Kent Bostick

Kent Bostick (USA) – “I’m probably the oldest athlete in an endurance speed sport.” A Masters athlete in cycling who is still going strong and winning championships in his early 50s, Kent Bostick is a prime example of someone not letting age slow him down. In fact, he accomplished his life-long dream of making the team at 42 in 1996, double the average age of most of his teammates. “In 2006, year I won the Tennessee Time Trial Championship in the 40 kilometer individual time trial,” says Kent. “My times in this event are the same as 10 years ago. I’ve been able to maintain the same level of sport from my 20s to my 50s, which is pretty unusual.”

Kent, who didn’t begin training seriously as a cyclist until the relatively late age of 26, is a two-time Pan-Am Games gold medalist and a 12-time senior national champion with two world records and more than 300 career victories.

Achievements:

• Winner of the Time Trial, Road Race and Best All Around Rider in the 55-59 age group, Masters National championships
• 1996 Games athlete at the age of 42
• Winner of 12 national titles including the Road, Time Trial, Team Time Trial and Pursuit
• Holds two world records and more than 300 career victories
• Six-time National Team Time Trial Champion
• Three-time National Pursuit Champion
• Two-time National Time Trial Champion
• Two-time Pan American Games Gold Medalist

As Dan Puder, an MMA fighter, shadowboxes in a sealed room at the Fortune gym on the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles, a small machine whirs in the corner, steadily sucking oxygen out of the air. That little contraption makes his body think it’s working out at 12,000 feet above sea level, so it starts manufacturing extra red blood cells to carry what little oxygen there is to his muscles. By the time Puder’s done, his body has developed so much extra oxygen capacity that when he walks out of the gym and into the afternoon sunshine, he’s taking in 20% more oxygen than just about anyone else on the street. “It’s crazy” he says. “I feel like Superman?’

Puder is among a growing legion of athletes singing the praises of hypoxic training, which simulates high altitudes in controlled environments. When hypoxic gear was first introduced in the late ’90s, it was primarily embraced by the Olympic and cycling worlds. Lance Armstrong started using climate tents in 2001 to simulate the soaring climbs of the French Alps, and his win in that year’s Tour de France led his rivals to do the same. The Air Force uses hypoxie gear to train fighter pilots. And it’s positively de rigueur with the mountain-climbing and adventure set.

But in the past year, hypoxic training has begun to move into mainstream sports. According to the Boulder-based Colorado Altitude Training, the Phoenix Suns and Philadelphia Flyers have added $40,000 climate chambers to their training facilities. And, as Puder demonstrates, it’s making its way into MMA. The reasoning behind this growth extends even beyond the training benefits. “With drug testing getting more strict, athletes have a choice” Puder says. “Try to beat the tests or find a natural edge.”

If he’s not doing supersets in the sealed workout rooms, the spiky-haired Puder, a college wrestler who got his big break on the WWE’s show Tough Enough, runs on a treadmill with a mask that simulates the air in the Peruvian Andes. At night, he sleeps under a tent that makes him feel as if he’s 9,000 feet above sea level in Sri Lanka. That metabolic trip around the world is all about helping him keep his edge in the ring. “Fifteen minutes of fighting is a long time” he says. “By the third round, you’re wiped. This helps me fight longer, harder. A lot of MMA guys are doing it.”

Puder discovered hypoxic training two years ago while transitioning to MMA. “In the WWE, I was lifting seven days a week, as heavily as I could” he says. “But MMA is all about cardio.” He had run up a 20-0 amateur record as a heavyweight when an instructor offered him a hypoxic mask. Puder wore it for four months while training for a September 2007 rifle match broadcast live by Yahoo! Sports from the Playboy Mansion. “I could feel the endurance difference,” he says. He won in a unanimous decision.

Realizing he’d hit on a key to increasing his stamina, Puder called Hypoxico, a leading supplier, and asked them to lend one of their glass climate chambers to his trainer, Justin Fortune, who owns a boxing gym on the Sunset Strip. Fortune was initially skeptical, but now he’s a convert. “The benefits are unreal,” he says. “High altitude kicks your metabolism to a whole new level.”

