Occlusion Training. Heard of it? I hadn’t until yesterday.
I was having a look through the latest articles from the Journal of Strength and Conditioning and saw this title:
“Occlusion Training Increases Muscular Strength in Division IA Football Players”
So obviously I did a quick Google search on the term and it seems to be an approach that is gaining some momentum. And it all reads like one of those infomercials that you know better than to listen to.
However, it’s backed up by scientific evidence. AND it turns out it’s not even that new, it’s been getting exposure for a good few years now with studies as early as 2000. I clearly need to keep my big ears to the ground a little more.
So what does it involve? Layne Norton, writing for Iron Man Magazine, says that “occulding blood to the muscle during low-intensity physical activity can produce an anabolic response equal to, or perhaps greater than, moderate-intensity exercise”.
Through increasing blood pressure and stunting blood flow, protein synthesis increases, strength improves, muscle size goes up and muscles become more vascular. All this is from performing low intensity exercise (typically 50% and lower of your 1 rep max).
Check out this video to see it in action:
Why does this work? When we want increases in strength (or size) we need to target the fast twitch fibres of our muscles. These are the ones that have the greatest potential for growth. However, we need to go heavy for this to happen otherwise you’re inviting the not-so-great growers (slow twitch fibres) to take up the task at hand. Occlusion training (we assume) works by restricting the blood flow to the slow twitchers since they are the ones that primarily rely on oxygen to work. Shut down their power supply and you force the big guns to get involved. They get stimulated. You get stronger and bigger. Wowser.
In addition to this, a study by Takarada et al (2000) demonstrated that occlusion training increased blood growth hormone by as much as 290%. This has been credited to the increase in lactate within the muscle as oxygen is starved from the area. This in turn decreases the pH balance which has been shown to promote secretion of growth hormone.
There’s other reasons too and rather than go into too much detail, here’s a summary also from Norton:
“blood-occulusion training can increase motor unit recruitment, raise anabolic hormones and suppress local negative regulators of muscle growth. It’s also free from many of the negative side effects of training, such as increased muscle damage and unfavourable catabolic hormone increases”
If all that wasn’t enough, it would also seem that the results are not just limited to young, healthy males. Research has also been conducted on healthy elderly females with positive results.
But before I let you get too excited there are some things you should know.
Firstly the pressure required should be around 200mm Hg. Remember the last time you had your blood pressure tested? Well the cuff is how tight we’re talking. So to achieve the results seen in clinical test you’ll need to replicate those conditions. In the studies listed they have tended to use the Kaatsu training cuffs but these are not easy to come by as the makers are very protective of their patent. You could try a whole host of medical wraps etc. to achieve the required tension but you would be guessing that the tightness was correct.
As you may imagine there are also downsides to occlusion training. It ain’t comfortable to train in, in fact it can be painful. There is also the risk of destroying living tissue through starvation of blood supply or blocking a vessel with prolonged use. Recommendations are that no longer than ten minutes at a time are attempted. And as far as strength training goes, it is suggested that movements such as squats or anything that would require balancing a resistance should be avoided.
It’s all quite impractical to be honest. Imagine wrapping up your legs with tape before going to exercise, then ten minutes later having to take the damn things off and redo the whole thing again should you want another bash.
But who knows what the future holds. People love easy solutions to building muscle and if someone can come up with a solution for us to not have to lift heavy weights and still get the same result then I’m sure (for those that don’t want the hard work) it could become popular providing you can avoid any of the dangers (imagine some fool doing it for an hour and then taking out a nice big lawsuit after cutting the blood supply off from his thighs and keeling over).
Finally, supporters of this training method point out that you can’t train heavy all the time, we need times of deload to give our muscles, joints and nervous system a rest. If we could utilise that time to continue to get stronger with lighter weights then we don’t have to put strength gains on hold. Food for thought.
NB. I should point out that compression sports apparel (such as SKINS range) does not fit into occlusion training. This product works by improving blood circulation to aid performance and recovery. Though maybe if you bought two sizes too small! (I’m joking, don’t do that please).
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References: http://journals.lww.com/nsca-jscr/ , www.ironmanmagazine.com/, www.abcbodybuilding.com, www.springer.com/biomed/human+physiology/journal/421, www.skins.net, www.menshealth.co.uk
