Expounding on my last post, as your altitude decreases the concentration of oxygen in the air increases and is the reason why many professional athlete’s subscribe to the “Train High, Sleep Low” methodology.  Of course, there are others that subscribe to the “Sleep High, Train Low” methodology.  From what I understand, which is probably very little as I’m a  dumb athlete, the main goal of this is to improve a person’s ability to convert oxygen in to energy and this improves with the availability of Oxygen in the air.

Oxygen is what assist mitochondreon in their production of Adenosine Triphophat, more commonly given the abbreviation ATP (P.S. what ATP stood for I had to look up, being the individual with limited mental capacity that I am).  ATP is the vehicle by which chemical energy is transported in cells.

Applying that to how the “Sleep High, Train Low” methodology works, while in your body’s rest state your body is generating a larger number of mitochondreon so that when you are training, or competing for that matter, your body has access to a higher number of mitocondrea to assist in the creation of energy.  At higher altitude, with less oxygen available, one’s body will produce higher number of mitochondrea per cell to assist in the intake of a lesser amount of oxygen to create the same amount of energy.

I hope that scatter-brained explanation made sense.

This year the U.S. National Championships are going to be held in Bend, Oregon.  Meaning, the race will be held at an elevation of around 3,000 feet.  Correlating that to athletics, the higher ones altitude is, the less dense the oxygen in the air, meaning, you have to breath in more to intake the same amount of oxygen that ones body takes in when at, similar to my Florida home, sea level.

It typically takes an individual over 30 days (I believe) to adapth to a change in oxygen content in the air.  For example, when athlete’s competed at the Mexico City (elevation about 7,000 feet) Olympic games they were flown in just prior to their race start so that their stregnth/endurance would not be as negativley affected as an individual who had arrived a week or two before.  The decline in performance is rather significant after the first day or two (if memory serves me correct) and slowly begins to work back up towards a decreased, but definitely better, level as your body adapts to the lower levels of oxygen concentration in the air. According to what I have seen, performance can decline as much as 45% over the first 4 days and then slowly builds back up, I believe it to be about 25 – 30% below, over the next 30 – 45 days, of what an athlete had at sea level.

Oxygen intake is important to athlete’s as it has a significant impact on one’s body’s ability to perform cardiovascular tasks.

The authors who write for Time are absolute morons, plain and simple.  That goes for anyone who reads the septic filth they term journalism and agress with the points that they conclude.  The issue that really raises my ire is an article by David M. Kennedy and lists several “lessons” that our current Overlord should learn from the first Communist President of the United States, FDR.

I nod my head in disdain at any incompetent that considers the scum-bag-in-chief Roosevelt to be the one that “rescued” us from the problems that existed during the Hoover – Roosevelt administrations.  Absolute imbeciles.  The Depression was exacerbated by the meddling of these incompetents and the masses agreeing that “only the grubvernment can save us” is what prolonged our plight.

Repeating these steps is a step in the wrong direction.