The Altitude Guide - for coaches and ambitious athletes (EN)

** From the oxygen cascade to the training decision: what altitude really does, which method is worth what, and how to plan a camp that pays off.**

Altitude training is full of promises and almost as many misconceptions. More red blood cells, a higher VO2max, a wonder cure for endurance — the reality is more nuanced, and it is precisely that nuance which decides whether a camp works.

This guide follows the oxygen from the outside air all the way into the mitochondria, shows how the body adapts over days and over weeks, and translates that into concrete choices: which altitude, how long, which method, and where it usually goes wrong. The guide stays honest about the limits of the evidence — where the science is firm, it is stated with a source; where it is divided, that is stated too.

**What you'll find inside**

- What altitude does to oxygen: the oxygen cascade as a single picture, and why "the same air, less pressure" explains everything.

- How the body adapts: the fast adjustment of the first days set against the slow gain over weeks, and why you must not confuse the two.

- The methods and what they are worth: "Live High-Train Low" and the alternatives, soberly weighed on what they actually deliver.

- The right dose: which altitude and how many days, and the trade-offs behind them.

- Planning the altitude camp: from preparation to return.

- Iron, nutrition and health: why a camp without sufficient ferritin throws away time and money, and what the liver has to do with it through hepcidin.

- Monitoring and individualising: including the reading pitfalls, such as a rising haemoglobin concentration that is nothing more than a shrunken plasma volume.

- Myths and the limits of the evidence.

With a glossary in which every technical term is briefly explained.

**For whom**

Coaches and ambitious athletes who are considering or guiding an altitude camp, and who want to make the investment pay off rather than gamble on it.

**Extent**

80 pages

15 figures

24 scientific sources (with DOI where available)

Glossary