Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Does Blood Flow Restriction (Occlusion) Training Really Work?

Episode Date: August 5, 2019

Blood flow restriction training is making waves of late. It sounds new. It sounds scientific. And some are saying it’s revolutionary. Well, it also smacks of artifice. Like it was contrived by marketers to sell the latest round of magazines, pills, and powders. And so if you’ve been skeptical, good. You should be. You see, the more time you spend educating yourself in the ways of muscle building, the more you become certain of one thing: If something sounds too good to be true — too easy, too effective, too innovative — it almost always is. Eventually, you learn that there really is no shortcut to building a strong, muscular, lean body. There are right and wrong ways of going about it, of course, but at least 80% of your long-term results will come from diligent application of the fundamentals: - An emphasis on heavy compound lifting. - Sensible workout programming. - Ensuring you recover adequately. - Proper diet and nutrition. Everything that falls outside of those boundaries should be viewed with a gimlet eye. As, at best, marginally important. Which brings us to the subject at hand: blood flow restriction training (also known as occlusion training). What is it? How is it supposed to work? How effective is it? Is it dangerous? How do you do it correctly? Well, this episode is going to give you answers to all those questions and more. By the end, you’re going to have everything you need to determine whether BFR is right for you and how to do it safely and effectively. 4:05 - What is blood flow restriction training? 4:50 - How does blood flow restriction work? 6:17 - How does blood flow restriction affect muscle growth? 12:51 - What are the benefits of blood flow restriction? 14:18 - Is blood flow restriction safe? 16:08 - How do you use blood flow restriction correctly? 19:00 - What are common mistakes that people make with blood flow restriction training? Want to get my best advice on how to gain muscle and strength and lose fat faster? Sign up for my free newsletter! Click here: https://www.muscleforlife.com/signup/

Hey, Mike here. And if you like what I'm doing here on the podcast and elsewhere, and if you want to help me help more people get into the best shape of their lives, please do consider supporting my sports nutrition company, Legion Athletics, which produces 100% natural evidence-based health and fitness supplements, including protein powders and protein bars, pre-workout and post-workout supplements, fat burners, multivitamins, joint support, and more. Head over to www.LegionAthletics.com now to check it out. And just to show how much I appreciate my podcast peeps, use the coupon code MFL at checkout and you will save 10% on your entire order and it'll ship free if you are anywhere in the United States. And if you're not, it'll ship free if your order is over $100. So again, if you appreciate my work and if you want to see more of it, please do consider supporting me so I can keep doing what I love, like producing podcasts like this.

Hello, hello, Mike Matthews here and welcome to another episode of the Muscle for Life podcast. This time around, we're going to be talking about blood flow restriction training or occlusion training as it is also often referred to because it is making waves of late. It sounds new. It sounds scientific. And some people are even saying it is revolutionary, which of course is a red flag, particularly in the health and fitness space, but really in every industry, in every space. If something is being introduced as revolutionary, it rarely really is. And because of that, blood flow restriction or occlusion training smacks of artifice. It's something that could

very well just be contrived by marketers to sell the latest batch of magazines, pills, and powders, and so forth. And so if you have been skeptical of it, then good, you should be. I would rather that than buying into it whole hog because some Instagram influencer says that it is the secret behind his 19 inch arms. You see, here is a good rule of thumb, something you can just kind of take to the bank as far as muscle building goes. Here's something you become more and more certain of the more educated you become. If something sounds too good to be true, if it sounds too easy or too effective or too innovative, it almost always is. Eventually you learn that there really is no shortcut to building a strong, muscular, lean body. There are right ways of doing things. There are wrong ways of doing things,

but at least 80% of your long-term results will come from diligent application of the fundamentals. You know, an emphasis on heavy compound weightlifting, sensible workout programming, ensuring that you are recovering adequately and you are managing your diet and nutrition correctly, particularly your energy balance and macronutrient balance. Everything that falls outside of those boundaries should be viewed with a gimlet eye as, at best, marginally important, which brings us to the subject at hand, blood flow restriction training, again, also often referred to as occlusion training. How is it supposed to work? How effective is it really? Is it dangerous? How do you do it correctly? Well, this podcast is going to give you answers to all those questions and more. And by the end of it, you are going to have everything you need to determine whether BFR is right for you and how to do it safely and effectively. All righty, so let's start with the most obvious question, and that is,

