Sport science

Performance and health

In this area, we focus on studying the athlete’s training, exercise physiology questions about human adaptation to acute physical exercise and training, the effectiveness of training methods, measurement of different energy processes during training and competition, performance factors in sports and the impact of training on health.

The research covers, in particular, questions about physiological effects of training but may also contain combination elements of physiology and biomechanics or psycho-physiological aspects. Another viewpoint is the health of the athlete themself, which includes mapping health-related factors in connection with training and performance. A further aspect is exercise and health among people with different types of disabilities to make training more inclusive for them. The main target group is winter athletes, primarily in cross-country skiing, biathlon and, to some extent, alpine skiing, which is continuously evolving, but there are also projects in other sports.

Environmental physiology

In this research area, we study human adaptation to extreme environments, primarily oxygen deficiency during, for example, freediving or at high altitude. The main focus of our research is on integrative and experimental physiology conducted in the laboratory with a large field studies component.

The main focus areas are training and performance in competitive freediving as well as safety in all freediving, in which the research group is an international leader. In other important projects, we look at acclimatisation and performance in high-altitude hypoxia and how we can predict an individual’s sensitivity and adapt acclimatisation for improved performance. We also study different breathing techniques, the effect of diet on performance, and adaptation to cold.