 I'll be finding it in a minute when I stick a needle in daddy. That's pretty cool, isn't it? Oh, to pump your hands. Well, your veins are fine. Little sting. So I've just had to conference in Rico because I've got no idea what I'm doing. Thanks mate. Excuse the background today. My subscribers will know I've just had a massive interstate move to hot and very humid Queensland. I'm absolutely rooted all the time at the moment, thanks to the humidity. And we've got a few boxes that haven't arrived yet, which have my lapel mic. So I'm having to be super close to the camera today with the microphone right here. But I don't think it's going to matter too much because what I've got to share with you today is pretty compelling. Now, as you saw at the start of the video, I was setting up an attitude tent provided by box attitude. They provide an array of different attitude products and solutions. And I'll link to their business in the below description area. I was also got a blood test before sleeping at attitude and a blood test afterwards. And I want to be up front with you. The results in terms of my increase in hematocritin hemoglobin were compelling. And I'm going to share those results with you in today's video. But what I wanted to do in this piece was do a comparison. I want to compare sleeping at attitude with blood doping. And the reason why I want to do this is I think it will put sleeping at attitude into perspective because really the outcome that you achieve from blood doping and the outcome you achieve from sleeping at attitude are the same. You want increased performance and improved performance. And you do that through an increase in hematocritin hemoglobin. And so we're seeing off the same hem sheet here because I wasn't overly clear on the differences between hematocritin hemoglobin. Is hematocritin is the volume of red blood cells within your blood. So you know people might be around 40 to 45 that's in men and 0.45 or 0.40 is essentially 40 to 45 percent of your blood volume is red blood cells. And within red blood cells is a protein called hemoglobin which is what carries oxygen to the working muscle. So ultimately what we want to be doing the reason why the pros use dpo back in the day and blood doping is because they wanted to increase the volume of red blood cells which has hemoglobin in it which helps carry oxygen to the working muscle and thus improving performance. So what I want to do here is talk about the pros and cons of both sleeping at attitude and blood doping and how you go about doing both. And let's start with blood doping. So there are three ways you can blood dope. You can inject dpo. You could do blood transfusions which is taking blood out of your body typically freezing it and putting it back in. Then you can inject synthetic blood carriers. So there are the three ways. Now the pros of doing blood doping is that it's an instant hit. It's an instant impact, instant increase in your hematocrit and hemoglobin when I say instant like 24 to 48 hours maybe even faster. Now the actual increase that you get in performance I did a fair bit of research online about this and there's no real compelling definitive study because every human being is different but overall I'm seeing sort of like a 5 to 10 percent increase in your sort of hemoglobin and your performance. Now the cons of doing blood doping is it's illegal so you're cheating which is pretty significant. Number two is it can cause clotting in the blood and in the lungs and lead to a stroke and as a result you can actually die from it. So the cons are pretty significant. Now conversely we talk about sleeping at altitude. The pros of sleeping at altitude are it's 100 percent legal and you get an increase in performance. Now my blood test results suggest that I got a 6.2 percent increase in my hemoglobin the ability for my body to deliver oxygen to the working muscles. Now I did a blood test before and after and some could argue with the results because it was one blood test before but luckily for me I actually had blood tests done 12 months prior to those initial upfront blood tests before sleeping at altitude and you'll see that my hemoglobin levels were basically the same so it's very hard to argue with the fact that I have achieved a 6.2 percent increase in my hemoglobin from sleeping at altitude. So those results are pretty compelling. The cons of sleeping in an altitude tent specifically is number one it's not an instant hit so you don't sleep at altitude for one night and get a dramatic increase. I had to do it over a four-week period in order to achieve a 6.2 percent increase in my hemoglobin. Number two it's not overly romantic so you saw me setting up a tent there in this is the bed my wife and I sleep in so she sent me upstairs about a week later into a single bed which actually turned out to be a blessing in disguise which I'll explain later in this video. Number three is that it's not overly comfortable sleeping in an altitude tent and once again I'll explain that later in the video and number four is that it's I don't think people are taking it seriously people like to joke about it which doesn't necessarily bother me but I know it does bother some and that is people seem to laugh about someone sleeping in a tent despite the fact the results are pretty compelling but I think that is about to change. So there are my comparisons there's some people out there probably asking so how did you feel on the bike what were your power numbers like where you're able to sprint harder and for longer etc and I'm going to create