Four times a week, Fortune puts his boxing clients through 30-minute workouts broken up with occasional half-minute breaks. Their routines range from mitt and heavy-bag work to circuit training with seven 10-rep sets per exercise. On alternate days, he puts a mask on them and has them walk on a treadmill for 25 minutes at an incline. Puder says his hematocrit level, the standard measure of red blood cells, has risen by at least 7%, to 46.8, in the past year. Most pro sports don’t check for hematocrit levels, but a reading of 50 is enough to get cyclists banned from the Tour de France.

Our kidneys have internal sensors that can tell when there’s a drop in oxygen, and they respond by making EPO, the hormone that prompts the body to make red blood cells. Since a cyclist who lives in Salt Lake City has more of those cells than one who tides in Dallas, why shouldn’t the Texan be able to naturally balance things out? The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) found itself curiously flummoxed when it considered that question in 2006. Its Ethical Issues Review Panel said the chambers violated the “spirit of sport,” and a high-ranking official called them “tacky.” But seven dozen doctors from around the world wrote a passionate defense, insisting that “altering the ambient oxygen concentration requires no more passive use of technology than getting into a car, turning on the ignition, and driving to the top of a mountain.” WADA ultimately agreed.

Given what amounts to a free pass, the drug-tested sports world is starting to give hypoxic training a second look. So are others. Larry Kutt, president of Colorado Altitude Training, insists his gear is tailor-made for anyone who hits the gym hard day after day. “The red blood cells are like trucks that deliver oxygen to the muscles” he says. “The more oxygen muscles get, the faster they can recover.” Victor Conte, the founder of BALCO (Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative), backs up the sentiment. “I learned during my years of work with elite athletes that increasing hematocrit levels can provide a huge benefit in terms of enhancing recovery during and after intense workouts,” he says. Puder, who’s working with Conte on a line of supplements that he claims will boost the hypoxic high, insists he’s living proof. “My muscles don’t break down as quickly as they once did,” he says. “Within eight weeks I saw a 25% gain in my overall cardio.”

I wanted to get a feel for the stuff myself, so I visited Hypoxico’s offices on Manhattan’s West Side. The two men who greeted me were youthful, eager, and–oddly–both named Matt. They led me to an ordinary-looking conference room that felt like the cabin of a 747. While we make small talk, a 50-pound generator starts removing oxygen from the air and piping it into the room. It runs through a small box that looks like a dehumidifier and wheezes like Darth Vader as it circulates the oxygen-deprived air. It is set to take 6% of the oxygen out of the air, which means we might as well be in Colorado. “When the first machines came out, they were used by specialists,” Matt Eckert, the company’s vice president, explains to me. “Now, an average soccer mom can walk in for 30 minutes and walk out feeling as if she’s just run for an hour.”

I nodded, wondering whether soccer rooms are really the market for this. Then I remember something Fortune told me: The most popular use for his chamber is hot yoga. Just as I started to believe maybe this really is the next wave, it occurred to me that I was laboring to breathe, and my chest burned like hell. As it turns out, the compressor had taken us up another 6,000 feet. I suggested that maybe it’s a good idea for us to continue our chat at sea level.

A 45-year-old Wall Street exec named Cynthia was in the showroom eyeing a portable mask for a trip she was about to take to the highest point in the Western Hemisphere, Argentina’s Mount Aconcagua. “Tour guides rush you up,” she explained. “Even big strong guys get wiped out. If you want to enjoy yourself, you need to get your body acclimated.”

Despite its emerging acceptance among athletes and adventurers, we’re still a long way from having a hypoxic chamber in every health club. Eckert’s partner, Matt Formato, figures it will take another year or two before we’ll see hypoxic spin classes in the local gym.

That’s why Puder may not be the best bellwether of hypoxic’s future. It might be his girlfriend, Playboy model Amanda Evans. The 27-year-old had a WTF expression when Puder broached the idea of putting a hypoxic tent over their California king-size bed last spring. “It looked really intimidating, and I was scared to fall asleep in it,” she recalls. “I didn’t know if I’d be able to breathe.” But after a few weeks of settling in at the equivalent of a 10,000-foot elevation, she no longer had trouble getting a full night’s sleep. “You also get that deep quality of sleep,” she says. She also noticed that a steep six-mile run near their Hollywood home stopped being a chore.

