SEMINAR: Exploring the limits of human performance and environmental stress

Abstract - Reduced locomotor performance generally occurs in hot and/or hypoxic compared to cool/normoxic conditions, especially when exercise is performed to the limit of tolerance (i.e., repeated ‘all out’ efforts). Such impaired exercise capacity with thermal and hypoxemic strains is largely determined by increased challenges placed on multiple regulatory systems to maintain homeostasis. Using a holistic approach, this presentation first aims to discuss lessons I have learned regarding performance regulation and associated physiological and neuromechanical consequences during exhaustive exercise in challenging environments. This will include examples taken from locomotor exercises performed in a lab-based environment (e.g., repeated sprint exercise in hot/hypoxic conditions) but also in the real world (i.e., when playing tennis or football in the heat). Historically, altitude training emerged in the 1960s and was limited to the “Live High Train High” method for the endurance athletes looking for increasing their oxygen transport. This “classical” method was completed in 1990s by the “Live High Train Low” method where athletes benefit from the higher intensity of training at low altitude. The panorama of the hypoxic/altitude training methods is now wider than in the past. This presentation also aims to present the recent updates on altitude/hypoxic training, targeting team sports in particular, to improve various aspects of sport performance. This will include innovative “Live Low Train High” methods (i.e., repeated sprint training in hypoxia) or the newly developed “Live High Train Low and High” intervention, presumably with molecular adaptations postponing muscle fatigue. Practical recommendations for implementation of these new altitude/hypoxic training methods and how to potentially combine them with heat stress training, in professional rugby for instance, will be discussed. Finally, the promises of heat therapy and hypoxic conditioning in clinical populations to improve therapeutic outcome beyond what is obtained today in rehabilitation settings will briefly be evoked