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With overtraining you have to undertrain to reverse the damage you've done. Doing so in intermittent hypoxia, returns important markers of OT to normal in less than 4 weeks in T&F athletes.

As Davide Susta and colleagues point out in the introduction to their pilot study on the effects of repeated hypoxia–hyperoxia exposure and light exercise enhances performance in athletes with overtraining syndrome, "[o]vertraining syndrome (OTS) is a major concern among endurance athletes and is a leading cause in preventing them to perform for long periods" (Susta. 2015).

As a waredownloadsoft reader you will know that as much and be aware of the benefits of training in hypoxia in non-overtrained athletes, where multiple studies have shown its efficacy to improve performance and body composition - often without exercising or at least only regular workouts.
The aim of the pilot study at hand was now to bring the two together, i.e. overtraining and intermittent hypoxia–hyperoxia training in combination with light exercise as an intervention to facilitate athletes with OTS to restore their usual performance level. For the experiment, the scientists recruited thirty-four track and field athletes:

"15 athletes with OTS volunteered to participate and undertook a conditioning programme consisting of repeated exposures to hypoxia (O2 at 10%) and hyperoxia (O2 at 30%) (6–8 cycles, total time 45 min–1 h), three times a week, delivered 1 5–2 h after a low-intensity exercise session (2 bouts of 30 min, running at 50% of VO2max with 10 min rest between bouts) over 4 weeks" (Susta. 2015). 

Nineteen healthy track and field athletes volunteered to participate as a control group and followed their usual training schedule. Measurements before and after the intervention included exercise capacity, analysis of heart rate variability and hematological parameters.

Figure 1: Pre vs. post results of the PWC170 (Boreham. 1990) performance test in overtrained and normal athletes (Susta. 2015) indicate that even with hypoxic training the time it takes to recover is a throwback for athletes.

In athletes with OTS, a 4-week light exercise combined with intermittent hypoxia–hyperoxia training
improved exercise performance (191. 9 +/- 26. 9 W versus 170 .8 +/- 44 .8 W in exercise capacity test in which the subjects physical work capacity was tested at a heart rate of 170 beats per minute | PWC170 | P = 0 01).

Figure 2: The most significant marker that indicates the normalization of the training status in the overtrained group is the LH/HF Index, the only variable that is plotted against the secondary axis (Susta. 2015).

In line with these improvement, the scientists' heart rate variability analysis (see Figure 2) revealed an improved sympatho-parasympathetic index (low frequency/high frequency ratio, wit 8 .01 +/- 7 .51 before and 1 .45 +/- 1 .71 after | indicative of a significant improvement in one of the few direct measures of overtraining we have | P = 0 007). All hematological parameters were unchanged.
References:

• Boreham, C. A., V. J. Paliczka, and A. K. Nichols. "A comparison of the PWC170 and 20-MST tests of aerobic fitness in adolescent schoolchildren." The Journal of sports medicine and physical fitness 30.1 (1990): 19-23.
• Susta, Davide, Elena Dudnik, and Oleg S. Glazachev. "A programme based on repeated hypoxia–hyperoxia exposure and light exercise enhances performance in athletes with overtraining syndrome: a pilot study." Clinical Physiology and Functional Imaging (2015).

If you haven't seen an altitude chamber like this (hypoxico.com) in your gym, you will have a hard time copying the training protocol of the study at hand.

You will probably remember my article about "Training and Living in Hypoxia" (read it) from January 2014. Some of you may even remember the article I posted one year before about a study that found that swimmers lost a whopping 11% of body fat while training in a high altitude camp (read this article, as well).

You are thus probably aware of the purported link between a lack of oxygen in the air you breath and the amount of energy your cells consume. As a regular at the waredownloadsoft you will also be aware that athletes have used the adaptive response to training in hyopxia (which is like high intensity training for your mitochondria) is highly useful for (endurance) athletes.
During their stays in altitude training camps, researchers observed significant reductions of body mass and fat mass and an increase in insulin sensitivity obesity researchers can hardly ignore. It is thus only logical that scientists from the Osaka Institute of Health conducted a study to examine the effects of exercise training under mild hypoxic conditions on body composition and circulating adiponectin levels in postmenopausal women, which is not only one of the subject groups that is at highest risk of unhealthy weight gain, but also as different from the young, lean, male athlete in the average "altitude training camp"-study.

To assess whether postmenopausal women would benefit to a similar extend from training under (albeit mild) oxygen-deprivation, fourteen postmenopausal women (56 +/- 1 years) were assigned to train either under normoxic (N group) or hypoxic (H group) conditions.
Both groups performed the same 30-minute aquatic exercise program at only 50% of their individual peak oxygen uptake level four times per week for 8 weeks.