And then there’s the sex. “You can do anything you want,” she coos. “The only downside is you get winded quickly. But then when you get back out into the fresh air, I mean, wow!”

It’s still too early to determine if hypoxie training will be worth the trouble for regular guys. Gary Wadler, M.D., who studies hypoxic gear as the chairman of WADA’s Prohibited List and Methods Subcommittee, says that there’s no guarantee that a $7,000 tent will work as well for Joe the Plumber as it does for Puder. “There’s tremendous individual variability that makes it hard to predict who will benefit” he says. More worrisome to Wadler are the muscle-heads who will try to cut costs by using homemade setups. “In a highly controlled, hospital-level environment, the equipment probably isn’t dangerous,” he says. “But if you’re using inferior equipment, there’s a potential to get a severely low intake of oxygen that could result in irreparable damage to the brain.”

While making the products more cost-effective may ultimately determine the longevity of hypoxic training, the gear appears here to stay in mixed martial arts and other drug-tested sports. In an A-Rod-scandal-rid country, “the best thing about it,” says Puder, “is that it’s not considered cheating.”

By: Shaun Assael

Hypoxico is proud to announce our new partnership with Performance and Nutrition Consulting! Lead by the former manager of the Athletes Performance Lab at the USOC, Dr. Krista Austin aims to help athletes excel in their sport by maximizing physical and nutritional health.  Dr. Austin is the foremost expert in altitude training in the United States, and will help design a personal training protocol for use with your Hypoxico training equipment. Consultation rates start as low as $60. Call Hypoxico to schedule your consultation today!

After being delayed for three days in Talkeetna due to poor weather, Slava and I finally departed to start our climb of Denali in the afternoon of May 29th via a tiny Cessna operated by Hudson Air. Because of our strong pre-acclimatization, we were a little bummed to lose a few days and wanted to get back to altitude asap. We made excellent progress the first few days and moved quickly and comfortably to the 11,200 ft camp before getting shut down for a day by 70+ mph winds at the top of squirrel hill.  After a day and a half at this camp the storm had a brief lull. We packed frantically and moved through 50+ mph winds to the 14,000 ft camp. This was a solid intro to the gnarly conditions of Denali where the wind, weather, and load hauling really does make every day feel like a summit day.

I was relieved to cache our one sled at this camp and move freely with “only” about 60 lb. Perhaps the greatest advantage of “pre-acclimating” before Denali was that we were able to leave BC with about as much equipment between the two of us as one person typically carries. It’s amazing because practically everyone does double carries between camps and is constantly managing a nightmarish amount of equipment. Because of our pre-acclimatization, we were able to move with much less equipment in half the time. This ultimately conserved our energy levels for Summit day, thereby drastically improving our Summit chances.

We were ecstatic to advance to 14,000 because many of the climbers had been at the 11,200 camp for a week. Feeling well and showing no signs of acute mountain sickness (AMS) (oxygen saturation’s were in the high 80’s), we made a similar decision around the same time the following day and left 14,200 around 5pm. The option of moving at night is about the only yielding element of climbing in Alaska. That night was very challenging.  After ascending fixed lines we had an interesting few hours on the exposed ridge in fierce winds before reaching high camp at 17,200 around midnight. Slava was showing signs of excessive fatigue upon arrival and we were both relieved to see his recovery after eating and hydrating.

Although we were hoping to bunker down for a day of rest at 17,000 ft, the weather was great and we left for the summit around 2:30 pm. Slava and I moved strongly through the famous autobahn section erasing all worries of his recovery and potential AMS. The summit day was relatively uneventful compared to the preceding days and we popped the top in around 6 hours and were back to high camp by 11 pm. The following day we marched all the way back to BC and found ourselves having climbed Denali round-trip in under 7 days.

