Blood Flow Training Essay

We can all agree that the overall goal of weight training is to promote hypertrophy in the muscles that we are training. This point is especially true for athletes or individuals that have suffered a mechanical injury and are just having their cast removed. When you have a limb or muscle group immobilized you start to develop disuse atrophy in those specific muscles that have been immobilized. The problem with lifting heavy weights, whether you are an athlete trying to get stronger or a patient trying to build your strength back up, is that you put an immense amount of stress on your limbs and joints. Blood flow restriction training is a method that has been proven to help individuals get the results that they are looking for while sparing
their body the unnecessary stress of a heavy lifting load. Disuse atrophy is a type muscle atrophy, or muscle wasting, which refer to a decrease in the size of muscles in the body (Jacques 2017).
A common cause of disuse atrophy is having a cast put on to immobilize a part of the body. Having a muscle group immobilized prevents an individual from being able to use that muscle causing it to weaken and possibly begin to shrink depending on the amount of time the muscles are not being used. An athlete might develop disuse atrophy recovering from an injury like a torn ACL. In both of these scenarios the muscle are significantly weakened after the recovery period. Blood flow restriction training is a form of therapy that can be used in both of these
cases. Blood flow restriction training is a therapy where a pneumatic surgical tourniquet, similar to a blood pressure cuff, is applied to the injured limb to partially restrict blood flow while the patient engages in strength training (Bell 2014).
By doing this only a very light load is needed to accomplish the strength gains that are desired when lifting heavy weight loads. Arterial blood flow to the muscle is 80% occluded and venous blood flow is 100% occluded so that there is more blood and lactic acid around the muscle than normal. The influx of blood and lactic acid causes the cells in the muscle to increase in size which can cause a metabolic stress on the cells, which in turn, increases the cell’s production of protein and stimulates an individual’s growth hormone (Boston Sports Medicine
2017). While this form of therapy helps patients build strength in the affected muscles it does not need to be performed every day or for long periods of time. A patient can achieve the desired results with sessions three times a week for about fifteen minutes per session where blood flow restriction training is performed. Patients should perform 15-30 repetitions, for 3-4 sets, with 20-50% your 1 rep maximum resistance (Boston Sports Medicine 2017). This means that before getting started with blood flow restriction training your maximum resistance, or the heaviest amount of weight that a patient can lift one time, needs to be calculated. For example, if a patient can only lift 100 pounds then a load of 20 to 50 pounds of weight would suffice for that patient.
Works Cited
-Erica Jacques, Reviewed by Grant Hughes MD. What is disuse atrophy? https://www.verywell.com/what-is-disuse-atrophy-2564682 March 17, 2017
-Stephania Bell, New method may benefit athletes http://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/11858977/tourniquet-training-change-way-athletes-recover-injuries November 11, 2014
-Bosbg, Blood flow restriction training: Just a fad, or a future in PT https://www.bostonsportsmed.com/2017/09/blood-flow-restriction-training-just-fad-future-pt/ 2017