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Elevation Training Masks - Opinions

Original Post
Erica H. · · Gresham, OR · Joined Jun 2016 · Points: 0

Has anyone used an elevation training mask? I am hoping to get some opinions on the pros and cons of using one and whether they are worth the $$.

I am not looking to simulate altitude but rather to improve cardio and add a little variety to aerobic workouts.

Do these really have any positive effect?

Kori Cuthbert · · Winnipeg, MB · Joined Apr 2014 · Points: 0

They are a gimmick and won't actually make you improve any faster/at all. The basic premise behind them is that they are air flow restriction devices so it makes it harder for you to breath. This only will strengthen your intercostal muscles which can enable you to take/exhale faster but your body will not adapt to process the air any faster anyways so there is no physiological benefit at all for performance.

If you like to look like Bane while you exercise and wasting money for it go ahead.

In some situations athletes will sleep in a hypoxic environment like a tent that simulates higher altitudes these have been shown to increase red blood cell counts and therefore improve your bodies ability to deliver and utilize oxygen more efficiently.

Your best strategy is just to train more and train harder.

Vanilla Drilla From Manila · · Goiter, CO · Joined Mar 2015 · Points: 50

Pretty much "snake oil".

jacob m s · · Provo, Utah · Joined Apr 2011 · Points: 135

Kori nailed it, the idea of a mask that would actually reduce the pressure is cool, but they don't.

Erica H. · · Gresham, OR · Joined Jun 2016 · Points: 0

Thanks for the input.

Kori - I had a feeling this was the case but have seen a lot of mixed reviews. A coworker of mine was using one for a while and said it may have helped him recover faster after a workout. I imagine if this was the case it may have been due to him "training harder" and not necessarily due to the use of the mask.

I can't believe how overpriced these things are, too! Most of them will run about $80 and all it is is neoprene and plastic air regulators.

Klimbien · · St.George Orem Denver Vegas · Joined Apr 2009 · Points: 455

Just pick up a few coffee straws, need more or less air, add or decrease the # of coffee straws.

highaltitudeflatulentexpulsion · · Colorado · Joined Oct 2012 · Points: 35

Kori nailed it.

I have a related question, sortof.

When swimming freestyle, I typically breathe every other stroke. Would you be able to simulate high altitude if you breathe every 3rd or every 4th stroke? Seems like this would work but only if you went a long way between rests.

Avi Katz · · Seattle, WA · Joined Sep 2010 · Points: 260
highaltitudeflatulentexpulsion wrote:Kori nailed it. I have a related question, sortof. When swimming freestyle, I typically breathe every other stroke. Would you be able to simulate high altitude if you breathe every 3rd or every 4th stroke? Seems like this would work but only if you went a long way between rests.
Yes. When I used to compete we would do this regularly. We called it 3/5 hypoxic. If I remember from class and my own research it helps increase vascular efficiency, which would then translate into better high altitude effectiveness.
Richard Murray · · Conway · Joined Oct 2014 · Points: 95

Here's what I'm thinking:

You want to simulate a high-altitude environment where the air is less dense. The restrictor is a bad simulation because it still allows you to fill your lungs with ambient-pressure air, and simply increases the workload on your diaphragm, intercostals, etc.

The trick is to get the effect of reduced oxygen (which is closer to the actual simulation we want), but without restricting breathing or the complications of creating a low-pressure microenvironment with a sealed mask, suit, chamber, whatever.

I'd say "invert" the concept of the systems currently used to deliver supplemental oxygen - use the same equipment to feed some other gas (like Argon?). This would effectively lower the oxygen content of each breath without the problems identified above. The problem with this is that you're changing the ratio of the gasses which comprise "air" and I have no idea what that would trigger physiologically, and I'm sure it depends on what gas you use (N2 or CO2 might be a problem?). This might be a second-order effect, though and it could be "close enough" for training. I'm not really a life sciences guy, so, I admit I have no idea what changing the makeup of "air" might do.

Of course there's also the very real risk of "drowning" yourself in the inert gas if you crank it up too high.

Tim Stich · · Colorado Springs, Colorado · Joined Jan 2001 · Points: 1,520
Erica H. wrote:Has anyone used an elevation training mask? I
Training? Ha ha ha. More like life.

