There's been some interesting studies on heat acclimation in trained athletes and results suggest that hot weather training can improve both submaximal and maximal aerobic performance in some sports; notably swimming, cycling and running and this is one reason for implementing warm weather training camps and post training sauna interventions. It usually occurs within 4-14 days; fit people acclimatising faster, with a whole plethora of cardiovascular, fluid and metabolic adaptions which may or may not occur.
I haven't however seen any studies on bodybuilding and hot weather training - where aesthetics is more of the issue and there doesn't seem to be much on the capacity of skeletal muscle to generate force during heat stress. Possibly the reason for this is most gyms are air conditioned and any normal person would most likely prefer to train in air conditioning if given choice. This is therefore quite an unusual experiment in which I am both living and training in the heat (gym is not air-conditioned), so exposure to hot humid air is pretty much full time and above and beyond the recommended 100 minutes of (daily) exposure time.
Through science, we have some idea of the physiology and the process of heat acclimatisation, but what does the body look like going through the process?
Thank goodness this blog is not going to be dedicated to lots of gym selfies and I'm keeping any photographic evidence well away from my brothers, as there would most likely be raucous laughter at the fact I looked like a puffer fish for the first 4 days of training here! What with my eyelash allopecia, I'm really going for it and taking full advantage of no Skype and having nobody I know around me for extended time!
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| Week 1 progress photo |
Some observations
1. Afternoon gym sessions
Training volume and intensity is unaltered with no change to perceived exertion. I still like to train with circuit style training, supersets, drop sets etc with minimal rest and don't find I need to take extra recovery.
2. Morning 6 am runs (Yes I do run, I will write about this)
It is usually dark on starting and much cooler, so fairly pleasant for training. In fact these runs have increased in speed for the same perceived effort, but I also find I can train at a much higher intensity than my usual London attempt. There maybe physiological reasons, but I am also without doubt more motivated training here.
This last point about running speed is a most welcome addition, as usually -5C (jogs) in London are more tortoise like. Out here I can sense a pep in my step and although I may not be "hare" like, it does at least look and feel like running. Interestingly this ties in nicely with a swedish intervention study that looked at the effect of 12 post training 30 min sauna sessions over 3 weeks in distance runners. This correlated with a 7% in blood volume and a increase + 2mins to time to exhaustion in a 5km time trial. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=sauna+post+training%3B+Scoon+et+al
3. Decrease in appetite, must be the heat and chilli!
4. I found an ab! As in 1 extra portion of rectus abdominis - found only in a certain light, at certain times of the day, in certain positions!...but good news for leanness.
5. Fluid retention and weight gain, therefore....
6. Huge increase to sweat volume and rate - I'm losing anywhere between 2-4L of very "unsalty" sweat per 90 min session, (Sorry to be graphic) but I am usually a "salty" sweater so this is quite interesting.
....and the reasons
The last couple of points are interesting because doing an aesthetic sport, this kind of thing matters. Hot weather acclimatization the week before a contest is probably not an excellent idea where the objective is to reduce total body water to really show off muscle definition.
This increase in water retention can be from both an increase in blood plasma volume and total body water. Anywhere between 0-3L (1kg per L) for an average build is not uncommon, but this doesn't factor in bodybuilding physiques, so weight gain can be much more. It is also a necessary adaptation to allow the body to dissipate heat more effectively and this is coupled with a more efficient sweat response - consisting of: i) earlier onset of sweating ii) total volume of sweat increases iii) ability to sustain sweating increases. I can vouch for all of these and my usual gym towel has upgraded to a full on beach towel.
One of the hormones instrumental in this is aldosterone, which allows the body to conserve sodium, which in turn promotes fluid retention. Add in some VERY salty Thai food and the result is one very puffy looking human. I usually don't add salt to my food back in the UK, so there are quite a lot of changes going on to my diet as well as the heat. I have since trialled a plain boiled egg and rice diet for a couple of days and my pufferfish look has since subsided a little so adaptations are calming down a bit and perhaps I may have been a bit overzealous with the fish sauce.
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