Hypoxic Advice/Workouts--Not Your opinion of Hypox Efficacy
Former Member
Discusing Hypoxic sets with a freind, can anyone suggest a good hypoxic set for me.
I'm doing 3500-4000 3x a week and a short sprint workout on the weekend. I will not likely add another day to my schedule.
What's a good starting workout, and also where in my workout should I do this? Do you mix it up e.g. hard interval set then a hypox or hypox and then a pace set.
I am guessing mixing is a good thing but what's a good start point for a set and intervals for this? BR and FR being my stronger strokes.
Parents
Former Member
Sorry, amigo, a "quick Google search" following your post isn't gonna cut it. I don't believe you have the coaching or training background to make such assertions. If others on the forum with experience feel the way you do, then I will give it more credibility.
Further you quoted only part of the article and the whole article is available for a fee. Did you pay the fee and read the whole thing or just pick and choose from the excerpt what you wanted?
You can read the abstract yourself. I might be able to get the full artcle with my school login, but the abstract is clear enough about the conclusions. There are quite a few other articles on this subject if you want to read them yourself. They appear to agree with the conclusion that hypoxic training either has no additional training effect, or a negative effect. If you could find me some article that supports hypoxic training, I'd like to see that.
I originally got my skepticism on hypoxic training from Maglischo's "Swimming Even Faster." This is what he writes:
Hypoxic training refers to swimming a repeat distance with a restricted breathing pattern. Swimmers may breathe only once every second, third or fourth stroke cycle. The original purpose of this method of training was to simulate swimming at high altitude. Proponents thought that reducing the breathing rate would also curtail the oxygen supply and create the same kind of hypoxia that takes place at high altitudes.
We know now that this assumption was incorrect.
He goes on to cite several studies which support the idea that hypoxic training does not provide unique benefits.
And I see that now, after having gotten a good scientific look at why long hypoxic sets are useless, you are asking about my experience. I told you, I don't breathe in the 50. I used to do it a lot, back in the day when I had expert coaches who told me to do thousands of yards holding my breath. All that ever got me was a headache. Now that I train myself, I specifically practice the skill of not breathing on a 50 free. Amazingly, I no longer struggle to hold my breath in that race.
Sorry, amigo, a "quick Google search" following your post isn't gonna cut it. I don't believe you have the coaching or training background to make such assertions. If others on the forum with experience feel the way you do, then I will give it more credibility.
Further you quoted only part of the article and the whole article is available for a fee. Did you pay the fee and read the whole thing or just pick and choose from the excerpt what you wanted?
You can read the abstract yourself. I might be able to get the full artcle with my school login, but the abstract is clear enough about the conclusions. There are quite a few other articles on this subject if you want to read them yourself. They appear to agree with the conclusion that hypoxic training either has no additional training effect, or a negative effect. If you could find me some article that supports hypoxic training, I'd like to see that.
I originally got my skepticism on hypoxic training from Maglischo's "Swimming Even Faster." This is what he writes:
Hypoxic training refers to swimming a repeat distance with a restricted breathing pattern. Swimmers may breathe only once every second, third or fourth stroke cycle. The original purpose of this method of training was to simulate swimming at high altitude. Proponents thought that reducing the breathing rate would also curtail the oxygen supply and create the same kind of hypoxia that takes place at high altitudes.
We know now that this assumption was incorrect.
He goes on to cite several studies which support the idea that hypoxic training does not provide unique benefits.
And I see that now, after having gotten a good scientific look at why long hypoxic sets are useless, you are asking about my experience. I told you, I don't breathe in the 50. I used to do it a lot, back in the day when I had expert coaches who told me to do thousands of yards holding my breath. All that ever got me was a headache. Now that I train myself, I specifically practice the skill of not breathing on a 50 free. Amazingly, I no longer struggle to hold my breath in that race.