what is BFR? What is blood flow restriction training? Well, as the name would suggest, it involves restricting blood flow to a muscle group while training. It's also called occlusion training and KATSU training, K-A-A-T-S-U training. And the first thing you need to know about BFR is the goal is not to completely cut off blood supply to a muscle. It is simply to slow down the rate at which blood returns from the muscles to the heart. In other words, to trap blood in the muscles. And when you do this, when you cause blood to remain inside your muscles for longer than normal, it influences muscle physiology in several ways. And that brings me to how BFR works. You see, blood is the body's delivery system for oxygen, nutrients, glucose,

hormones, and other compounds that we need just to stay alive, let alone lift heavy weights, jump, run, and the like. And that's why muscles require a steady supply of blood to work. Your heart pumps blood to your muscles via arteries, which are large muscular walled tubes running throughout your body. And then that blood makes its way back to the heart through the veins, which are a different set of tubes crisscrossing your body. And when you engage in resistance training, and especially in higher rep ranges, the amount of blood going from your heart to your muscles outpaces the amount returning from your muscles to your heart. And that is part of why you get a pump when you lift weights.

That pump, however, does diminish when you rest in between sets because the arterial blood flow drops and blood is slowly evacuated from the engorged muscles back to the heart. And so the point of BFR, of blood flow restriction training, is to prolong the pump that you get. And this is accomplished by tying a band around the limb or limbs that you're training, which then allows blood to pump in but restricts the flow out. Now, pumps are cool and all. We all love getting a pump. But how could that possibly affect muscle growth? You might be wondering. Well, let us find out, shall we? And really the first question here is, can blood flow restriction training increase muscle growth?

And the short answer is yes, it actually can. And there are several ways that it does this. Let's quickly review each. So when you are working out, your muscle cells are burning through energy at a much faster rate than normal. And as they churn through their fuel stores, metabolic byproducts build up faster than your body can clear them out. And some of these molecules act as anabolic signals telling your body to increase muscle size and strength. Now, in technical jargon,

this process that I just described is known as metabolic stress, and it is one of the three primary ways, at least mechanical ways, that you can trigger muscle growth with progressive overload and muscle damage being the other two, and with progressive overload being the primary one. Now, because blood flow restriction training slows the rate at which these byproducts are flushed from your muscles, it allows them to hang around longer and have a greater anabolic effect on the muscle cells. In other words, BFR amplifies the muscle building power of metabolic stress. Now, resistance training also causes cells to expand and fill with fluid and nutrients. This is known as cellular swelling, and it too acts as a signal for muscle growth.

Now, occlusion training or BFR training magnifies the muscle building power of this as well, of the cellular swelling as well, by, you guessed it, increasing the amount of time that your muscle cells stay swollen. Now, research also shows that blood flow restriction can enhance genetic signaling pathways involved in muscle growth as well. You see, your body uses a complex network of chemical messengers to tell cells to grow or to shrink. Now, one of them that says grow is the protein called mammalian target of rapamycin or mTOR, M capital T-O-R, you might've seen that before. And one of the chemical messengers that says shrink is the

protein myostatin. Now, studies show that blood flow restriction training increases levels of mTOR and lowers myostatin levels, which creates an environment in your body that is more conducive to muscle growth. Now, blood flow restriction can also cause muscle cells to release their own anabolic hormones through a process called autocrine signaling. And by keeping blood pooled in the muscles for longer periods, these hormones have more time to interact with muscle cells. And yet another way that BFR can help you gain muscle faster has to do with what happens when you push your muscles to the point of failure, where you simply can't get another rep. Not technical failure, which is the point where you can't perform another rep with good form, but true muscle failure. You've probably heard that muscles only grow in response to the last few reps of your sets.

You know, the grinders that really light your muscle bellies on fire. And while that is not exactly true, it's not entirely off base either. You see, one of the easiest ways to ensure you continue to overload damage and fatigue your muscles is to frequently push them to failure or close to it. Of course, that's my general recommendation for training is close to it. One to two reps shy of failure is a good rule of thumb. When you do this, you activate much higher amounts of muscle tissue than with easier sets. If you were leaving, let's say five reps in the tank on your hard sets or your working sets, you wouldn't activate nearly as much of the muscle tissue as if you were leaving just one to two reps in the tank. And that alone positively influences muscle building.

