Whether you’re a pro earning $50,000 a fight or an amateur paying $50 to fight, you’re both on the lookout for that extra edge.
Now, a spectrum of elite MMA athletes including Wanderlei Silva, Daniel Puder and Sean Sherk are all embracing the latest revolution to take their cardio to extreme levels: hypoxic training.
But what exactly is hypoxic training and why did Joe Rogan label it as controversial when Kyle Noke walked out donning a hypoxic training mask at UFC 127?
The lowdown
Hypoxic training is basically altitude training done at sea level. It might be new to MMA but there’s nothing groundbreaking about it to other athletes. It first reared its head almost by chance. The 1968 Mexico City Olympics, which was staged at 7,350 feet above sea level, saw countless records being broken, mostly by athletes who had trained at higher elevations.
This was when Kenyan runners first stamped their authority on long-distance races. Their secret? In a word: altitude. That’s because the higher you train above sea level, the less oxygen there is in the air for you to breathe. Make sense?
Don’t worry, it will. Today MMA stars are the latest breed of athletes using it to gain an endurance advantage in the cage. What’s more, with the avalanche of new hypoxic technology, you don’t even need to learn Sherpa to reap the benefits. But before you go taping up your mouth for training, you have to ask yourself if it’s really worth all the huff and puff?
How it works
Relocating to Bhutan to test if it works is a pretty extreme step, yet it can be just as tough to find gyms that have hypoxic chambers – mostly because they can cost as much as a modestly priced sedan.
With that in mind athletes have taken to using or renting hypoxic masks and tents. And even cheaper options have taken a foothold, such as the use of a snorkel, which restricts your breathing but doesn't actually reduce the oxygen you get.
“They might build up CO2 levels which make it feel uncomfortable but your oxygen levels do not really fall,” says Richard Pullan, the director of London’s The Altitude Centre. Extreme? Yes, and this is what happens under the hood.
Step 1: You go hypoxic training by finding a chamber or looting your diving bag. However you do it, the bottom line is the higher up you are, the less oxygen there is for you to breath. Normal air has about 20% oxygen while air at higher altitudes is made up of about 13–15% oxygen. But budget snorkels can also work by restricting the air, and with it oxygen, you can breathe while you do cardio.
Step 2: You start your cardio (run, cycle, rowing, etc) at intervals, try alternating between periods of sprinting and jogging or walking.
Step 3: As the intensity of your workout ramps up, your demands for oxygen increase. The problem is, you’re not getting as much as you’re used to because the air you’re breathing now has significantly less oxygen. Your kidneys sense there isn’t enough oxygen in the blood, so they release a hormone that prompts the body to make more red blood cells.
Step 4: There is a flood of these cells, which set to work carrying what little O2 you’re getting from your lungs into your muscles. “Your muscles are also not getting enough oxygen so they start to work anaerobically, which raises acidity and over time the body learns to process these increases in acidity better and you end up with lower lactate levels for the same given workloads,” says Pullan.
In short, you get fitter. But this won’t have you blazing out the blocks. In fact, straight off the bat you’ll probably notice a dip in performance. So if you can normally sprint for 40 seconds flat out , you’ll now only last about 30 seconds at the same speed because the adaptation and performance-boosting benefits aren’t instant.
Step 5: After a few sessions this does lead to performance improvements, especially when you train at sea level because you’ll have more red blood cells floating in your blood. And they carry additional energy-yielding oxygen to your muscles.
But this competitive advantage only lasts for 10–15 days, found research in Journal of Applied Physiology. That’s because your body will eventually have to return to normal.
This is why endurance athletes often live in high altitudes and compete at sea level. But the question is not if it works, but if it works specifically for fighters.
Is it worth it for the fighters?
1. Performance
Before you get down to it, there can be some confusion between hypoxic training and altitude training. They’re much the same animal because hypoxic training is when you try to replicate altitude training by limiting the oxygen you breathe.
Think of hypoxic as altitude training at sea level. It can be done while you train or while you rest or as a mix of both: where you live in a low-oxygen house, or sleep in a low oxygen tent, then train at sea level. Each has slightly different results and, as with most things, a balanced approach is usually the most effective option.
