Vascular Occlusion Training May Not Be Applicable In Real World

Written by Robbie Durand
19 April 2008
Vascular Occlusion at low intensity has been shown to produce increases in muscle hypertrophy but what about high intensity exercise.  At high forces, muscle contraction per se may restrict blood flow to a similar extent as external vascular occlusion, thus negating any additional effects of cuff occlusion to high strength training loads.  Researchers assigned subjects to 4 groups: A. high intensity-no occlusion, B) High Intensity with occlusion, C.) Moderate Intensity- no occlusion, D.) Moderate Intensity-Occlusion.  Both the HI and the MI groups performed unilateral knee extension exercise training. The HI group trained with a load of 6 RM and the MI group with a load of 12 RM, corresponding to ~ 80%

and 60% 1RM, respectively.  At the end of the study, In the present study, they not find an additive training effect on muscle hypertrophy and strength gains when vascular occlusion was combined with training intensities that mimic a real

world setting. Strength gains and quadriceps hypertrophy increased without

any correlation to vascular occlusion. Therefore, they concluded that vascular occlusion in combination with high-intensity strength training does not augment muscle strength or hypertrophy when compared to high-intensity strength training

alone.

  

Laurentino G, Ugrinowitsch C, Aihara AY, Fernandes AR,

 Parcell AC, Ricard M, Tricoli V. Effects of Strength Training 

and Vascular Occlusion. Int J Sports Med. 2008.