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EFFICACY OF A VENTILATORY TRAINING MASK TO IMPROVE ANAEROBIC CAPACITY IN RESERVE OFFICERS’ TRAINING CORPS CADETS

Abstract

John H. Sellers, Taylor P. Monaghan, Bert H. Jacobson FACSM, Jessica A. Schnaiter, Garrett M. Hester & Zach K. Pope. Health & Human Performance, Oklahoma State University, Oklahoma; e-mail: john.sellers@okstate.edu

Present day military operations often require personnel to be deployed into high altitude locations without a sufficient acclimatization period, which may require 1-3 weeks for sufficient physiological changes to occur. Any decrement to performance as a result of environmental factors such as altitude increases the risk of the mission. Therefore seeking both cost effective and time efficient methods for providing adequate physiological altitude adaptations is of great importance. Intermittent hypoxic training (IHT), follows the “live low-train high” philosophy. One potential method is performing physical training (PT) while wearing a commercially available ventilatory training mask, which increases the energy costs of breathing and provides a small level of hypoxia in an attempt to simulate training at altitude. PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to examine the efficacy of a ventilatory training mask to improve anaerobic fitness in ROTC cadets. METHODS: Nineteen ROTC cadets (age 19.47 ± 1.22 y, weight 73.2 ± 9.94 kg, height 174.79 ± 6.5 cm, body fat 7.85 ± 2.9%) from a Midwest university completed pre- and post-assessments consisting of anthropometry and a 30-sec Wingate Anaerobic Test (WAnT). A six week intervention training period was utilized during which time participants completed their mandatory physical training (PT) sessions. Participants were randomly assigned to either the experimental group (MASK; n = 9), or the control group (CON; n = 8). The ventilatory training masks were adjusted to simulate an altitude of 2750 m. RESULTS: There was no significant effect (p < .05) between groups on fatigue index (FI), anaerobic capacity (AC), or peak power (PP). Based on the results from the paired samples t-test, there was a significant improvement in AC for the combined groups (p < .001), while no significant difference was found for the combined group’s FI (p = .724) nor PP (p = .154). CONCLUSION: These results suggest that the use of the ventilatory training mask during mandatory PT did not elicit superior anaerobic adaptations in ROTC cadets. Therefore, it is recommended that more established simulated altitude training methods be utilized when incorporating intermittent hypoxic training.

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