And that is why regularly pushing your muscles to the point of failure or just shy of it is a very important aspect of gaining muscle and strength. It's really one of the fundamentals. Now, with a normal weightlifting set, you only reach this point of muscle failure, or at least close to muscle failure, at the very end of the set after you've done several reps. Therefore, if you wanted to increase the number of times your muscles taste failure in a workout, you just have to do more and more sets and more and more reps. And that's well and fine, but you can only do so much work per major muscle group per workout and per week before you reach the point and exceed the point of diminishing returns and before your body starts to fall behind in terms of recovery and then

symptoms related to overtraining can set in and so forth. And that's especially true if you are doing a lot of heavy compound weightlifting like you should be. Blood flow restriction training is helpful in this regard though, because while it doesn't inherently boost muscle activation levels more than normal training, it does allow you to achieve higher total levels of muscle activation in a workout with less muscle damage than would otherwise occur. In this way, BFR is similar to rest-pause training and, in a sense, kind of tricks your muscles into thinking that you are using much heavier weights than you really are. Hey, quickly, before we carry on, if you are liking my podcast,

would you please help spread the word about it? Because no amount of marketing or advertising gimmicks can match the power of word of mouth. So if you are enjoying this episode and you think of someone else who might enjoy it as well, please do tell them about it. It really helps me. And if you are going to post about it on social media, definitely tag me so I can say thank you. You can find me on Instagram at Muscle for Life Fitness, Twitter at Muscle for Life, and Instagram at MuscleForLifeFitness, Twitter at MuscleForLife, and Facebook at MuscleForLifeFitness. So let's summarize here. Let's summarize the benefits of BFR. By using lighter weights, your tendons, ligaments, and joints are not placed under as

much strain, which allows you to do more volume with less risk of injury or overtraining. And this can also be helpful if you are injured or you are dealing with some nagging aches and pains. BFR allows you to train more effectively with lighter weights that hopefully don't aggravate the problems that you are having. BFR is also nice when you are training in a poorly equipped gym because it allows you to produce a decent muscle building stimulus with lighter weights, like a hotel gym, for example, that just has a bunch of lighter dumbbells. Another benefit is assuming you are not a new weightlifter, research shows that adding BFR sets to heavy traditional sets can increase strength more than just heavy training alone. Another benefit on the list is if you are deloading or you're taking a

longer break from training, you can use BFR to better maintain your conditioning with much less muscle damage and fatigue. And last but not least, if you're just not feeling up to a heavy workout for whatever reason, you can use BFR to have an effective but less stressful training session. So as you can see, there are plenty of reasons to dabble with this rather unusual training method, but is it safe? Or should I say, is it dangerous? That's the question that I often get asked. And I understand because stinting blood supply to muscles while working out definitely sounds like a bad idea. It sounds like something that probably has a long list of nasty side effects, something that WebMD would not recommend. Surprisingly, though, research shows there is no evidence that blood flow restriction training is dangerous when it's done correctly, of course. Now, when you dig into the details, when you get past the first impression, this actually does make sense. Because remember, it only involves reducing blood flow out of the muscles, not stopping it from entering the muscles, which would be dangerous indeed. Now, this means, of course,

you have to make sure that the cuffs or the bands that you're using are not too tight. But as you will soon learn, this is pretty easy to do. If they are tight enough to cause problems, they are going to be very uncomfortable and you are going to start losing feeling in your limbs, which of course is impossible to miss. And even if you're the real gung-ho, no pain, no gain type, studies on medical tourniquets have shown that you would have to completely cut off blood flow to a limb for about two hours to cause nerve and muscle damage. So basically to get hurt with BFR, you have to deliberately try to get hurt. You have to really make a big mistake to mess it up. Now, one other common concern with occlusion training is that artificially increasing muscle pump and swelling is going to damage your muscles in some way. Some people claim that, and that is untrue. This will not happen. Remember, the same effects happen when you do a lot of reps to failure. BFR just makes those effects last a little bit longer.

All right, so now let's talk about how to do this correctly. How do you do blood flow restriction correctly? Well, the first thing you need to know about BFR is it is just for arm and leg training. There is no practical way to restrict blood flow in any other major muscle group. And the first thing you are going to need to actually do it is a way to reduce blood flow. Now, quick release medical tourniquets tend to be the best for the arms and elastic knee wraps or exercise bands are usually easiest for the legs. Next up is learning how to wrap your arms and legs properly. Now, if you're wrapping your arms, you got to make sure that the band is tucked into your armpit. If you're wrapping your legs, the bands should be nudged up against your crotch. Now, in terms

of tightness, you should be going for a nine out of 10 for the arms and a seven out of 10 for the legs. If you want to find a good video on this, just head over to the YouTubes and search for bodybuilding.com blood flow restriction, and you'll find a video. The title is Dymatized Project Mass Blood Flow Restriction, and it's a good breakdown of how to do it. So once you have the right tools and you know how to use them, you are ready to go. From here, all you need to know is one, you should just continue with your current strength training or weightlifting plan. Remember that BFR is something to be worked into a well-designed workout program. It should not be

