A 200m drift from target altitude across a six-week block is the difference between a productive Hbmass response and a partial one. The dose-response curve for altitude training is approximately linear at moderate altitudes, and the protocol math depends on the system delivering the prescribed altitude reliably across the full duration of...

Erythropoiesis cannot occur without iron. Every haemoglobin molecule contains four iron atoms, and every new red blood cell produced during an altitude block consumes iron from the body's stores. An athlete with depleted iron going into a properly dosed block produces no Hbmass response, regardless of how many hours are accumulated, what...

Rico Rogers, Founder and Director of Box Altitude, raced professionally on the road in Europe for a decade. The French Alps were a working environment. Sierra Nevada was a pre-season fixture. Altitude was not a marketing concept on the World Tour calendar. It was infrastructure, alongside the turbo trainer and the team...

Triathlon is the second-largest sport vertical for serious altitude training after cycling, and the structural reasons are direct. The race spans 4 to 17 hours of sustained sub-threshold aerobic effort. The bike leg dominates the time distribution. Three disciplines stack on top of one another in a training week. The protocol math...

The question is fair, and the honest answer is conditional. Altitude training works under specific protocol conditions. It does not work universally, and a meaningful percentage of athletes who run a block see only a marginal Hbmass response. The literature has been arguing about this for nearly thirty years, and a serious...

Eight to ten hours nightly, sustained for four to six weeks, accumulated to roughly 300 hours of total exposure at 2,500m (8,202ft). That is the dose. Below it, the haematological response is partial. Above it, the response plateaus. The rest of this article shows where each of those numbers comes from. The...

Athletes who run altitude blocks face two practical questions about persistence. When does the peak performance window land after redescent? How long do the gains last before declining back to baseline? Both questions determine how a block integrates with the racing calendar, and both have specific answers in the literature that competitors...