sickness. After all, permanent habitation at this altitude is normally considered impossible. In the meantime, I will continue to survey with the team at sunrise, sneakers on my feet and the breath a little short, these mountains which are full of possibilities. See you soon.
By Axel Pittet, mountaineer and communications manager for Expedition 5300
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