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OT: Do you donate blood, platelets or plasma? 6-Jun-2011 At 6:07:06 PM daave

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On 6/06/2011 hairy1 wrote:
>perhaps some exercise physiology person can tell us if there is any benefit
>to training post donation (i guess your VO2 max is reduced)?

There have been a few studies to test this - reduction of VO2max after blood donation.

Mostly, they found slight reductions in VO2 max ( Reductions of about 9% ). This was a result of decreased Cardiac output ( the amount of blood pumped out to the body each minute). Since max HR was seen not to change, the decreased cardiac output can be attributed to decreased Stroke Volume (the volume of blood pumped each beat) since Cardiac output = Stroke volume * HR.

The decreased Haemoglobin (the protein upon which oxygen is carried ) as a result of having had blood taken out, was suggested not to have significantly decreased oxygen uptake in the muscles as the availability of oxygen per 100ml of blood getting to the muscles was adequate for what they needed.

So, VO2max seems to slightly decrease, but submaximal VO2 appears to be unaltered. Since you don't typically train at VO2max, the ability to sustain submaximal VO2 throughout a typical climbing training session shouldn't really be affected.