Pre-Season training
Pre-Season Training
The pre-season training programs developed at Mt Baw Baw focus on a number of key areas including cross training, running, injury prevention, team development, leadership, consistency of performance and motivation in order to provide an effective and concentrated training experience. Our physical coaches can tailor the program to suit your particular playing group and experienced facilitators are available to engage your group and improve player mindsets. Cross-country trails for running and mountain biking, a downhill mountain bike course, challenging alpine terrain, mountain streams, and the altitude all combine with a variety of accommodation and catering options, conference rooms and open spaces to provide an enviable training location.
Altitude Training
Altitude training is widely utilised as a serious training aid by many athletes from Olympic runners to Premier League football clubs. A number of persistence physiological changes are noticeable after a period of altitude (1300m – 2000m) training and contribute to improvement in endurance capacity (especially trained respiratory muscle, increased alveolar PO2, increase blood volume, reduced red cell age, decrease lactate and ammonia concentration, increase buffer capacity).
At 1560m (the height of Mt Baw Baw) the standard barometric pressure is 85kPa (636mmHg) which means that there is 18% less oxygen than at sea level. Athletes seeking a competitive advantage improve their power and aerobic potential by improving the delivery of oxygen to the muscles by exposing the body to the reduced oxygen partial pressure which upon return to sea level provides a boost in performance.
The body naturally produces a hormone called erythropoetin (EPO) which stimulates the production of red blood cells which carry oxygen to the muscles. Up to a point, the more blood cells you have, the more oxygen you can deliver to your muscles. The resultant natural increase in production of EPO at altitude provides improved muscle power and endurance. Studies have shown that after a period of training at altitude a 5% – 6% improvement in personal best times running over a 10km course are common.
