Assessment of Moderate Altitude Training on Speed Endurance among Amateur Distance Athletes in Plateau State, Nigeria

The study was designed to assess the effects of 3 weeks moderate altitude training on speed endurance among male amateur distance athletes in Plateau State, Nigeria. This is against the fact that current records show a discouraging weak performance among endurance athletes in Plateau state. The study was significant to the athletes’ hence it has the potential of improving their speed endurance for further competitions at national and international level. Coaches can also benefit from this study in the area of designing and executing training programme. Pankshin which is located at an altitude of 1414 m above sea level was used as the venue of the study. A 1 x 4 x 1 factorial research design was used for the study. The purposive sampling technique was used to select 15 out of the 20 amateur distance runners who are dwellers of Shendam located at a low altitude of 289 m above sea level on the basis of their performance in a VO2 max. test. Training was maintained between 60-80% of maximal heart rate of individual runners on daily basis for duration of 3 weeks. All training sessions was conducted between 7.00am – 8.30 am and 4.30pm -6.00 pm daily. The daily training programmes included road running (6-12km) hill training that consisted of five repetitions of 200 m and interval sprint training on a cinder track. The participants speed endurance were assessed at baseline, immediately after the first, second and third weeks of training. Descriptive statistics of mean, standard deviation and standard error of estimate were used to analyze the physical characteristics and performance scores of the participants. The inferential statistics of repeated measures analysis of variance were used to test the hypothesis at an alpha level of 0.05. the result revealed that moderate altitude training significantly improved (P = 0.000) the speed endurance of amateur distance runners in Plateau State. It was recommended that amateur distance runner’s should be exposed to altitude and other endurance related training programmes by coaches and relevant agencies in Plateau state to further equipped them for better performance at national and international competitions