Over the past few years the trend of people wearing predator style masks in the gym has seemingly taken off. You can walk into any gym in the country and you’re bound to see someone with a training mask on at some point.
This seemed to really take off after various pro athletes from all sports would post pictures on social media showing them working out while wearing a training mask, so naturally the trend was emulated.
Part of me doesn’t hate this, because it makes it easier to see who in the gym is a massive douche that should be avoided at all costs. And while I like it when people signal that sort of thing, I also like spreading good information.
What’s the theory behind wearing a training mask?
Most people have a level of familiarity with altitude training. Essentially, if you train at higher altitudes your body has less oxygen. So when you get back to lower altitude levels you’ve adapted to less oxygen, and now your performance makes a leap forward due to the increased aerobic capacity.
The idea behind a training mask is by making altitude training available everywhere, and by extension making people all over better athletes. Except oxygen deprivation training doesn’t work that way.
Why training masks is basically just self-imposed suffocation.
Placing some sort of obstruction over your face and trying to breathe doesn’t limit the supply of oxygen you’re getting. No matter how cool that obstruction may look, it isn’t parsing out oxygen molecules and preventing them from reaching your lungs.
Instead, you’re just forced to breathe harder. And while that may feel like you’re being productive and a super serious fitness douche, in reality you’re just forcing yourself to breathe harder than you normally should, without a single oxygen deprivation benefit to be had.
If you want to suffocate yourself while training I’m not going to hate you for it. We all have our weird kinks. But just be aware that it’s not depriving you of oxygen.
As if it couldn’t get any worse.
So you’ve openly admitted that suffocation is your thing? That’s cool. Do you, bro. But here’s what you also need to be aware of when it comes to training masks: that labored breathing pattern while exercising helps reinforce poor breathing techniques, which can harm your long-term aerobic potential.
Training masks and the like encourage deep mouth breathing and chest heaving. That isn’t what we want when it comes to breathing, because when we’re stressed like you are when working out, it limits the amount of oxygen you can actually send to your lungs and working muscles.
So while you’re thinking that you’ve been kicking ass and becoming super hardcore with your fancy mask, you’ve actually made yourself worse at breathing, specifically under stress, when you need it the most.
What should you do instead?
Don’t worry about buying any sort of training mask. Instead, spend time doing cardio that is actually useful. This means that from time to time you should be doing some steady state cardio, and that you should also be doing dedicated HIIT style training.