Altitude Training

Altitude training - History

Altitude training - history

Altitude training - an increasingly advertised and widespread form of training that is perhaps not as well researched and/or known as other forms of training.
Coaches and high-performance athletes began to think about training for optimal performance at high altitudes even before 1968. After all, the 1968 Summer Olympics took place in Mexico City, at an altitude of around 2200m.
While critics warned before of the largest health problems, the opposite occurred straight in disciplines without larger perseverance portions, it was set up one record after the other one.
Even readers who are too young to really remember have probably heard of the so-called jump of the century by the US American Bob Beamon, who jumped an incredible 8.90m at that time. It took 23 years until this record could be overcome again!

In endurance sports, there were not these best performances, but there were also not the dreaded and announced health problems. As in all extreme endurance competitions, there were also athletes who had to be medically treated, but in total there were no other problems than in other high-performance sports.

At the latest since this moment, trainers and sports scientists in Germany began to deal with the possibilities of altitude training, the pioneer was certainly the former GDR with the underground training facility in Berlin Kienbaum. This is how altitude training looked like in Germany from 1979 on (all following pictures are from Ralf Roletschek / roletschek.de, gallery found on website of Wikepedia http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundesleistungszentrum_Kienbaum - By © Ralf Roletschek - Fahrradtechnik und Fotografie (Own work) [GFDL or CC-BY-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons - Ralf Roletschek / fahrradmonteur.de):