Prep for Paris: the heat is on

Blood screening

Blood screening helps athletes to understand their current state of health so they can adapt their training, nutrition and recovery accordingly.

We take small venous blood samples from the arm, taken within three hours of waking from a rested, hydrated athlete. We then screen the samples in our accredited laboratory. The biomarkers (compounds in blood) reflect different things about athlete health like kidney and liver function, metabolism, hormone levels, and the health of bone, brain, heart and muscles.

It is particularly important for female athletes, as many report that changes associated with menstrual cycles can be a sign of poor recovery and under fuelling that can influence health and performance.

The environmental chamber

International competitions mean athletes will compete in very different conditions across the season, but often don’t have the finance, time or space in a packed calendar to travel to camps to acclimatise effectively.

Elite athletes also like to spend time at home with family and friends like everyone else. The facilities in Carnegie School of Sport’s new building include two environmental chambers which allow athletes to train for almost any weather condition while staying in Headingley. Our students get to use the same facilities for seminars/practical’s and for their dissertation research.

There are very few environmental chambers like ours in Europe, both in terms of size and the weather conditions we can create. We can simulate up to 8000m in altitude (hypoxia) by reducing the fraction of inspired oxygen, and temperatures as high as 50 degrees Celsius (°C) and as low as -20°C. Humidity can also be manipulated from 20-90% relative humidity, while the chambers contain large fans to simulate high wind speeds. 

Most athletes use the chamber for 60-90 minutes on a treadmill or bike in hot, humid conditions (30-40°C and 40-80% relative humidity) to replicate the expected or ‘worst case scenario’ of competition.

While they exercise, the support team assesses physiological measures including body temperature, skin temperature, heart rate, sweat loss, fluid intake, hydration status, thermal sensation/comfort.

Athletes can swallow a telemetric pill which measure core (gastrointestinal) temperature and communicates it via bluetooth, allowing us to track their core body temperature in a laboratory or out in a field setting. Ultimately, you’re trying to get an athlete hot (core temperature above 38.5°C and skin temperature greater than 35°C) so that they experience the heat and feel how it impacts performance and pacing.

The time in the chamber promotes physiological adaptations that we know ultimately benefit performance. This includes reduced resting and exercising core temperature and heart rate, an increased sweat rate/sweat sensitivity, reduced thermal comfort, rates of perceived exertion (the intensity of exercise), and increased plasma volume (increase in blood volume).

While athletes usually use the chambers to prepare for specific races, like the heat of Paris this summer, there is also some evidence that heat training can prompt changes which support endurance performance that can benefit general training.

This includes mitochondrial biogenesis (the powerhouse of the cell) and increased haemoglobin mass (transport system of oxygen).  

Pioneering performance research

We are a multi-disciplinary team focused on developing evidence-informed policy and practice, to support optimising physical performance while protecting athletes wellbeing. We have a community of PhD students working with academics within the Centre for Human performance, and practitioners embedded within sports teams and national governing bodies. Ensuring our research spans the laboratory through to translational science on the track, on the pitch and in the mountains.

A team of postgraduate students delivers across of range of physiological services as part of the ‘Health and Performance Hub’. We make sure that practitioners are adequately trained, the correct validated protocols are used, and health and safety and data protection protocols are in place and adhered to which ultimately provides students with the necessary skills to work with elite athletes and industry partners. 

Achieve your goals

Many of the applied services used by elite athletes are available to any member of the public at the Health and Performance Hub . Ultra marathon runners, triathletes, cyclists, sports teams…any athletes working towards a specific challenge or simply trying to find out how good they could be can use the services to help achieve their own personal goals.