IN the off-season break I had a bit of spare time on my hands. As mentioned in an earlier ‘The Richards Report’, during the break I had a few minor operations, I travelled, I had exams, I moved house and I gave different forms of exercise a go.
However, I also had a bit of thinking time ….
I was reading the paper one day and saw an ad that said blood was urgently required.
This ad got me thinking about a form of training some clubs now do every pre-season - high altitude training, and the associated benefits.
The idea with high altitude training is that if you train at a high enough altitude then your body will adjust to the lack of oxygen in the air by producing more red blood cells. Then those red blood cells improve oxygen transfer around the body and help it to return to homeostasis (normality).
At the Swans we don’t go away for high altitude training, so here was my plan - I decided to try a few things to replicate altitude training without leaving the comfort of sea level:
• I went to my local Red Cross and donated some blood. (I’d been meaning to do this for a few years)
• I decided that if I kept on training really hard, then because I had less blood, my body would have to work harder to train at the same intensity I usually train at.
• As my body slowly adapted and increased the blood volume (and the red blood cells) I would be able to train harder for longer, as my red blood cells increased back up to my normal level.
I was aware my thinking had a lot of flaws, and I came to the conclusion that I should never be involved in sports science. I could go on about the known flaws in my “theory” for a long time but basically I was conscious that my red blood cells would never actually increase more than my normal level (which is the desired outcome from high altitude training).
Also, I was aware that the blood sample donated is only a small amount and hardly going to make that much of a difference.
In conclusion, there were plenty of reasons that this was going to be a pointless exercise, but as I’ve done many times in my life before, I elected to proceed despite what common sense suggested.
So what was the outcome?
Unfortunately, not much changed. I didn’t run a PB at my first session back, (but arrogantly I’m going to blame that on the slow recovery from some off-season operations, rather than my theory.)
I figured that even though I didn’t receive any physiological benefits, I’d still donated blood to someone who needed it and that’s a good enough outcome in itself.
Ted Richards
@richards_report
