We all know how exercise can get our blood pumping. But when it comes to trying to build muscle, sometimes reducing the blood flow during your workout can boost your results. At REPAIR SI, we offer a type of training that helps you increase muscle mass by carefully restricting your blood circulation while you exercise.
Blood flow restriction training can be utilized by anyone looking to boost their muscles, either as a fitness enthusiast or a professional athlete. But it’s most commonly used for physical therapist patients who are trying to restore their strength after an injury.
What Is Blood Flow Restriction Training?
Blood flow restriction training, also known as occlusion training or BFR training, involves using a tourniquet or cuff around a limb to reduce the blood flowing out of your muscles during an exercise, such as weight training. It’s important to note that blood is still flowing into the muscle while being restricted.
BFR training involves low-intensity exercise and blood occlusion, which means to interfere with the blood flow of moving limbs. By reducing the blood circulation during the exercise, your limbs transition into hypertrophy, which is the process needed to increase your muscle cells.
It’s most commonly used as a rehabilitation technique for athletes after an injury because it provides low-intensity resistance to decrease the amount of stress placed on specific areas of the body during training exercises. It increases a person’s muscle strength without putting excessive strain on the joints. That’s why it can also be used to help people who have lost their strength due to a medical condition or surgery.
Even though it can be utilized by people of all fitness levels, there are a variety of conditions that can benefit from blood flow restriction training, including:
- Arthritis.
- ACL injury.
- Rotator cuff injury recovery/repair.
- Hip or knee replacement rehab.
How Blood Flow Restriction Training Helps You Gain Muscle
BFR training has been known to have similar results as a high-intensity workout, but how does it actually work? By wrapping your limbs with a compression device during low-intensity workouts, it helps you to boost your muscle mass in a variety of ways, including:
- Building up metabolic byproducts to provoke muscle growth, such as lactate.
- Increasing your growth hormone levels.
- Boosting the mechanical tension placed on your muscles.
REPAIR SI Can Help Add Blood Flow Restriction Training to Your Treatment Plan
Gaining muscle isn’t always easy, and it becomes especially difficult if your strength has been affected by an injury or a medical condition like arthritis. By reducing your blood circulation during low-intensity exercises, you can build your muscle mass just as much as you would by doing high-intensity workouts.
So whether you’re recovering from a knee injury from sports or your joints have been impacted from arthritis, BFR training can help improve your strength.
If you’re interested in discovering how blood flow restriction can help improve your muscle mass and speed up your recovery, reach out to our team today for more information or schedule an initial appointment to get started with BFR training.