"The subjects were required to perform exercise maintaining approximately the target HR, which was predetermined from a cycling exercise (pretest), at an intensity of 50%VO _ 2peak. To achieve the target HR, instructors also gave movement instructions to individual participants. Water level was set at around the xiphisternal level (water temperature 27–29°C). The N group performed exercise training under normobaric normoxic conditions (749 3–750 0 mmHg). On the other hand, the H group performed exercise training under hypobaric hypoxic conditions corresponding to 2000 m above sea level (600 1–603 8 mmHg) [... Otherwise] Participants in both groups were instructed to main tain their normal diet and to refrain from any other specific exercise training throughout the study period" (Nishiwaki. 2015).

In that, it is important to note that the subjects in the H group were exposed to the low oxygen condition which mimicked training at 2000 m above sea level for more than just the 30 minutes of (under normoxic conditions) actually pretty light exercise.

Figure 1: The sign. reductions in body fat and visceral fat were highly (inversely) correlated to the changes in adiponectin the scientists observed. The inter-group differences are impressive (Nishiwaki. 2015),

Rather than that, each participant was exposed to these conditions for 2 h per session. This was done, because a previous study has demonstrated that hypoxic stimulus influences the changes in circulating metabolites and hormones in terms of substrate metabolism during exercise and the recovery over the total 2 h (Katayama. 2010) and may thus be relevant if you want to copy the procedure for your clients.
References:

• Katayama, Keisho, et al. "Substrate utilization during exercise and recovery at moderate altitude." Metabolism 59.7 (2010): 959-966.
• Nishiwaki, et al. "The effects of exercise training under mild hypoxic conditions on body composition and circulating adiponectin in postmenopausal women." Clin Physiol Funct Imaging (2015): Accepted article.

The less you rest, the more you burn.

If you're looking for the latest exercise science news, look no further! In today's installment of the short news you will learn about the effects of different rest intervals on the acute metabolic effects of "battling the rope", the effects of 5-week resistance training in hypoxia on the hormonal response to exercise and muscle strength and exercise metabolism.

Sounds great? Well, in that case let's get to the study designs and results without further ado.

• The Effects of Rest Interval Length on Acute Battling Rope Exercise Metabolism (Ratamess. 2015) - From a 2014 waredownloadsoft article you already know that battling the rope can get you ripped and jacked. A detailed analysis of the metabolic response to the "battle with the rope" was yet never conducted. With their latest study Nicholas A. Ratamess et al. are filling the gap.
  
  The purpose of the present study was to quantify and compare the acute metabolic responses to battling rope exercise utilizing two different rest intervals. Twelve men and ten women (age =20.8 ± 1.3 yrs) performed a control protocol and two battling rope exercise protocols on separate days (48 to 72 hours) in random order while connected to a metabolic system.
  

  Figure 1: Aerobic, anaerobic and post-exercise energy expenditure (kj/min) in 22 healthy, regularly exercising college-aged men (N = 12) and women (N = 10) using 1- and 2-minute rest intervals (Ratamess. 2015).

  The battling rope protocol consisted of 8 sets of 30-sec intervals (15 sec of single-arm waves and 15 sec of double arm waves) utilizing either a 1-min (1RI) or 2-min (2RI) rest interval length. A metronome was used to standardize repetition number/frequency for each exercise, i.e. 15 waves for each arm for single-arm waves and 15 repetitions of double-arm waves. Mean oxygen consumption (VO2) values for the entire protocol were significantly higher during the 1RI than 2RI protocol and values in men were 11.1% (1RI) and 13.5% (2RI) higher than women, respectively, and equated to 52.8 ± 5.5% (men) and 50.0 ± 11.2% (women) of VO2 max during 1RI and 40.5 ± 4.5% (men) and 37.7 ± 11.0% (women) of VO2 max during 2RI.
  
  

  Battle yourself lean | more

  Energy expenditure values were significantly higher during the 1RI than the 2RI protocol in men (11.93 ± 1.4 versus 8.78 ± 1.4 kcals/min) and women (7.69 ± 1.3 versus 5.04 ± 1.7 kcals/min) with values in men statistically higher than women. Blood lactate, mean protocol minute ventilation, and heart rate were significantly higher during the 1RI protocol than the 2RI protocol and these data were significantly higher in men compared to women.
  
  If you take a look at the energy expenditure bars in Figure 1 it is yet obvious that the extra-effort is well worth it for anyone trying to shed body fat - plus: based on the significant increase in heart rate you can expect to see more pronounced increases in fitness with the more intense 1-minute-rest protocol.
• Enhancing Short-Term Recovery After High Intensity Anaerobic Exercise (Al-Nawaiseh. 2015) - You probably know a few things that are supposed to help you recover, right? Vitamin C, vitamin E, NSAIDs, protein, cold water immersion, those are "only" five of the things athletes do because they believe that they'd give them the recovery edge.
  
  

  Anti-Oxidants & Resistance Training: In the Elderly We See Minimal Benefits. In the Young and Fit Potential Detriments ➯ Could ROS Management, Not Eradication Be the Key? Find out!

