Myths and Misconceptions of Blood Flow Restriction Training

And consequently, we get a lot of questions in the inbox from customers or perspective customers around implications of BFR training. And of course we end up addressing quite a few myths. So the goal of this podcast is to maybe create a one stop reference source for a bulk. Again, there's four specifically that we're gonna go through. So what we'll do is highlight the myth and talk about where it came from. So kind of the origins of the myth.

In other words, what about it kind of makes sense, maybe, uh, the partial truth to it. And then we will realign it to reality. So that is the goal of the episode, starting with myth number one, which is BFR is dangerous. Kind of understandable, given the name of the modality. Blood flow restriction sounds very counterintuitive. But in general the literature suggests that blood flow restriction training is safe and it's as safe as intensity matched exercise.

But where did the kind of origin of this come from? Well, of course, like I said, the name is one thing that could kind of turn somebody's eye, but really where this came from is that blood flow restriction training increases the intensity of your training. If the load or intensity isn't adjusted to match.

So a good example, I've given this example a couple times, but if you were to walk at a certain speed, we'll call it four miles an hour on the treadmill, I guess that'd be like kind of a power walk on a treadmill with a little bit of an incline, just to be specific. We'll call it a incline seven for 10 minutes. And then you were to repeat that same exact workout with the same per. With blood flow restriction cuffs on, of course the BFR session is gonna be more difficult.

It's almost every odd that your heart rate will be higher. You'll be breathing harder with the BFR cuffs on, and we've gone through this in previous episodes. But what that will generally do is you'll have a, you know, training itself, whether it's BFR or not, will increase your blood pressure a bit. It's a very natural response to the demand of, uh, of your training. So if we were to just look at that without considering the context, we would say, hold on a second. BFR raised blood pressure.

You know, BFR raises blood pressure compared to traditional training. Well, what it did was it just made the, the session more difficult in other. If you were to on the non BFR portion, just maybe raise the incline or raise the speed a bit or a combination of the two to kind of match the intensity of what the BFR cuffs brought. The blood pressure response would broadly be equivalent, and you know, any other physiological parameters would be pretty equivalent.

Which is to say if you just look from afar and make a judgment call on blood flow Restric. You'll notice that there are some physiological changes that would happen, But in instances where the loader intensity is, We'll generally see no difference or no discernible or significant difference in things like blood pressure between the BFR and the non BFR group. There's actually several studies that report higher blood pressure in the traditional resistance training group.

Again, that's not to say there's anything wrong with traditional resistance training. It's just, uh, something to, to pay attention to and understand that the root of this myth just comes. In any literature that hasn't matched loader intensity, it's kind of easy to say, hold on a second, what's happening here with bfr? Why was blood pressure increased? beyond things like blood pressure, there's, you know, muscle damage.

There's a couple different ways that we can measure markers of muscle damage. And again, if you were to perform the same, I you could do this. This has been done many times not just in BFR literature, but kind of a crossover design where. You have a subject, put a BFR cuff only on one leg, and then perform the same workout.

There's gonna be much more, damage and disruption in that limb because you know they're being taken closer to failure on that leg because of the reduced oxygen and blood flow into the limb and probably the cell swelling that's happening from blood leaving the.

So again, if you were to just look at that broadly, or if you were to look at two groups who do the same exact resistance training session, one of them with BFR cuffs on on and one group without, you're probably gonna see greater markers of muscle damage in the B FFR group unless again, they were to match and increase the load on the non B FFR group. So that's sort of the origins of where people may have made the incorrect assumption that BFR is dangerous.

Uh, but BFR has been studied directly now even on, uh, elderly patients with congestive heart failure at least three times that I'm aware of, and there were no adverse effects. in any of these studies. The central theme here is just that BFR will increase the intensity of your session. So its safety is broadly equivalent to non BFR training of that intensity. Of course, we put this disclaimer at the end of every episode, uh, but I'm gonna include it here given we're discussing safety.

Uh, this is not medical advice, and if you have a history of D V T or blood clots speak with your doctor first. Or if you have any concerns about applying Bfr s modality. This is just a literature review on the current landscape of level restriction training. And again, not medical advice. But with that outta the way, let's move on to myth number two, which is that BFR is only for rehabilitation.

So that's obviously where B FFR got its start from a, a research perspective, but the applications extend far beyond injury recovery and just think about this logically. You know, if we ask ourselves, well, why is it beneficial for injury rehab? Well, it allows you to or gain muscle and strength at lower loads. And that should beg the question. Okay, well, well then if it can do that, then when else would it be beneficial? And we've gone through this.

We have a full episode called Four Situations to Train B F. But, uh, one instance would be, you know, think about deloading when you, for, for one reason or another heavy loads are too much, uh, systemic fatigue for either systemic fatigue for you to handle or for your joints or connective tissue to handle.

Another one would be when you have a time constraint, generally bfr, you can get, uh, achieve a certain stimulus in a shorter, a more compressed time window because the, the rest intervals are shorter and the rep ranges are higher. And what the higher rep ranges lead to is just, well, you don't need to spend as much time warming up as you would training it. You know, the five to 10 rep. And then when weights aren't available.