MojoMonkey · · Unknown Hometown · Joined Jan 2009 · Points: 66
Rich Murray wrote:Here's what I'm thinking: You want to simulate a high-altitude environment where the air is less dense. The restrictor is a bad simulation because it still allows you to fill your lungs with ambient-pressure air, and simply increases the workload on your diaphragm, intercostals, etc. The trick is to get the effect of reduced oxygen (which is closer to the actual simulation we want), but without restricting breathing or the complications of creating a low-pressure microenvironment with a sealed mask, suit, chamber, whatever. I'd say "invert" the concept of the systems currently used to deliver supplemental oxygen - use the same equipment to feed some other gas (like Argon?).
WADA brings in ban on xenon and argon
kenr · · Unknown Hometown · Joined Oct 2010 · Points: 16,608

Rich Murray wrote:
> You want to simulate a high-altitude environment ...
> The trick is to get the effect of reduced oxygen ...

But it's much more complicated than that.
So far you're only considering the reduced pressure of Oxygen at altitude.
You also need to be careful in your simulation of what's happening with Carbon Dioxide and Water, because both of those are bio-active substances for human biochemistry.
. . (low Nitrogen pressure at altitude is normally not relevant for humans, though I guess it's important for some plants).

Carbon Dioxide pressure (lower or higher) is especially important, because it impacts the pH acidity level of the blood.

Ken

kenr · · Unknown Hometown · Joined Oct 2010 · Points: 16,608

The proven methods for improving aerobic performance by simulating altitude are used while resting or sleeping, not during the workout.

Some of the methods work, but the equipment for the ones that actually work costs more than $80.
. . (Climbers are not the ones to ask about these methods: Instead learn from serious racers in bicycling, running, cross-country skiing).

Warning: The way they work is by increasing the concentration of Red Blood Cells and hemoglobin in your blood. But that increase also brings an increased risk of dangerous embolisms / blood clots.
So have to have a strategy for managing that risk.
. . (and I think you have to ask, "Why is it worth taking that risk?")

Ken

will ar · · Vermont · Joined Jan 2010 · Points: 290

Here's the problem with the concept behind these masks and high altitude training: exercising at altitude or in a simulated high altitude environment has minimal benefit on actual performance.

If you are at high altitude for a period of time changes occur in your body and will last temporarily after you return to a lower altitude, but the benefits are offset by the fact that you can't maintain the same intensity when training at altitude. A lot of runners and other endurance athletes trying to benefit from altitude have maximized the effectiveness by "sleeping high and training low," which research has shown to have some benefit. Now days you can invest in a fancy altitude tent to sleep in at home.

Working out with a mask on is the worst of both worlds. Your workout will be less intense and (assuming you're only wearing the mask during your workout) you won't have it on long enough for your body to adapt to the simulated high altitude environment and start making more red blood cells.

kenr · · Unknown Hometown · Joined Oct 2010 · Points: 16,608
will ar wrote:exercising at altitude or in a simulated high altitude environment has minimal benefit on actual performance.
Key point is that it's well-proven that the main stimulus for getting the human body to grow extra Red Blood Cells is not "reduced Oxygen during exercise", but rather "reduced Oxygen" .(period).
. . (or by injecting EPO or similar chemical or some EPO precursor.
. . . but that's a whole different level of the game).

You likely would not have guessed that in advance -- discovering that fact required careful research. But once you know it, then you can infer that likely there is at best little benefit (for growing more RBC) in imposing reduced Oxygen on your exercise workouts.

Ken

P.S. I suppose you could stil think exercising with a mask is useful for a different reason: To try to stimulate your lungs to adapt or learn work harder, but I don't think that's a significant bottleneck for improving most people's aerobic performance.
. . (And if that's the intended purpose, then why bring in the word "elevation" or "altitude").
slim · · Unknown Hometown · Joined Dec 2004 · Points: 1,103

it gives you superhuman powers, but it will make your face very very ugly.

Vanilla Drilla From Manila · · Goiter, CO · Joined Mar 2015 · Points: 50

Ok, so. This is the reason why the mask doesn't work as an "altitude" adjuster.
It's very simple, air is 21% oxygen & 79% nitrogen. Let's say you love at sea level with an atmospheric pressure of 760 mm Hg. The partial pressure of oxygen is ~160 mmHg. Maybe I'm missing something big time, but he only way to decrease what people call "oxygen content" ie) pressure exerted by oxygen within air, is to go to a higher altitude or do as others have suggested and introduce an inert gas to displace oxygen and nitrogen within the mixture (which is stupid and can kill you).

