Blood and muscle

For muscle growth, restricting blood flow safely may be the next best thing to weight training itself

- By Sean Hyson, C.S.C.S.

Ever since that time you tied yourself up with rubber bands as a kid, you've been taught that cutting off the circulation to your arms or legs is a bad thing (fun as it may be). But research shows that mild, strategic blood-flow restriction, or BFR, may promote rapid muscle gains when done with (and even without) weight training. It may be the best thing you've never tried to break a plateau or reach a goal.

THE SCIENCE OF SQUEEZE

Blood-flow restriction has been used in rehab. settings for decades, but it is now catching on with athletes and bodybuilders as a way to both heal faster and grow muscle mass. (Olympic skiing medallist Bode Miller reportedly used it to recover from a back injury last year.) The process of using BFR with weight training is simple: For upper-body exercises, an elastic knee wrap or cuff is placed around the top of each arm; for the lower body, it's wrapped around the top of the thighs. By applying a gentle squeeze to the muscles, the wraps cut down the amount of blood that can run into the extremities, which limits blood being returned to the heart.

Sounds scary. right? Like your limbs will turn blue and you'll die? But that's not so, says Jeremy Loenneke, PhD, Assistant Professor of exercise science at the University of Mississippi, USA. "The BFR stimulus is very short-term (minutes, not hours). When we compare it to traditional resistance training. it appears just as safe, if not safer." (Though, of course, if you have a vascular disease or disorder, you should probably skip BFR.)