If you have aspirations to climb Mt. Everest or you’ve just booked a ski trip to Japan, getting your body ready for great heights is impossible in Bangkok, right? Wrong, thanks to an Australian company, Altitude Technology Solutions (ATS), which “brings the mountains to you” with their simulated altitude training systems that put you in an oxygen-deprived (hypoxic) environment.

And this isn’t just for would-be mountain climbers. ATS touts its overall health benefits, as working out in a hypoxic environment requires less effort for greater returns. Exercising at high altitude makes it harder on your body to process oxygen and deliver it to your cells. In layman’s terms, walking for 30 minutes at a higher altitude would burn as many calories as running for the same amount of time at sea level.

The Aspire Club is the only place in Bangkok, so far, to offer their technology. First, the club’s head trainer Daniel Remon puts a pulse oximeter on your finger, which measures a normal blood-oxygen saturation point of 98%. Then you work out on a rowing machine at sea level (or nearly below sea level in Bangkok’s case), where the oxygen in the room is about 20.95% of the surrounding air. Then, by simply walking into another closed room, you instantly ascend to 4,072 meters and an oxygen level of 13%. At that point, the blood-oxygen saturation level plummets to the low 80s and your heart rate skyrockets. Now doing the same rowing exercise, you only need to put in a fraction of the effort you put in at sea-level to get the same results. “No pain, no gain,” they say. But ATS is turning the tables on this one—less pain, more gain.
For more information on Altitude Technology Systems, contact Romchalee Chanprasit at 02-538-6414-5; 08-1752-9511 or email [email protected]