In the 1980s and 1990s, footballer players were not the athletes of today, where you once found a drinking culture deeply ingrained, you’ll now find players in hyperbaric chambers.
If Liverpool were to play every game in a single season competing across the Premier League, Champions League, FA Cup and Carabao Cup, they would play 67 times in nine months.
When you add international exploits to the mix across the year, recovery becomes all the more essential to a long career – you only need to look at the lengths Mo Salah goes to!
The modern player has an endless list of technology to turn to for recovery compared to those who came before them, and hyperbaric chambers are heavily frequented by those at the elite level.
Alexis Mac Allister is one of them, and we know this as he posted a picture on social media of himself (below) playing on his GameBoy inside one while recovering during Liverpool’s hectic fixture list.
What is a hyperbaric chamber, and why use it?
A hyperbaric chamber is a pressurised space where patients breathe pure oxygen, which increases its distribution throughout the body and its blood capillaries, tissues and organs.
Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy (HBOT) allows for greater oxygen absorption, which promotes accelerated healing and recovery of the body’s tissues, helping to reduce inflammation and eliminate fatigue.
As per the Mayo Clinic, in a hyperbaric oxygen therapy chamber, air pressure is increased two to three times higher than normal air pressure, which allows lungs to gather more oxygen than they would at normal air pressure.
As a player at the highest level of the sport, the tight schedule reduces recovery time between games, which can lead to a risk of fatigue, muscle soreness and injuries.
Thus, a hyperbaric chamber allows a player to accelerate their recovery from matches, training sessions and injury, with sessions lasting for up to one to two hours.
A patient will typically lie on a bed that slides into the chamber and, as seen in Mac Allister’s photo, a nasal cannula will deliver the oxygen while they are free to relax and play games to pass the time.
There are several benefits to the treatment, which for a footballer can see an increase in physical fitness, the reduction of muscle tension and fatigue, faster cell renewal, improved joint mobility and faster recovery from injuries.
Salah’s house ‘looks like a hospital’
We all know how dedicated Salah is to keeping his body in pristine shape, so much so that he has a hyperbaric chamber at home, among other recovery tools.
In 2022, Salah told France Football: “Two rooms in our house are dedicated to different fitness machines, bodybuilding.
“At home, I can also do cryotherapy, there is a hyperbaric chamber. I am constantly looking to improve my physical condition.
“It’s true that I like to say that my house looks like a hospital, [but] my wife doesn’t like that! [She] says that I spend more time with my machines than with her!”
HBOT is seemingly one of the open secrets to longevity!
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