According to the Washington Post 16-time Olympic medalist Michael Phelps said Wednesday he had been sleeping “at 8,000 feet every night†for almost a year, after noticing he bounced back from workouts better when he trained at altitude, and therefore trying a device that simulates that.
“We’ve been able to realize after going to Colorado Springs so many times that it is something that helps me recover,†Phelps said. “That’s something that is so important to me now being older. I don’t recover as fast as I used to.â€
They are for some reason calling it a hyperbaric chamber, which as far as I know would be a chamber with higher air pressure than what’s normal at sea level, and therefore the exact opposite of altitude. But there you go.
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The only way I was able to come up with in order to decrease oxigen partial pressure by increasing overall air pressure is increasing the partial pressure of other gas component of the air (say N2) while keeping the O2 partial pressure, thus making the air Phelps breathes with a lower O2 concentration. This way, even though the overall pressure would be higher than what it would be at 8000 feet of altitude (hyperbaric) the O2 concentration would be similar to the one experienced at that altitude (hypoxic).
Wow, thanks for commenting ! :-)