Environmental Impacts on Exercise

Environmental Physiology has been an important feature within the broader theme of Sport and Exercise Science in the School for over 20 years.  Our research focus is towards investigating the human body’s responses to exercise in environmental extremes and how they may best prepare for these hazardous conditions.

We have an active MPhil/PhD programme that aims to advance our knowledge and understanding through the study of applied problems that athletes, coaches, practitioners and a range of special populations encounter when exercising in extreme environments. We are currently involved in projects with the English Institute of Sport, that are integrated into the studies of some of our MPhil/PhD students, that seek ways of helping Olympic athletes acclimatise using altitude and heat for competitions around the world.  

Moving into the Welkin Laboratories in 2000 benefitted our research activity by the investment of a sophisticated, purpose built environmental chamber that can closely control ambient temperature (-20°C to +50°C) and relative humidity.  In 2009, a purpose built hypoxic chamber that enables us to simulate altitudes up to an equivalent of 5000m was commissioned.  Since the 2008 RAE, we have published over twenty research studies in peer reviewed journals and made a similar number of conference presentations from our research. Our research theme has the following specific aims:

1. To examine how exercise performance can be optimised in challenging thermal and hypoxic environments.

This research is directed towards the evaluation of applied methods to alleviate the consequences of exercise in the heat (i.e. heat acclimation, pre-cooling and hydration), understanding the interplay between simulated altitude and hydration status and exploring the usage and efficacy of different hypoxic and altitude exposures to optimise endurance and intermittent sports.

2. To explore the impact of the environment on special populations

This aim brings exercise, environmental extremes and special populations together, with some of our work having examined the efficacy of precooling maneouvers and heat acclimation strategies for wheelchair athletes exercising in the heat, while also evaluating how cooling strategies could benefit heat-sensitive individuals with multiple sclerosis.  The interaction between hypoxia and glucose metabolism in type 2 diabetics and those who are obese is also being investigated.

3. To understand fatigue and physiological function in extreme environments

Research aimed at linking the first two aims, combining methodologies from scientific disciplines to use sophisticated techniques (e.g. interpolated twitch, transcranial magnetic stimulation, stable isotope tracer analysis of metabolites, ammonia infusion, functional MRI, muscle temperature, thermography and biopsy) to investigate mechanisms of fatigue and exercise tolerance under different environmental conditions.

Students carry out research in the Environmental Lab