  Whether they work or not, however, is questionable - if you use each of them in isolation and, even more so, if you use them all at once... sounds like an overkill? Well that's exactly what AL-Nawaiseh et al. did in their latest study, they examined the effects of antioxidant vitamins (C+E), ibuprofen, cold water submersion, and whey protein administered simultaneously on short-term recovery from an AM + PM HIT protocol consisting of two sessions of two Wingate tests (3*30s Wingate tests) with 3 min of active recovery in between (that's two sessions in the AM and two sessions in the PM, separated by only 30 minutes).
  
  The participants were randomly assigned in counterbalanced order to start the first week as a treatment or as a control (non-treatment): 

  "In the treatment trial, participants were provided with two oral doses of 1000 mg of vitamin C (ascorbic acid with citrus bioflavonoids, General Nutrition Corp, PA, USA) and 400 IU of Vitamin E soft gel capsules (d-alpha tocopherol, General Nutrition Corp, PA, USA). The first dose was taken with dinner the night before the exercise protocol, and the second dose was taken on the morning of the exercise test. The morning doses were consumed at least 1 hour before the blood sample was taken. Ibuprofen doses (400 mg; two ADVIL liquid gels, 200 mg capsules, Wyeth Consumer Healthcare, Madison, NJ, USA) were given to participants 30 min before each exercise session. The protein supplement, 23 g of whey protein (10.6 g EAA, 7.3 g of conditionally essential amino acids CEAA, and 5.6 g of NEAA ON® Sunrise, FL, USA), was mixed with 200 ml of skimmed milk to form a protein shake. The protein shake was given to participants within 3 min of finishing each exercise session in the treatment trial. Three to five minutes after the end of each exercise session, participants submerged their lower body in cold (10-12.5 °C) water for 10 min" (Al-Nawaiseh. 2015).

  Thusly fortified, the subjects didn't just feel less fatigued before the PM trials, they also performed at significantly higher mean intensities and reduced pain.
  

  Figure 2: Mean power and perceived pain rating during the two AM and PM Wingate protocols with and without the use of the five short-term recovery boosters (Al-Nawaiseh. 2015).

  If peak performance is all that counts (e.g. during a meet or race), the recovery quintet consisting of vitamin C+E, ibuprofen, whey and cold water immersion may thus in fact give you a potentially decisive advantage. In view of the possibility that the vitamin + NSAID combination may also blunt the hormetic and thus the adaptive response to exercise it is questionable, whether using the protocol on a regular basis would be a smart thing.
• The effects of 5-week resistance training in hypoxia on hormones and muscle strength (Yan. 2015) - You will remember from previous articles about hypoxia and training in low oxygen environments that you can use the lack of O2 to your endurance advantage. Originally, high altitude / low oxygen training were recommend mostly to endurance athletes. More recently, however, the evidence that training in hypoxia can benefit strength athletes, as well, is accumulating. Evidence like the results of a recent study from China in which the scientists tested the effects of different levels of systemic hypoxia on hormonal responses, strength and body composition changes during a 5-week resistance training.
  
  Twenty-five male subjects were randomly assigned into 3 experimental groups that performed 10 sessions (2 sessions/week) of barbell back squat (10 reps, 5 sets, 70% 1RM) under normoxia (NR, FiO2=21%) and hypoxia (HL, FiO2=16%; HH, FiO2=12.6%). Serum growth hormone (GH), testosterone (T) and cortisol (C) concentrations were measured before (Pre) and at 0 (T-0), 15 (T-15), 30 (T-30) min after exercise in the first and last training sessions. 1RM, isometric knee extension (KE), isometric leg press (LP) and body composition were evaluated before and after the protocol.
  

  Figure 3: Changes in body composition and strength - that's what really counts (Yan. 2015).

  In the first session, GH of really low (12.6% | HH) oxygen group (p<0.01) and low (16% | HL) oxygen group (p<0.01) was higher than NR at T-0. In the last session, however, only GH of HH was higher than NR at T-0 (p<0.05); meanwhile, T/C ratio of HH was higher than NR at Pre (p<0.01), T-0 (p<0.01) and T-15 (p<0.05).
  
  Following the training protocol, HH showed greater (p<0.05) improvement of isometric LP strength compared with NR; lean body mass (LBM) was increased in hypoxia groups only. Moderate intensity resistance training performed in severe hypoxia (FiO2=12.6%) induced greater GH responses and isometric strength gains in leg press than that in normoxia. What is more important than the GH and testosterone / cortisol increases are the beneficial effects on lean mass, strength and body fat which occurred in both the low and the very low oxygen condition - the additional hormonal bonus in the HH (12.6% O2) trial is nice, but over the relatively short study period it did not pay off.

References:

• Al-Nawaiseh, Ali M., Robert C. Pritchett, and Philip A. Bishop. "Enhancing Short-Term Recovery After High Intensity Anaerobic Exercise." The Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research (2015).
• Ratamess, Nicholas A., et al. "The Effects of Rest Interval Length on Acute Battling Rope Exercise Metabolism." Journal of strength and conditioning research/National Strength & Conditioning Association (2015).
• Yan, Bing, et al. "The effects of 5-week resistance training in hypoxia on hormones and muscle strength." The Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research (2015).