Occlusion Training

[Persicutor]

Came across occlusion training in an article in the Strength and Conditioning Journal, and it sounds pretty interesting. Basically you reduce blood flow to the target tissue (ie.legs) by wrapping knee wraps fairly tightly at the top of the leg for example. Then you use 20%-50% 1RM and do 3 sets of >15 reps with less than 1 min rest in between sets with the wraps on.

Apparently the venous pooling of blood and ischemic conditions increases metabolites and GH concentrations, recruits Type II fibers right away (usually they are recruited during heavy sets) and also increases protein synthesis. It's interesting for those who are doing high intensity workouts all the time and their joints are taking a beating or finding it hard to recover after intense workouts, so occlusion training would be helpful since lighter weights are used and comparable hypertrophy gains can be seen without increasing recovery time. It's also useful for rehab situations (ie. knee injuries) since light weights must be used.

Heres an article that talks about it a bit more http://www.abcbodybuilding.com/ABCocclusionpaper.pdf

Has anyone heard/used this method before? I'm considering giving it a shot at the end of my workout just to try it out.

[JK1]

Its bull****.

[AlMohr]

I read the same article awhile back in the journal, I just don't see it as very practical or time worthy

[Persicutor]

I don't see how its bull**** since its got decent research to back it up. I agree that its not very practical to be used consistently but I was talking more about its application for lower body rehab and to reduce overreaching and joint stress in athletes while still making size gains.

[Travis Bell]

it's not bs, but it is sometimes a pain in the neck and time consuming

I have used this stuff before, but with a bit of a different twist on it.

Sometimes if my tri's are super sore, I'll wrap them quite tight with a band (usually a light band) or a knee wrap and hold it just about til your fingers tingle and then release the pressure. it does seem to help recovery a little bit, but it's not worth wrapping up, doing some reps and then un wrapping simply from a time perspective.

It's really not going to reduce joint pain or stress, but it does help in muscle recovery sometimes.