Alongside haptic knowledge, attunement and historical density are other significant attributes taught, learnt, consciously embodied and unconsciously enacted within sports performance through physical training. Attunement and historical density are keys to understanding the ways that athletes experience, perceive and know their bodies and the world around them. Drawing on Ingold’s (2000) notion of attunement, I explore below one significant example of athletes’ physical training of fitness, physiology and elite athlete embodiment: that of altitude training as carried out at the AIS.
The 1968 Mexico Olympic Games was the first – and, to this date, only — Games held at high altitude. During the Games athletes’ performances were significantly affected by the altitude being much greater than that at which the athletes had
trained (Australian Olympic Committee 2015). For athletes in long-distance events the high altitude resulted in slow times, poor performances and severe fatigue. For other athletes (from many different nations, and across a wide range of sprinting and power events), the impact of high altitude positively influenced performances, resulting in many existing world records being obliterated.96
These performance outcomes were understood to be the consequence of Mexico’s high altitude (two-thousand-two-hundred-and forty meters above sea level). Since the 1968 Games, there has been significant sports science and sports medical research into the science and physiology of altitude on athletic sporting performances. Likewise, since that time many athletes have attended high altitude training camps in preparation for competitions in both high and low altitude locations in an attempt to boost sporting performance.
So what is going on? High altitude affects athletes’ sporting performance because of the lower density of the air (and therefore oxygen)97. As a result, the amount of
oxygen inhaled with each breath is reduced in contrast to the amounts inhaled at locations at lower altitude. Athletes’ bodies that are not physically acclimatised to high altitudes must work physiologically harder to make use of the lesser quantities of oxygen.
96 American long jumper Beamon’s historic world record leap of 8.90 metres won the gold medal at the
Mexico Olympic Games and was fifty-five centimetres further than the previous world record (8.35 metres). This result remained a world record until 1991 (more than twenty years) (Australian Olympic Committee 2015).
97 “Any given volume of air is comprised of 79 percent nitrogen, 20.9 percent oxygen and 0.1 percent other
gases such as argon and krypton. But as you get higher and higher above sea level, the pressure of the atmosphere decreases. This is due to the effects of gravity (which keeps air close to the ground). So as you reach higher altitudes, the air expands. While the composition of the air stays the same, the expansion means that the air is ‘thinner’ – so in essence, at higher altitudes you inhale less oxygen and nitrogen molecules than you would at sea level” (Australia’s Chief Scientist 2012).
For instance: to counteract the lack of oxygen,
“The body increases its heart rate and respiratory rate to increase the amount of oxygen taken in and circulated around the body. So, for example, while an athlete might normally run with a heart rate of one-hundred-and-fifty beats per minute, at high altitude it might increase to one- hundred-and-sixty-five” (Australia’s Chief Scientist 2012).
Over time the body compensates for the low oxygen conditions by increasing the red blood cell count; thus, with constant exposure to high altitude (through altitude training), the body acclimatises. This physiological response is advantageous.98
One swimmer explained to me what training at high altitude feels like: Swimming at [high] altitude is tough. Especially when you do deep water swimming in those conditions, it’s really tough. You’re tired because you don’t get as good a quality sleep and you don’t feel as fresh [because of the reduced oxygen and the impact of this on muscle recovery and repair after training]. But then [after a few days or weeks] you just get used to it. Then you come home [to low altitude] and train, you feel amazing. You just glide through the water and it’s so easy! Training in [high] altitude feels like you’re weight lifting with heavy weights and then you come home and do the same routine and it’s like the weights are tiny and so light and move so easily that you’re surprised by it, by the lack of resistance {demonstrates movement and smiles}.
Although some athletes travel internationally to locations of high altitude, the AIS has constructed an Altitude House to simulate such an environment. This house, comprised of twelve beds, bathroom, kitchen and a lounge, mimics what it would
98 “More than two-hundred genes are turned on in response to altitude, including the one which induces
the creation of more red blood cells thereby increasing the amount of haemoglobin in the blood. Haemoglobin is the protein that binds oxygen molecules to red blood cells. The more haemoglobin in the blood, the more efficiently oxygen is carried around the body. This means that even though less oxygen is taken into the lungs, it is more easily transported to the muscles. In addition, as you breathe faster the amount of carbon dioxide in the blood is reduced, which leads to the blood becoming less acidic. To counter this, the kidneys release blood bicarbonate to try to balance the PH level. For athletes, this is a big advantage since blood bicarbonate is the primary source of protection for muscles against lactic acid – the waste that builds up during exercise and leaves muscles feeling stiff and sore” (Australia’s Chief Scientist 2012).