BJ Penn used this live-high train-low, method before his recent win over Matt Hughes and he’d clearly been swotting up on the latest scientific journals. Research in High Altitude Medicine and Biology compared all the different techniques mentioned here and found that living high and training low can improve VO2max (your maximum oxygen consumption) by 13% and can boost long to medium-distance running times (events lasting more than 20 minutes).
But the researchers found that training under hypoxia (with limited oxygen) actually reduces speeds and power output making it unlikely to cough up an advantage to a well-trained endurance athlete. That should leave you with a few questions about the fundamentals of Octagon fitness, such as: is an MMA fighter built for stamina, strength or power? The answer is yes, to all three, which does make the effectiveness of hypoxic training tough to pin down.
There are reports of 60m sprinters such as Dwain Chambers using hypoxic training but the bulk of the athletes using it are purely endurance-style gazelles. Fighters actually have very little use for this stamina-style fitness and instead have pioneered their unique brand of fitness that can only be described as power endurance.
“This is the definition of our sport and separates the good from the great,” explains Jon Chaimberg, strength trainer and athletic co-ordinator to GSP and Rashad Evans. “It’s the ability to explode, use optimal energy, then find a way to recover in a short period of time, and be able to explode again on demand. I’ve seen many fight won and lost here.” MMA is one of the few disciplines that can’t be categorized into a neat little box because you have to be good at everything. And that’s probably a huge part of the sport’s appeal. If you are looking for harder punches then the extra puffing and panting will be for nothing. Athletes who do mostly anaerobic exercise, such as weight lifting or sprinting, saw no benefits from any form of altitude or hypoxic training, found research in Advances in Experimental Medicine and Biology.
That means any flat-out exercise that lasts more than two minutes will not get a performance kick. But slightly more recent research in the International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance contradicted the old thinking by finding that it actually does boost anaerobic performance and actually help you build more muscle and strength than training normally, if you’re doing arm curls that is.
They didn’t test hypoxic training in the way that fighters often train with high-intensity weight lifting circuits. So if you’re planning on going for a quick knockout then you’ll probably just be using brute force, but if you’re in it to force a judging decision then the final few minutes of each round might feel a tad easier after hypoxic training.
This is where the controversy lies, because each person will respond differently. Some of the pro's do use it, but does that necessarily mean it will give your performance a bump? Yes, in a limited capacity, however, that’s sometimes all it takes to put your name on a winner’s sheet. Also, it does have a few other benefits that might come in handy in the lead-up to an event.
2. Higher calorie burn
If you’re after a faster way to make weight then it might help in your pre-fight prep. Construction workers who worked at high altitudes reduced their body fat by 10.2% within one month of moving from a sea-level site, found a study at the Research Center for High Altitude Medicine. That happens thanks to a ménage a trois of appetite, fat and recovery. Firstly, it can cause a lack of appetite because you feel fuller after your workouts, found a study in News in Physiological Sciences.
Secondly, your working muscles start to lose their appetite for food but trade this for a hunger for fats. Research in Experimental Physiology discovered that when people are exposed to a hypoxic environment they shift their muscle metabolism to rely more on your stored carbs and fats for energy rather than just the food you eat.
Lastly – and this one is still in debate – the workouts might not be as intense, as the ones at sea level or without oxygen deprivation, but the lack of O2 makes them seem tougher for your body as a whole.
The next day this can make you feel stiffer than the Tinman after a swim and you’ll have to use more calories after the workout to recover. It’s worth a try if you’re a few too many pounds above your weight class.
3. Feeling like you're in a fight
Every fighter would have reached a point where they’re gagging for air thanks to exhaustion or a well-placed chokehold. So it makes sense that if you’re training in one of these exhausted states that you become used to this lack of oxygen. If it feels normal in training then it’ll feel normal on fight night.
Although this may only give a psychological advantage rather than a proven psychical advantage, fighters like Sean Sherk claim hypoxic training is their secret weapon, so much so that he has now released what looks like a hypoxic gas mask that you train with.
