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- Alex Hutchinson (@sweatscience)
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[UPDATE 11/30: Lots of great discussion of this post below and on Twitter. I’ve added a new post with some responses, more data, and further thoughts HERE.]
A recurring theme on this blog is that not all studies are created equal. The quality of the study design makes a huge difference in the amount of faith that we can place in the results. So it’s always a big pleasure to see awesomely painstaking studies like the new one in Journal of Applied Physiology by Carsten Lundby’s group in Zurich. The topic: the “live high, train low” (LHTL) paradigm used by endurance athletes, in which they spend as much time at high altitude as possible to stimulate adaptations to low oxygen, while descending to lower altitude each day for training so that their actual workout pace isn’t compromised by the lack of oxygen.
There have been a bunch of LHTL studies since the 1990s that found performance benefits — but it’s really difficult to exclude the possibility of placebo effect, since athletes know they’re supposed to get faster under the LHTL strategy (and, conversely, athletes who get stuck in the control group know they’re not supposed to get faster). But Lundby and his colleagues managed to put together a double-blinded, placebo-controlled study of LHTL. The main features:
- 16 trained cyclists spent eight weeks at the Centre National de Ski Nordique in Premanon, France. For four of those weeks, they spent 16 hours a day confined to their altitude-controlled rooms. Ten of the subjects were kept at altitude (3,000 m), and six were at ambient (~1,000 m) altitude.
- Neither the subjects nor the scientists taking the measurements knew which cyclists were “living high.” Questionnaires during and after the study showed that the subjects hadn’t been able to guess which group they were in.
- On five occasions before, during and after the four weeks, the subjects underwent a whole series of performance and physiological tests.
So, after going to all this trouble, what were the results?
Hemoglobin mass, maximal O2-uptake in normoxia and at a simulated altitude of 2,500 m and mean power output in a simulated 26.15 km time-trial remained unchanged in both groups throughout the study. Exercise economy (i.e. O2-uptake measured at 200 Watt) did not change during the LHTL-intervention and was never significantly different between groups. In conclusion, four weeks of LHTL using 16 hours per day of normobaric hypoxia did not improve endurance performance or any of the measured associated physiological variables.
This is, frankly, a surprising result, and the paper goes into great detail discussing possible explanations and caveats — especially considering the study didn’t find the same physiological changes (like increased hemoglobin mass, which you’d expect would be placebo-proof) that previous studies have found. Two points worth noting:
(1) The subjects were very well-trained compared to previous studies, with VO2max around 70 ml/kg/min and high initial hemoglobin mass. It’s possible that the beneficial effects of LHTL show up only in less-trained subjects.
(2) There’s a difference between living at 3,000 m and living in a room or tent kept at oxygen levels comparable to 3,000 m: pressure. “Real-world” altitude has lower pressure as well as lower oxygen; this study lowered oxygen but not atmospheric pressure. Apparently a few recent studies have hinted at the possibility that pressure as well as oxygen could play a role in the body’s response to altitude, though this remains highly speculative.
As always, one new study doesn’t erase all previous studies, nor does it override the practical experience of elite athletes. But it suggests that we should think carefully about whether altitude really works the way we’ve been assuming it works. As the researchers conclude:
In summary, our study provides no indication for LHTL, using normobaric hypoxia, to improve time trial performance or VO2max of highly trained endurance cyclists more than conventional training. Given the considerable financial and logistic effort of performing a LHTL camp, this should be taken into consideration before recommending LHTL to elite endurance athletes.
And for all those who still swear that, when the salesman put the bracelet on their wrist, they really did do better on the balance test, it’s worth noting the University of Wisconsin pilot study (cited in the Texas paper) that found that in balance and flexibility tests like the ones used by Power Balance salespeople, you always do better the second time you try it, due to learning effects. So if you try the test first with the bracelet on, then with the bracelet off, you’ll “prove” that the energy flow actually harms your balance. (Or maybe that just means you had the bracelet on backwards…)