be like to live at high altitude (Australian Sports Comission 2009a). The Altitude House simulates the impact of low pressure atmosphere of two-thousand-and- fifty metres by changing the composition of the air within the House to approximately eighty-five percent nitrogen and fifteen percent oxygen. The air is not thinner, but the presence of less oxygen is physiologically equivalent to being at altitude (Australia’s Chief Scientist 2012).
When athletes conduct altitude training at the AIS they ‘live at the Altitude House’ on campus, typically for three to four weeks at a time. The expectation is that athletes spend minimal time outside of the house, preferably only leaving to train and eat meals (at the AIS Dining Hall). Consequently, when some of the athletes I interviewed were conducting altitude training I interviewed them in the Altitude House.99
Professor Gore, Head of Physiology at the AIS, explains that:
By living in the house for twelve hours or so a day, the athletes’ red blood cell counts increase and their haemoglobin increases. As well, their muscle buffering capacity, ability to handle lactic acid and their efficiency also improves. They [athletes] can then use these factors to their advantage in training and competitions. Overall, we’re talking about a one to two percent increase in performance, which mightn’t sound like much, but can be the difference between a medal and failing to qualify (Australia’s Chief Scientist 2012 emphasis added).
Altitude training is a demonstration of attunement: training the body to physiologically respond to its surrounding environment and embody advantageous qualities to assist movement in that environment. Physical training
99 These interviews were always noticeably shorter than the usual interviews I conducted with athletes. I
would leave them dehydrated, with a pounding headache and feeling exhausted, sometimes after only thirty minutes! This significant effect on my own body after such a short time demonstrated some of the difficulties of high altitude training as well as the seriousness of the side effects and the dramatic physiological changes athletes must undergo through high altitude training as a form of physical training and attunement. For instance, many athletes said they found it hard to sleep (waking up several times during the middle of the night) and felt lethargic during the day when they were staying in the Altitude House.
of altitude acclimatisation is also a “(re)socialization of the physiology” (Wacquant 2004, 59).
However, the effects of altitude training, and the embodied attunement that it involves, only last two to four weeks after returning to a low altitude environment such as Canberra (which is at an altitude of six-hundred meters above sea level) (Australia’s Chief Scientist 2012). Therefore the de-adaptation is relatively rapid and attunement techniques and physical training have to be reinstated to repeat the results. Constant altitude training would be necessary if one wanted to maintain these results indefinitely. Like Kelly’s technical breathing techniques, high altitude attunement is not eternal.
Ultimately, elite athletes’ movements and sporting techniques are trained and embodied though complex physical training from multiple service providers with the aim of reconstituting their habitus.
Wacquant aptly concludes that:
The function of pedagogical work [through physical training] is to replace the savage body… with a body ‘habituated’ that is temporally structured…[and] kinetically remodelled according to the specific demands of the field (Bourdieu 1972, 196 cited in Wacquant 2004, 60).
Almost every physical movement and technique that athletes perform is a product of discipline and training imposed by service providers and teammates throughout their sporting careers. The result is a transformation of their embodiment so that it becomes a culturally specific elite athlete habitus.
Athletes consciously and unconsciously absorb some physiological techniques and styles of movement, while discarding others. These techniques and styles communicate to outsiders the socio-cultural and historical environment in which they were learnt. Thus athletes’ embodiment of physical training is complex,
being at the same time both individual and flexible, and a reflection of docility and adherence to cultural norms.
Through repetition of culturally-specific practices, athletes’ bodily techniques and movements become automatic. However they are also carved by their unique physiology. Although many athletes are born with propensities towards kinaesthetic learning, and with genetic and biological predispositions towards athletic behaviour, it is only through physical training that athletes come to embody the specific bodily techniques, sporting movements and elite athlete practices that together constitute the appropriate elite athlete habitus. As one coach summarised “champions are not champions just because they do the spectacular, they are champions because they do the basics spectacularly — better than anyone else. For champions the basics are automatic”. Thus, as I have shown, training is the embodiment of ‘the basics’ and the reconstitution of specialised techniques as second nature.