So that's another situation, uh, where bfr makes a lot of sense of your traveling, you know, limited access to weights. Um, maybe you just don't have a gym membership. In general, the added stimulus of blood flow restriction cuffs will help you get more out of your limited or body weight only training session. But you know, if you want more detail on this, you can look at our podcast called, uh, I think it's when should you train BFR for Situations to Apply the modality? Something like that.

And that's myth number two. Uh, that bfr is only for rehab. Myth number three is that BFR itself will directly make you stronger. Wait a second. All the literature seems to suggest that B FFR can increase your strength at low loads. That is true, but. Nothing can replace heavy resistance training. If your goal, if you're a power lifter or somebody who's, you know, max strength is the goal. Uh, you cannot get around moving heavy weight. Will, will you get stronger? Will most people get stronger?

Applying bfr to their resistance training. Sure. Uh, it'll allow you to put on muscle and muscle. Larger cross-sectional area of muscle generally comes along with an increased capacity to produce force. But there are neural adaptations that you, you need to. Begin to move heavier weights. The only way to build those adaptations are to move heavy weights.

So if somebody comes to me and says, my goal is to get as strong as possible, I'm not gonna prescribe BFR training as a primary modality in their training. Uh, there's a reason why. You know, power lifters, you don't see them training under BFR for their, squat bench and deadlift sessions. Of course, there's a time and a place I mentioned this on the last episode, but, and I'll probably mention this a hundred more times, but you know, specificity is a primary, uh, pillar of sports science.

And, it says we should either train the thing that we're trying to get good at or the underlying systems and structures that support that thing. In this case, BFR can be a good option for building muscle at maybe a reduced cost on the joints of connective tissue, and that muscle can later be converted to strength. So maybe in the case of a power lifter, um, Who's further out from competition perhaps, and is just needs a break on the joints.

A connective tissue feels like lighter loads are the move for now. This is where BFR can make sense cuz it, it can allow this, this, uh, athlete to accumulate some volume, continue training even when, maybe fatigued or connective tissues too disrupted, et cetera. And it can allow bad. Build or maintain muscle during that time period.

But overall, I think just the, the myth should be dispelled that, you know, it's not that B FFR can't make you stronger, it's that it should be pretty far down on your priority list. If your goal is, if you're trying to be a power lifter, you're trying to move as much weight as possible, you need to to prioritize heavy lifting first. Myth number four is that you need expensive equipment to train bfr. And this, this myth has dissipated a bit over the last three or four years.

And of course this is gonna be kind of a, this section, it serves as a bit of ad for our product. I think many people that listen to this podcast. Aren't aware that saga is, uh, we're a world leader in blood flow restriction technology. We produce Bluetooth-enabled blood flow restriction cuffs. Uh, and I promised when we launched this podcast that I wouldn't mention this very often and I hope that I've stuck by that.

It's, it's been very rare that I brought this up, but that to say, I think historically on the. Of course, the first on the scene, if you're familiar with blood flow restriction, is a company called Delphi. And it's a bit cost intensive and training intensive. So I, I'm not sure the exact price, I'm not gonna quote them, uh, here, but I know that it's, uh, indie, what is that four-ish figures range, uh, that cost is. Fairly extensive, and it does require training.

And there are, uh, the cons there is the constraint of cables. So it's not a wireless solution. And so when we launched, we saw, okay, there's Delphi, which is fairly expensive, requires some training, and there's the constraint of the cables. You know, it's not a wireless solution, making movement a little bit less free. And then the other options on the market. Uh, either just straight kind of rubber bands or straps.

You can see these for 20 ish bucks on Amazon, which give you absolutely zero data on how much blood is being occluded. Um, there's no, there's no measurement involved or calibration involved there or a manually inflated pump. So you kind of had this, this high low where you have this really expensive gold standard device and then you have beneath it, there's these manual pumps and.

Uh, just general straps or bands, and we thought there's a space for something that has accuracy and precision that's wireless, uh, and doesn't require manual inflation. You should be able to, you shouldn't have to sacrifice, uh, calibration and automatic nature of, of finding the right pressure. You shouldn't have to sacrifice that at a lower cost. And so that's where we launch. Saga Fitness, the Bluetooth enabled blood flow restriction cuffs.

They'll auto calibrate with one tap and allow you to kind of select your specific occlusion percentage. You can find out more. I'm gonna be done here. You can find out more@saga.fitness. Uh, but if you have any questions about our product, you can email me personally. Uh, my email is Steven Saga Fitness. That's Steven with a V. Okay. That's all for today. Uh, that kind of wraps up this myth busting episode. I hope this brought a bit of clarity around some of the common misconceptions.

We may turn this into a series. Uh, as more kind of myths and mis misconceptions come to the surface, it's, it's hard, it's easy to forget sometimes that bfr is still in its infancy, so there's more, more to learn and more myths I'm sure will arise over the next few years. So, but that's all for now, and we will see you all on the next episode.