![]() ![]() on the bar, your body would sense the large force pushing into your upper back and signals your brain to respond accordingly. For example, if you were to perform a set of 10 slow tempo squats with an unloaded barbell, your body would recruit predominantly low intensity type 1 or “slow twitch” muscle fibers. Here’s why this is so interesting.ĭuring a normal resistance training session, the amount of weight you lift and how fast you move the weight determines the amount and type of muscle fibers your body activates. The building fatigue in your arms or legs then tricks the brain into thinking you’re lifting heavy weight, which causes your body to start recruiting more and more high intensity “fast twitch” type 2 muscle fibers. On a cellular level, numerous tiny cells called satellite cells simultaneously converge to help repair damaged tissue and build new muscle or bone. 6 Human growth hormone levels begin to rise, lactic acid starts to buildup and a gene within your body called mTOR is stimulated (all essential factors in supporting muscle/bone growth and repair). This pump sensation is the feeling of fluid shifting into the muscle cells (a process called cellular swelling). This is where the “magic” of BFR starts to happen. It’s that intense if you’re performing BFR correctly. Imagine for a moment the most intense muscle pump you’ve experienced while lifting, and then multiply it by 10. Your body senses this drop in oxygen within the muscles and responds by increasing your heart rate in an effort to pump more blood (and therefore oxygen) to the working muscles.Īs you continue to exercise, you’ll then start to feel an extreme muscle “pump” sensation. The tightly fitting cuffs essentially trap blood within your arms or legs and create a low-oxygen (hypoxic) environment. One of the first things you’ll experience when using BFR is an increase in your heart rate. Here’s how it is believed to work scientifically. Mario Novo (one of the foremost researchers on the topic) explains that BFR, “simply changes the environment your brain thinks you’re actually in.” Basically, you trick your body into thinking it’s performing very intense exercise (when you’re not) and it responds accordingly. As you will learn in this blog, BFR training can be a gamechanger for an athlete looking to maintain strength when they can’t lift heavy due to injury, enhance recovery from training and improve endurance without spending countless hours on a bike.ĭr. 25Ĭhris Duffin of Kabuki Strength using BFR.Īnd here’s the kicker, it does this all with light weights and a higher rep scheme than one would normally use in a traditional strength protocol. As you’ll soon see, BFR can help optimize recovery to an even greater degree in the right circumstances when used apppriately. Blood flow restriction (BFR) has steadily been gaining national recognition and popularity. Once such tool is blood flow restriction training. Within this approach, there are tools that can help us achieve our performance or rehab goals a little faster. This “movement based” approach allows us to be significantly more effective at recovering from intense training and with fixing injuries. This understanding allows us to therefore address the root cause of injury throughout the entire “kinetic chain” rather than focus on the site of symptoms. ![]() Over time poor movement and/or loading habits create tiny amounts of trauma that eventually cumulate and lead your body over the proverbial ‘tipping point’ into injury. We now know that most injuries that occur in the weight room are due to poor movement/technique or inappropriate loads when lifting. Just as performance training has evolved over the centuries, the world of rehab and recovery has pushed forward as well. We manipulate reps and sets across multiple training sessions like a Fields Medal mathematician, fine tune lifting technique like a mechanic working on a Formula 1 race car and spend hours upon hours devising the ‘best’ meal plan down to the microgram like a mad scientist concocting their latest experiment. When it comes to performance, we have learned how to take a healthy athlete and make them even bigger, stronger and faster. In our constant pursuit of athletic excellence, we have always been on the lookout for ways to optimize training and recovery.
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