The once-odd notion of wearing a mask (outside of a Halloween party, of course) has now become commonplace with the arrival of the Covid-19 pandemic. To keep transmission and infection rates lower among the general population, folks are recommended to mask up whenever they can’t practice proper social distancing (staying six-feet away from other people).
But before the appearance of the virus, the one place regular mask use wasn’t that out of the norm was at the gym since the fairly recent advent of restrictive breathing training masks. There was always one or two dudes who strapped up with a training mask to start huffing and puffing during HIIT workouts or cardio blasts on the elliptical.
Training masks are usually made out of neoprene and feature a few adjustable valves to alter the amount of air flow that’s getting to your lungs. They’re purported to do many things, like simulate the demands of training at higher altitudes and force your respiratory muscles to work harder to make them stronger and more efficient. Those claims play into the goals of anyone who’s trying to get an edge in building a great physique and take their fitness to the next level, which is pretty much everyone reading this website.
But do they really do anything besides make you look a little goofy (and menacing) while pounding out a few miles on the treadmill?
Before we get into whether these training devices can actually help boost your gains in the cardio department, let’s take a look at what may be happening with your respiratory system when you put one on. Obviously (like almost all of us know by now), placing a close-fitting mask around your mouth is going to make it harder to breathe. The restrictive air flow can also put more strain on your respiratory system, making it work harder to get the same result.
But do either of those reactions to the mask’s restrictions mean you’re becoming more efficient at using oxygen or actually getting fitter? And will they prevent the transmission of the coronavirus or other diseases?
As far as the claim that they are high altitude-simulating devices, it’s just not physiologically possible, says Bryanne Bellovary, NSCA-CPT, C.S.C.S., and Ph.D. candidate at the University of New Mexico Department of Health, Exercise, and Sports Sciences, who has based most of her scholarship for her doctorate on studying the effectiveness of the masks. “The valves would restrict the volume of air the individual is able to inhale, but not the concentration of oxygen.” Air has an oxygen concentration of about 21 percent whether you are at sea level or at moderate altitude, like the mile-high city of Denver.
It’s the lower barometric pressure (basically, the pressure put on Earth by the air above us) at higher altitudes that results in hypoxia, or lack of oxygen saturating the blood. “Our bodies rely on pressure gradients to get oxygen from our lungs to the blood,” she says. “The outside environment is usually at a higher pressure compared to our bodies. Since oxygen likes to travel from high to low pressure, if we are in an area that has a lower pressure, or at a moderate altitude, then the pressure gradient is smaller so less oxygen will move from the lungs to the blood compared to when at sea level.”
These training masks have no way to alter barometric pressure—they are simply restricting airflow, that’s it. Bellovary’s 2019 study, published in the Journal of Human Sport and Exercise, found that after 6 weeks of high-intensity cycling intervals there was no difference in blood oxygen saturation in subjects wearing a restrictive mask versus those not wearing one.
The study that prompted her research, which appeared in the Journal of Sports Science & Medicine in 2016, showed a slight, 2 percent difference between mask wearers and the non-masked during a similar 6-week HIIT protocol, which could be attributed to the effect of rebreathing exhaled carbon dioxide trapped by the mask barrier, though more research needs to be done to prove that, Bellovary notes.
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Shopping King Louie
Will Masks Build Stronger Lungs?
There is more evidence that the masks can stress the respiratory muscles. Although the aforementioned study showed a 2 percent difference in oxygen concentration that was deemed insignificant, it did conclude that there were improvements in endurance markers among those working out with a mask, notably ventilatory threshold (the time during intense exercise that you start to breathe faster and can’t talk in complete sentences) and power output.
Bellovary’s study, however, did not find that either of those markers were improved by wearing a mask during exercise. “All participants in both studies improved their maximal aerobic fitness from the training, regardless of whether they wore the mask or did not,” she says.
A 2018 study published in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research had 20 male recreational lifters doing two workouts of back squats, bench presses, and sprints. It found no difference in reps performed or total workload from those wearing masks or not. The research did show that 12 percent of those wearing masks had mild side effects like lightheadedness, anxiety, and discomfort and that there was a lower rate of peak velocity in the masked-up weightlifters along with reduced alertness and focus.
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Training Masks Vs. the Coronavirus
The same way that restrictive training masks won’t really do much besides make you feel uncomfortable while working out, they also won’t do much to help stop the spread of Covid-19. The masks’ open-air valves provide an unrestricted airway to the world, which means they won’t do much at all to stop any inadvertent saliva spray from spreading around the room.
And if you’re planning on going back to the gym, you should be masked up at least until a viable vaccine has been made available. The simple cloth masks that are recommended to help tamp down the spread of the virus actually do serve a potentially life- (and society-) saving purpose by keeping 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,” says Jordan Metzl, M.D., fitness instructor and sports medicine physician at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York City. “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.” And 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.
And your exercising mask doesn’t have to be a bulletproof, surgical N95 mask that’s not going to let many air particles out and in, he says.
“That’s not the idea of the mask, it’s to reduce the respiratory droplet flow from yourself outward.” Even something as simple as a Buff, or sleeve of fabric made for multiple uses, can be helpful for cutting down on your respiratory emissions, though most aren’t rated to stop viruses. “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,” Metzl says.
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To Mask or Not to Mask
No conclusive research evidence has shown that wearing a restrictive mask is going to get you much of an edge, either in your cardiovascular endurance or overall strength, especially of your respiratory muscles.
There could be a slight, positive benefit from wearing one, and these days you are less likely to be looked at like a freak for stalking around the gym (if yours is cleared to open) with one, but overall the main reason for wearing a mask would be to prevent transmission or infection from the Covid-19 virus, not increase fitness. And for that purpose, you’d be better served to skip the elevation masks and just go for a cloth mask like the CDC recommends.
