Pies' state-of-art training room up in air
Chip Le Grand
The Australian
June 09, 2006
AN altitude training program of the kind pioneered by Collingwood within its new club headquarters has been shown to enhance performance by up to 5 per cent, a major sports medicine conference has been told.
The finding, delivered this week by Florida State University researchers to the American College of Sports Medicine in Denver, has put Collingwood at the forefront of a global debate on the benefits of hypoxic training.
"This is all new stuff," said Michael Hamlin, a leading researcher on hypoxic training from Lincoln University in New Zealand. "We are changing the way we use it and the evidence shows it seems to work."
But the Magpies' advantage - one the club declined to discuss publicly this week for fear of sparking a similar furore to that that erupted in May 2003 over Brisbane's use of a hypoxicator machine - may be short-lived.
On September 16, the second Saturday in this year's finals series, the World Anti-Doping Agency will announce whether all "artificially induced hypoxic conditions" will be included in next year's list of banned substances and methods.
According to WADA chairman Richard Pound, any players subsequently found using Collingwood's $100,000 altitude room would face mandatory, two-year bans from football.
"If it is a doping offence it is not different to blood doping or using EPO or steroids and the athlete would be subjected to the same standard penalty of two years," Pound warned last month.
WADA has already determined that hypoxic training devices are performance-enhancing and against the "spirit of sport".
But the Australian Olympic Committee will lobby WADA to keep hypoxic devices off the banned list. AOC secretary general Craig Phillips said while some hypoxic training methods appeared to work "the jury was out" on the benefit.
"We consulted with the AIS and AOC medical commission and we have recommended to WADA that they don't put it on the list," Phillips told The Australian last night.
The AOC submission also highlights the difficulty in enforcing a ban.
"One of the concerns is you can get some of the same effects by flying long distances," Phillips said. "You could test an athlete after they have stepped off a long-haul flight and say they have been using an oxygen tent."
The AOC this year banned its athletes from using altitude tents at the Winter Olympics in Turin but only because they were prohibited under Italian law.
At Collingwood, conditioning coach David Buttifant has no doubts about the benefits of the altitude room, which is based on a different training technique to the hypoxicator machine used by Brisbane since 1999.
Despite a 2003 warning from then AFL football operations manager Andrew Demetriou that the use of hypoxic respirators sent "the wrong message concerning the image of our game," the use of altitude devices remains widespread.
At the Gabba, a $29,000 hypoxicator allows up to four players to sit and breathe low-oxygen gas intermittently with normal air. At Collingwood, players train at low intensity using cycling machines or treadmills within a hypoxic environment.
While the Pies players cannot reach the same simulated altitudes as the Lions - about 3500m instead of 6000m - the combination of hypoxic conditions and moderate exercise has been shown to boost performance.
The Florida State University researchers found that the benefits of intermittent hypoxic training (Collingwood) significantly outweighed intermittent hypoxic exposure (Brisbane).
According to Hamlin, previous research showed a 3 per cent advantage, at most, using using exposure. Collingwood's "train-high, live-low" philosophy turns other traditional altitude training on its head.
Other hypoxic devices such as the AIS's three-bedroom altitude apartment in Canberra and readily available altitude tents are designed to allow athletes to train at sea-level and sleep in hypoxic conditions.
But unlike these techniques, which have been shown to boost the natural production of EPO so that the blood can carry more oxygen, there is no agreement on why hypoxic training works.
One theory is that the training makes the muscles more tolerant of lactic acid. Another is that the muscles become more efficient and are able to work harder for longer.
Buttifant is doing his own studies at Collingwood but for now, is keeping any findings a closely guarded secret. AFL medical commissioner Peter Harcourt confirmed that Collingwood would have to close its altitude room if WADA put hypoxic devices on its banned list but said this was unlikely to happen.
"The whole issue will be clarified shortly and I would be surprised if there is any change," he said. In the meantime, Collingwood can breathe easy.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,19410359-36035,00.html
