The purpose of this article was to briefly review heat acclimation training literature to identify training variables that provide benefits in aerobic performance for elite athletes. A secondary aim was to discuss the time course, induction and decay of physiological responses. A literature search was performed using CINAHL, MEDLINE, SPORTDiscus, Rehabilitation & Sports Medicine Source databases. This resulted in 12 articles being identified, with additional articles manually sourced from reference lists. The environmental conditions utilised for heat acclimation training should imitate conditions likely to be experienced during competition or provide a challenging stimulus for the athlete where temperature is 40 degrees Celsius (°C) and relative humidity (RH) set at 60%. Exercise protocols employed should replicate physical demands experienced during competition; for team sport athletes this may involve 60 minutes of intermittent high intensity exercise sessions. Adaptations to such a training stimulus can be obtained after four consecutive days, however, ten to fourteen consecutive days are required to achieve close to full adjustments, with benefits lasting for up to fourteen days depending on the protocol used. Cardiovascular adaptations are the first benefit gained typically within four days but are also the first lost. Meanwhile, thermoregulatory adaptations take up to seven to fourteen days to complete. The physiological adaptations achieved through heat acclimation training led to improvements in aerobic performance through improved time trial performance via increases in maximal aerobic power (VO2 max) and increased power output at lactate threshold for elite athletes.
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