I would call the mask hogwash because increased resistance to breathing does not decrease the barometric pressure, you still get ~148 mm Hg delivered to the lungs with any alveolar ventilation. In the long run it may make the work of breathing relatively easier by placing the internal and external intercostals into a muscular endurance workout. As far as I know this increased work of breathing does not stimulate hematopoiesis, though hypoxia would. Hypoxia could only really be achieved if alveolar ventilation was not adequate and the minute ventilation wasn't enough to support exhalation of volatile metabolic waste (CO2). It may be possible to limit alveolar ventilation with the restriction device, but the brain stem would sense the rise in CO2 and stimulate respiration rate and depth to increase, which may negate the restriction device all together.. Lastly, any muscular contraction temporarily shuts down blood flow, and thus oxygen delivery to the tissue, which creates a LOCAL hypoxia, not hypoxemia that is sensed by the kidneys to stimulate erythropoesis. This final niggle may be what the oxygen mask people want you to believe is a result of their product and not a result of actually "lifting the fucking weight" which achieves the effect.

All in all, your workouts could be very short and brutal and you would be better off strapping a pillow to your face...

Medic741 · · Des Moines, IA (WTF) · Joined Apr 2012 · Points: 265

You'd need to wear one daily for a few weeks to see any changes in [2,3 BPG], completely a gimmick.

It's all about forcing the physiologic changes you'll experience at altitude which just ain't going to happen with this mask, and those changes have a lot more to do with your Hct and other enzyme levels than they do to just getting used to a lower oxygen concentration in the air

I am curious... Does this mask actually induce hypoxia? I'd imagine the body would override the mask by altering breathing patterns.

Vanilla Drilla From Manila · · Goiter, CO · Joined Mar 2015 · Points: 50

I imagine it does, but probably through the Bohr shift and hypoventilation which would stimulate breathing changes in a person not affected by drugs (shift in CO2 curve)... Nothing more meaningful than doing HIIT workouts. I've seen people use them, get totally faded with their sets and rip them off in between sets, which I'm sure completely negates any "benefit" of the mask. Additionally, lifting with it on is a little suspicious, you are supposed to brace your core by creating a rigid cylinder, comprising of a valsalva (you're holding your breath through the lift and bracing your spine with completely filled lungs and rigid core)...

Bill Kirby · · Keene New York · Joined Jul 2012 · Points: 480

If you wanna train for high altitude take up smoking cigarettes. I was so proud that I acclimatize so quickly. I had zero problems going from sea level to 14K in two days. I was very full of myself until one of the old guys in the group told me it was my pack a day habit that probably helped. The next trip was to Mt Washington. I quit because of what that man said, well and the idea of standing outside Harvard Cabin freezing sounded.. Just dumb.

kenr · · Unknown Hometown · Joined Oct 2010 · Points: 16,608

Dirt Squirrel wrote:
> way to decrease "oxygen content" ...
> introduce an inert gas to displace oxygen and nitrogen within the mixture

Well in the context of human biochemistry, Nitrogen as N2 gas is close enough to "inert" already, so there's no need to displace it with say Argon.

Oxygen O2 and Carbon Dioxide CO2 are usually the most critical gases to worry about for this sort of game. The cheapest and really stupid thing to do is replace the Oxygen with Carbon Dioxide (by simple re-breathing). Stupid because CO2 is nothing like inert for human biochemistry, and breathing air with elevated CO2 has very immediate and noticeable effects (which are mostly not positive for health).

So instead what most people do who play this sort of game successfully for building aerobic capacity is to decrease the Oxygen in the air they breathe and replace it with (mostly) Nitrogen.

Dirt Squirrel wrote:(which is stupid and can kill you).
Yes, breathing air with reduced Oxygen and elevated Nitrogen pressure is stupid to do in an _uncontrolled_ way,
but ...
thousands of serious athletes in aerobic-related competitions do it with (some sort of) measured controls all the time -- and I haven't heard of any deaths while doing the actual breathing.
. . Though I do know the name of a racer who got an embolism sometime after doing a few weeks of regular low-Oxygen breathing sessions - ("embolism" is a bad thing).

But doing it in a controlled way costs more than $80.

Ken
Guideline #1: Don't be a jerk.

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