19
June
2020
|
10:39 AM
America/New_York

Do Altitude Training Masks Work?

Muscle & Fitness reports elevation masks do not increase your fitness, however wearing a cloth mask may help prevent transmission or infection from the COVID-19 virus according to experts including HSS primary sports medicine physician, Jordan D. Metzl, MD.

If you’re planning on going back to the gym, you should be wearing a mask until a viable vaccine has been made available. The cloth masks that are recommended to help tamp down the spread of the virus keep airborne water droplets that may carry the virus to a minimum. “I think there’s no room for not wearing a mask inside. And I think that’s an absolute hard and fast rule,” cited Dr. Metzl. “Masks should be worn all the time when you’re in an indoor exercise environment. Outdoors, you can be a little more liberal if there’s nobody around.” When exercising outside, stick with the six-feet rule; if you’re running or biking and you’re coming up close to someone, pull your mask up or try to go out of your way to avoid them.

According to Dr. Metzl, your exercise mask doesn’t have to be a surgical N95 mask that’s not going to let many air particles in and out. “That’s not the idea of the mask, it’s to reduce the respiratory droplet flow from yourself outward,” he explained. “Thinking about where we’re using these things and, selectively, how we’re using them, is going to be really important [in fitness], probably as important as actually using it in general." 

Read the full article at Muscleandfitness.com.