Intermittent lower-limb occlusion enhances recovery after strenuous exercise

Abstract

34Repeated cycles of vascular occlusion followed by reperfusion initiate a protective 35 mechanism that acts to mitigate future cell injury. Such ischemic episodes are known 36 to improve vasodilation, oxygen utilisation, muscle function, and have been 37 demonstrated to enhance exercise performance. Thus, the use of occlusion cuffs 38 represents a novel intervention that may improve subsequent exercise performance. 39Fourteen participants performed an exercise protocol that involved lower-body 40 strength and power tests followed by repeated sprints. Occlusion cuffs were then 41 were delayed beneficial effects of occlusion on eccentric power (ES = 1.38), 48 acceleration (ES = 1.24), and an immediate positive effect on jump height (ES = 49 0.61). Thus, specific beneficial effects on recovery of power production and sprint 50 performance were observed both immediately and 24 hours after intermittent 51 unilateral occlusion was applied to each leg. 52

Ischemic preconditioning: Potential impact on exercise performance and underlying mechanisms

“…Similarly, IPC did not improve 30 m 7) and 40 m sprint time 8) . Interestingly, one study revealed that IPC decreased the peak power output and the total anaerobic power during the Wingate test 9) .…”

“…These two studies suggest that IPC has minor beneficial effects, but these apparently fade over time and may possibly have a placebo effect because, compared with control (CON), the SHAM condition also improved repetitions along with IPC 24,25) . Beaven et al (2012) compared the early (immediate) and late (24 h later) effects of IPC on power production, and they found that IPC showed beneficial effects in both periods 8) . In addition, a recent study investigated the effects of IPC on static leg extension exercise and found that the endurance time to task failure was significantly longer in IPC than in CON 26) .…”

“…As mentioned previously, the results are equivocal. Several studies found an improvement in exercise performance, i.e., time to failure (time trial performance), peak power output, and repetitions, to name a few, after IPC on the primary or a part of the engaged limbs 4,8,[10][11][12][13][18][19][20][21]26) , whereas other studies did not show any beneficial effects [5][6][7]9,10,[14][15][16][17]22,24,25) . A few studies investigated the effects of remote IPC on exercise performance.…”

“…Further, the numbers of ischemic-reperfusion cycles were also varied in previous studies. For example, one study used 2×5 min cycles 8) , nine studies used 3×5 min cycles 5,7,10,[12][13][14]18,23,26) and 13 studies used 4×5 min cycles 4,6,9,11,[15][16][17][19][20][21][22]24,25) . As a result, a manipulation of 2 cycles showed improvement of exercise performance (100%), seven of nine studies using 3 cycles also showed improvement of exercise performance (78%), whereas, only five of 13 studies using 4 cycles showed positive effects with IPC (38%).…”

“…Previous studies used various populations, such as healthy volunteers and trained subjects (Table 1). Although an accurate classification is difficult because the detailed information of subjects is often not available, we attempted to classify subjects into 3 groups: healthy (including recreationally active) subjects 6,8,10,12,21,23,25,26) , trained athletes 4,5,7,9,11,[13][14][15][16][17][18]22,24) , and elite athletes 19,20) . This classification showed that the studies did not reach a consensus on the effects of IPC on exercise performance across different populations, i.e., different training levels.…”