You may have seen or heard over the last couple of years that we have been investigating the effects altitude training on health and well-being of overweight/obese individuals. The last study of this project included a training study alongside our academic partners, London South Bank University. We are now excited to share with you some preliminary results of this!

Briefly, 16 individuals with a BMI over 27 kg/m2 completed a 2-week training period. This included eight, interval walking sessions, whereby participants walked for 2 mins then rested for 2 mins repeated over one hour. The intensity of walking was self-paced by the individuals, they were simply instructed to make sure it felt ‘somewhat hard’ to ‘hard’. Half of the individuals carried out their sessions in hypoxia (13% O2), and the other half in normal conditions (21% O2). Before and after the training phase, we measured total body mass, resting energy expenditure, glucose levels and perceived mood, as well as overall fitness via a 6 min walk test (covering a maximal distance).
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The results showed that those who were in the hypoxic training group had a larger reduction in blood glucose and increased perceived mood after training compared to before than those in the normal training group. Further, hypoxic training led to a greater increase in resting energy expenditure compared to normal training. In both groups, body mass and distance covered (overall fitness) was maintained after training.
Results

Overall, hypoxic training has greater benefits on how you feel as well as health-associated factors compared with normal training. Importantly, these changes occur even when the exercise intensity is self-paced. Given the low levels of adherence to exercise in today’s society, these findings may be advantageous for carrying out regular exercise as the freedom and selection of intensity is controlled by the individual carrying out the exercise.

By now you are probably wondering how you can get results like these? Now is your chance to achieve them! Simply enrol onto a Health & Wellbeing training camp and you’ll be on your journey to a healthier lifestyle. It will only be a matter of weeks of regular exercise (controlled by you!) before you begin to notice positive changes!

#AimHighTrainHigh