MEDICINA SPORTIVA - Journal of Romanian Sports Medicine Society

Comparison of the effects of resistance training with and without vascular occlusion in increases of strength and hypertrophy: a review of the literature

The literature indicates that adaptations to resistance training with and without blood flow restriction appear to occur differently.
Aim: To compare the effects of RT with and without BFR in strength and hypertrophy gains and understand the mechanism of adaptation between two methodologies. Moreover, check the influence of volume training in these gains.
Methods: In this review of the literature, were selected by two independent reviewers, articles in English of Pubmed database. These articles were clinical trials and evaluated strength and / or hypertrophy gains. The following keywords were used: blood flow restriction training, ischemic exercise strength, low load resistance training, restriction of blood flow, training and exercise. For this review were selected 16 articles.
Results: In the articles selected for this study, all assessed strength and nine also hypertrophy gains. Furthermore, only three controlled the volume of training and two performed surface electromyography.
Conclusion: in the short term, the RT would have a tendency to increase muscle strength greater than the LI-BFR and hypertrophy respond similarly in the two methodologies. This would indicate that neural adaptation interferes in the early stages of training only in the RT. The volume of training appears doesn’t to influence the increase of strength and hypertrophy in LI-BFR Finally, we need long-term studies to identify how adaptations occur for strength and hypertrophy in these two methodologies.