a separate video in addition to this one about physiologically how I felt after sleeping in altitude and the reason why I'm not going to do it in this video is the effects of sleeping in a tent last anywhere between 60 to 90 days and I'm not at the end of that period yet in addition I only really raced a hand less than a handful of times after coming out of the tent plus I was packing up the house and super stressed and I don't really feel I've seen and reaped the full benefits of the process that I've just been through so I want to wait until the end of that in order to be able to share with you how I felt physically and my performance on the bike. So what I wanted to do to conclude this video is I've learned a lot over the course of sleeping in an altitude tent and if I had my time again there are five things that I would do a lot differently to improve the process and I want to share them with you right now now you can either buy a tent outright or like I did you can rent them but ultimately the Mac Daddy solution the solution that I would be going for if I was to do it this again and I do want to do this again because I think if you can set up your whole bedroom at attitude which you can it changes the landscape you've got the comfort of sleeping in your own bed without being surrounded by a tent or a canopy and you get the benefits of sleeping at attitude you get the increase in hemoglobin. So to me that seems like a no-brainer and something that I want to do either if we buy up here in Queensland and we have our own house or if we end up moving back to Melbourne but sleeping in a tent here are some of the things that I would do differently. So number one is you want to pick a good time of year to do it what I mean by that is you want a clear run six out of the seven nights you want to be sleeping in the tent so for me not only were we packing up the house so it was a rather stressful time of the year but also we had a couple of periods where I had to go away for the weekend and it means you're out of the tent disrupting your consistency of being in the tent so you want a clear run at it. Number two don't set it up on a bed with a thick mattress like this one behind me as you saw at the start of this video there wasn't much room between the top of the mattress and the top of the tent and that creates more of a feel like a claustrophobic environment and when my wife shipped me upstairs I was on a much thinner mattress and there was more space between me and the top of the tent which gave me a better night's sleep. Number three I'd do it ideally in a cooler time of the year than during summer reason being when you're in a tent the system has different levels and you start on system five which replicates about 1500 meters above sea level and you go up to level 10 which replicates over 3000 meters in sea level and as a result you're getting less oxygen while you're sleeping and your body heats up because your physiology is changing and if you're hot inside the tent and outside the tent it can lead to a very disrupted sleep which I experienced on a number of occasions so I spoke to Rico from box attitude about this and he said turn on the air conditioning in your room and leave it on so that's what I did and that improved my sleep dramatically having on about 19-20 degrees but if you did it during the cooler months of the year you may not even have to worry about air conditioning. The fourth one is do it during a time in your training program where you're either training your base or you're not training heavily at all. When you're training hard your physiology is changing and you're fatigued when you're in a tent your physiology is changing and you're also fatigued so doing them both together is not a great blend and the last one is the attitude tent itself makes a bit of noise pushing the air inside as a result I'd suggest getting some earplugs now I spoke to Rico during the process about this and he said hey we've got a prototype tent which is called the silent treatment if you'd like to trial it out and for the remaining sort of two to two and a half weeks for being in the tent I did trial this new tent that he's releasing in the next six to twelve months I can't show you what it looks like or explain in much detail but I did find sleeping in the silent treatment that I had a much better night sleep so that's to come but in the meantime certainly get yourself some earplugs. So in conclusion I think the most compelling part of this story is my blood test results I've had a 6.2 percent increase in my body's ability to deliver oxygen to the working muscles by sleeping in an attitude tent for a four-week period now I race criterium which is round-around circles for an hour and it's not so much about fitness more so about making the right decision at the right time so I don't think it's the best benchmark to test this from an athlete's perspective I think if you were racing against the clock if you were doing an endurance sport like long road racing or time trialling or Ironman etc this would be a significant increase in your performance and it's really an o-brainer additionally it's not just about delivering more oxygen to the working muscle it's also to your brain so I think from a cognitive perspective as well there's a lot happening here and the general health and more being sector I think watch this space so I hope to catch you in the next video part two of the series where I'll talk about the physiological effects that I've experienced from this 6.2 percent gain and I'll catch you in the next video