all that you do or even the emphasis. Think of it as supplementary. You should also save blood flow restriction for your accessory exercises. So I still recommend that you begin your workouts with your heavy compound lifts, your hardest lifts. That's generally the best way to program. Of course, you can deviate from that for various reasons, but if you're like most people who are just wanting to gain whole body strength and size, you're going to want to start your workouts with your hardest sets. And those are the core muscle and strength builders, right? And so save the BFR for later in your workouts. And specifically, I recommend that you use it on your accessory exercises as they are generally called, you know, the isolation exercises that you can safely take to muscle failure,

the dumbbell curl and triceps press down and leg extension and hamstring curl and so forth. Now, as far as programming it goes, I recommend that you start with three to five BFR sets per workout. And at the end of your workout with a weight that allows you to do about 20 to 30 reps. So it's going to be somewhere around 50% of your one rep max if you are an experienced weightlifter. And I also recommend a 202 rep cadence, which means two seconds down, no pause, and about two seconds up. And that's really all there is to it. Now, before I sign off, I have to share four mistakes, four BFR mistakes that people make that I do not want you to make. Because while it is pretty simple, there are definitely ways to mess this benefit them. So studies show that beginners actually don't benefit as much from BFR as more advanced weightlifters. And the reason for this is very simple because when you are new to weightlifting, your body is hyper responsive to

it, right? So it reaches its anabolic ceiling, so to speak fairly easily with the simple stuff, proper diet, progressive overload, heavy compound weightlifting. So including BFR is just unnecessary. So practically speaking, then I recommend that if you have less than a year of proper weightlifting under your belt, shelve BFR for now, just stick with traditional lifting and get into your intermediate phase before you dabble with it. and get into your intermediate phase before you dabble with it. Now, the exception here would be injury. So if you're a newbie, but you're injured, you can definitely use BFR to get in some volume while you recover. Another common mistake is tightening the tourniquets way too much until they hurt. Now, remember, you're not looking to cut off blood flow completely. You want to use enough pressure to restrict the blood flow

back to the heart, but not so much that blood simply can't even make its way into your muscles. So as I mentioned earlier, the sweet spot is a tightness of about seven to nine on a scale of one to 10, nine with your arms and about seven with your legs. Another common mistake with BFR is just using too much weight. Now, when you do BFR for the first time, one of the things that will likely strike you is just how quickly you run out of steam. And that's why you want to err on the side of using less weight with your BFR training, not more. So start light and increase incrementally until you've got it really dialed in. Another mistake here, the fourth and final mistake is exclusively using BFR instead of

heavy weight training. And I know I've said this a couple of times, but I'm just going to say it again, that blood flow restriction training is not a replacement for traditional weightlifting. While it does produce more metabolic stress than just normal lifting, it does not produce much muscle damage or overload, which are much more powerful muscle building stimuli. And there's also the issue here of exercise limitations. If you want to build a strong muscular physique as quickly as possible, you are going to have to focus on several key lifts and get strong on them. You're going to have to squat on several key lifts and get strong on them. You're going to have to squat and deadlift and bench press and military press. And BFR only lends

itself to the squat out of that list. Okay. So those are all the key points I wanted to cover. And I know that workout magazines love to recycle old training methods as breakthroughs that will help you build muscle and gain strength faster than ever before. Most of these things are overblown or unproven or proven to not work. Blood flow restriction, on the other hand, is a legitimate science-based way to squeeze more muscle growth out of your training by itself. It can produce similar results to traditional strength training. And when combined with it, the overall results are magnified. That said, it is not worth the hassle if you're new to weightlifting because it's really not going to have any noticeable effects. It's really for people who are into their intermediate

phase and beyond as a weightlifter. So if that's you, if you are an experienced weightlifter, at least one year of proper lifting in the books, or if you are injured or maybe you're just limited in equipment, then you may be able to benefit from blood flow restriction training. Hey, Mike here. And if you like what I'm doing here on the podcast and elsewhere, and if you want to help me help more people get into the best shape of their lives, please do consider supporting my sports nutrition company, Legion Athletics, which produces 100% natural evidence-based health and fitness supplements, including protein powders and protein bars, pre-workout and

post-workout supplements, fat burners, multivitamins, joint support, and more. Head over to www.legionathletics.com now to check it out. And just to show how much I appreciate my podcast peeps, use the coupon code MFL at checkout and you will save 10% on your entire order. And it'll ship free if you are anywhere in the United States. And if you're not, it'll ship free if your order is over $100. So again, if you appreciate my work, and if you want to see more of it, please do consider supporting me so I can keep doing what I love, like producing podcasts like this.