“I’ve been using masks for about three years now in my own training and had always kept it a secret, because I knew it was a huge advantage for me in the gym and in the cage,” says Sherk. “The mask not only simulates high-altitude training and limits oxygen flow, it also causes a claustrophobic effect. Forcing me to perform and train in these conditions lets my body require less oxygen while exerting myself and teaches me to relax while in claustrophobic, intense situations. After acclimating my body to perform with limited oxygen, when I’m able to train without limitation, my body feels super charged and I feel unstoppable.”
Some pretty big claims that might be worth having a crack at if you panic when you’re pinned by a ‘Bigfoot’ Silva-like beast. Being able to think clearly when you’re starving for breath could come in handy.
Must-have hypoxic gear
Backyard hypoxic training is not a safe way to get in shape thanks to all risk factors that low oxygen brings. To make sure you stay in the land of the living get an oximeter. “An oximeter is critically important because it measures blood oxygen saturation levels,” says Brad Morris, former UFC heavyweight and sports scientist specializing in hypoxic training. “Your blood oxygen saturation levels should not drop below 80%. If they do, the little powerhouses within your cells – known as mitochondria, which produce ATP (energy) – start to die. "Mitochondial death will lead to a huge drop in performance due to smaller amounts of ATP being produced.”
Oximeters are cheap, but important safety devices, as there is no way to tell when your blood oxygen saturation levels have dropped below 80% except via an oximeter.”
Ways to go hypoxic
- Take a drive: Fighters like Brock and Randy are famous for disappearing to the mountains to take advantage of the oxygen-depleted environment of high altitude.You may struggle to find a grappling partner though. Value: 2/5
- Give yourself room to breathe: You can convert an entire room to a low oxygen environment so that you can sleep or work while boosting your stamina. Power nap is an understatement. Value: 1/5
- Go camping: You can get a hypoxic tent that you can position over your bed so that you limit your oxygen while you sleep, boosting red blood cells, and benefiting from the extra O2 when you train. Value: 2/5
- Wear a mask: It might stifle any advances by your missus, but will limit your oxygen intake wherever you might be sleeping, such as the hotel before a fight. Value: 4/5
- Go snorkeling: This is as budget as it gets which is surprising that Wanderlei Silva uses it by taping up his nose and breathing through a snorkel as he does cardio. "You don't use your nose, just your mouth, so it makes it much more difficult,” says Silva. “Training 15 minutes with the snorkel is the same as training two hours without. After I'm done, all I want to do is eat and sleep, I am very, very tired.” Value: 5/5
Is it ethical?
You might want to win at any cost – and this will cost you – but is the performance boosting really fair? Well, initially the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) considered banning artificial altitude systems stating that it is as good as the blood doping that Tour De France cyclists so often do. But it’s got a reprieve, within limits.
The sad fact is, however, shelling out for a pricy hypoxic tent might not cough up any benefits. "There's tremendous individual variability that makes it hard to predict who will benefit," says Dr Gary Wader who studies hypoxic gear as the chairman of WADA's Prohibited List and Methods Subcommittee.
So your genetics might well leave you out of pocket. But if it helps you win your next few fights we’re sure you won’t be losing any sleep over your competitive advantage, unless you’re sleeping in a hypoxic chamber that is.
Dangers of hypoxic training
At UFC 127 there were some concerns expressed about the use of hypoxic method and like all types of extreme training, it does come with its own set of dangers.
If you’re doing it and feel any of these symptoms listed by the Mayo Clinic then don’t act like Rambo, it means it is time to stop.
- Extreme dizziness: Some dizziness is okay but when you’re running like a drunkard then go outside take a deep breath of full strength O2.
- Severe headaches: Limited oxygen starves your brain of its most used fuel source and it’ll complain – like your missus when you come home late – if it’s not getting enough.
- Insomnia: This is a reality for athletes who sleep in hypoxic tents because even though your breathing will have slowed down, you may wake up in the night while your body is adjusting to its new environment.
- Cough: Less oxygen can make your lungs voice their protest. It’s okay to let out the odd cough but if dogs start to bark back then ease up.