Speed Attempt

After five days of rest in Talkeetna I flew back to Mt Mckinley to attempt a speed ascent with Vern Tejas. The two of us had been working on the details of this 24 hour climb for a few months but still found ourselves making last minute adjustments to our modified equipment. The two major challenges of this climb were to utilize extremely lightweight footwear while avoiding frostbite, and to carry enough water for a 24 hour push so we would not need any outside support. We used Nike Javelin spikes with 1 1/4 inch spikes with some combination of overboots. This system came in at about 1 lb vs. my Superboots and crampons would have been close to 8 lbs. For water, Vern and I each carried 4 liter MSR Dromedaries near our stomachs by utilizing backpack like straps in the reverse direction. The spigots could be closed on top and we attached a 3 inch piece of hose, which ultimately worked amazing as the water never froze. Vern had used this ingenious set-up on a previous speed attempt a few years back and I will most certainly use it again in the future. Other individual equipment included: 20 liter ultralight day packs, 2 liters of water in bottles, a trekking pole and BD Whippet (instead of Ice Axe), mittens, food, a children’s sled, and hard warmers.

After an excellent night of sleep, we left base camp (BC) on June 11th, at 5:15 am. We made solid progress and removed our harnesses and rope at Camp 1 (7800 ft) by 7 am. We also left a liter of water there as we passed through. We moved through the 11,200 ft camp by 9 am and reached 14,000 by 11:15. The snow conditions were quite good and luckily there was no post holing in our “shoes.” There were several groups to pass on the headwall to 16,000 ft, but we passed most of them near where we cached our sleds just below the fixed lines. The plan was to utilize the sleds to conserve our legs on the descent by sledding headfirst back to Camp 1. Climbing the fixed lines for 800 ft without a harness proved uneventful and there was no wind on the ridge to 17,200. I’m not positive but I believe my elapsed time passing through the camp was just over 10 hours and Vern was shortly behind. Because I climbed to the top the week before in about 6 hours, I was very confident that we were on pace to be very close to the 14 hour 22 minute time that is the unofficial ascent record.

The autobahn is a long semi exposed traverse that leads to Denali Pass at just below 19,000 ft. Unfortunately it was here that the snow conditions were very inconsistent and awkward. Both Vern and I were losing javelin spikes from our shoes throughout the day. By this time I would say I had lost about 40% of mine and he was about the same. I resorted to kicking steps and drastically slowed the pace through the sketchier sections but was a bit unnerved at some of the moves. Already questioning continuing with the loss of the spikes and the quickly dropping temperatures, I turned the corner to Zebra rocks only to find 40+ mph winds. In normal gear this would not be a major obstacle, but I don’t think it was an option on that day and I’m sure it was the right decision to turn around. My turn around time was just about 5 pm. Vern quickly agreed with the decision because he was having trouble keeping his toes warm and wanted to avoid “the bite.”

While descending we both openly questioned our acclimatization because our pace had slowed a bit when we hit the 17,500 ft mark. Vern had been off of Everest for almost 3 weeks while I had been out of our Hypoxico training tents for over 2 weeks. We both thought these acclimatization plans were adequate, but in retrospect we would have benefited from using a hypoxic tent in Talkeetna. I had originally planned to spend a few nights at the high camp on my first climb to avoid bringing my generator to Alaska, but because the weather was good I only spent about 36 hours at 17,000 ft and above.

The decision to turn around shy naturally sapped our adrenaline and so we were pretty conservative with our descent speed. Vern is practically the pioneer of “death sledding” but still found the conditions too fast and the snow too hard to use this technique from just below the fixed lines. The basic concept is that you hold onto the sled going head first and shift more or less of your body on or off of the sled to control speed. We were able to sled most of the way between 11,200 and 7,800 which offered a great break for our legs. We arrived back in BC around 2:15 am, or 21 hours after departing feeling pretty good.

Unfortunately, we could not fly off the glacier for the next 3 days due to weather.  This gave us plenty of time to talk about adjusting the equipment and strategy for a future attempt. Because it is such an ambitious project that requires a significant amount of luck with weather, neither of us were particularly upset about turning around. In fact, I am left with confidence that the roundtrip time of just under 24 hours can be significantly reduced and that a roundtrip time of around 18 hours is entirely possible. In a future attempt I would use a lightweight randonee ski set-up and am already excited about an opportunity to try again!!!

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An existing altitude training room at Olympic training center in the south of Taiwan.

The new altitude training room hypoxico.com built at the college in the north of Taiwan