Effects of Sports Compression Socks on Performance, Physiological, and Hematological Alterations After Long-Haul Air Travel in Elite Female Volleyballers

Abstract

The purpose of this investigation was to assess the merit of sports compression socks in minimizing travel-induced performance, physiological, and hematological alterations in elite female volleyball athletes. Twelve elite female volleyballers (age, 25 ± 2 y) travelled from Canberra (Australia) to Manila (Philippines), and were assigned to one of two conditions; compression socks (COMP, n = 6) worn during travel, or a passive control (CON, n = 6). Dependent measures included counter-movement jump (CMJ) performance, subjective ratings of well-being, cardiovascular function, calf girth, and markers of blood clotting, collected before (-24 h, CMJ;-12 h, all measures), during (+6.5 h and +9 h, subjective ratings and cardiovascular function), and after (+12 h, all measures except CMJ; + 24 h and + 48 h, CMJ) travel. As compared with CON, small-to-large effects were observed for COMP to improve heart rate (+9 h), oxygen saturation (+6.5 h and +9 h), alertness (+6.5 h), fatigue (+6.5 h), muscle soreness (+6.5 h and +9 h), and overall health (+6.5 h) during travel. After travel, smallto-moderate effects were observed for COMP to improve systolic blood pressure (+12 h), right calf girth (+12 h), and CMJ height (+24 h), mean velocity (+24 h), and relative power (+48 h), as compared with CON. COMP had no effect on markers blood clotting. This study suggests that compression socks are beneficial in combating the stressors imposed by long-haul travel in elite athletes, and may have merit for individuals frequenting long-haul travel and/or competing soon after flying.

Putting the Squeeze on Compression Garments: Current Evidence and Recommendations for Future Research: A Systematic Scoping Review

“…Nonetheless, there were a number of studies reporting beneficial effects on jump [3,27,31,39,69,73,85,86,91,103,[117][118][119][120][121][122], time trial/race [5,17,72,[123][124][125][126], sprint [22,73,[126][127][128][129], and agility [73,130,131] performance. A similar pattern was identified with time to exhaustion/ fatigue, as compression is reported to improve [8,132] or have no effect [9,12,36,133,134] on time to fatigue.…”

“…A small number of studies investigated other blood markers including glucose [64,89,93,119,120], blood pH [15,22,50,87,164,171], oxygen saturation of haemoglobin [12,15,50,93,167], and partial pressure of oxygen [12,15,50], with no effect of compression reported, with the exception of a positive effect in one study measuring oxygen saturation of haemoglobin [167]. For markers of coagulation and fibrinolysis two studies reported no effect [122,169], and one study [170] reported a positive effect on thrombin-antithrombin complex and plasminogen activator inhibitor with compression. However, one study [172] reported a negative effect of compression on d-dimer.…”

“…The vast majority of studies (n = 53) reported no effect of compression on heart rate [2, 5, 7-9, 13-15, 27, 35, 47, 49, 50, 52, 56, 64, 87, 92, 94, 97, 99-108, 114, 115, 117, 123, 124, 126, 127, 131, 135, 136, 148, 156, 162, 163, 165, 171, 177-183], while 12 studies [22,31,36,119,122,132,133,164,173,175,176,184] reported positive effects of compression, and three studies [14,166,185] reported negative effects. Blood pressure was largely not influenced by compression, with seven studies [106,107,123,156,162,165,186] reporting no change and only two studies [122,173] reporting a positive effect. There is some evidence to suggest compression garments positively influence cardiac output, with three studies [106,173,176] reporting positive effects of compression and two studies reporting no effect [15,156].…”

“…Muscle oxygenation, often used to reflect changes in peripheral blood flow, was largely not influenced by compression, with ten studies [15,22,49,56,100,104,107,108,127,187] reporting no change and seven studies [9,104,122,133,136,156,188] reporting a positive effect. In addition, two studies [35,186] reported negative effects of compression on muscle oxygenation.…”

Up in the Air: Evidence of Dehydration Risk and Long-Haul Flight on Athletic Performance

“…It is still unknown whether hypohydration per se accelerates declines in physical performance or imposes additional fatigue development following transmeridian air travel, since rapidly crossing multiple time zones is known to impair physical performance. Jet lag side effects and subsequent performance outcome parameters that have been assessed are diverse, including jump performance [48][49][50], sprint performance [48,49], isometric adductor strength [47], and handgrip strength [51,52], all presented in Table 2. Performance decrements were predominantly observed throughout the explosive movement of the lower limbs (e.g., countermovement jump decreases immediately upon arrival by 7-10%, and a similar pattern was observed in sprint performance), but not during isometric contractions of the lower or upper limbs.…”