PE

• Humidity will

  • Increase sweat rate
  • Increase fluid loss
  • Decrease the effectiveness of cooling via evaporation
  • Decrease performance, particularly aerobic performance
• Heat Index

  Used to determine how hot it feels by considering the air temperature and the relative humidity
• Body's response to cold weather

  • peripheral vasoconstriction
  • shivering
  • piloerection
• Wind Chill

  The apparent temperature felt on the skin due to the combination of wind and ambient temperature
• Cold Acclimatisation

  • Allows chance for experimentation clothing/warm-up
  • Psychological adaptation
  • Athletes train their body systems to generate more heat and better prevent heat loss 
  • should occur 7-10 days before competition
• Strategies to help cope with exercising in the cold

  Experiment with the length of warm-up

  Experiment with layered clothing

  Psychological acclimatisation

  Ensure adequate fluid replacement, as water loss will be increased via the need to humidify dry, cold air before it enters the lungs
• Altitude Acclimatisation

  Live high, Train low

  Live high, Train high

  Live low, Train high
• Acute adaptations (first 24 hrs) Altitude

  • ↑ Respiratory rate
  • ↑ Tidal Volume
  • ↑ Nausea/headaches/dizziness
  • ↑ HR and Q during rest and sub maximal exercise
  • ↓ plasma volume to ↑ concentration of haemoglobin in the blood
• Chronic adaptations (72 hrs+) Altitude

  • ↑ Haematocrit
  • ↑ mitochondria 
  • ↑ aerobic enzymes 
  • ↑ capillarization
  • ↑ myoglobin 
• Live high, train low

  This involves daily intermittent exposure to artificial altitude environments whilst maintaining normal training intensities
• Live high, Train high

  Athletes live at altitude to achieve the physiological benefits of a decrease in O2 concentration and train at altitude to obtain adaptations
• Live low, train high

  Athletes live at sea level but train in hypobaric chambers or altitude tents to simulate a hypoxic environment.