Effects of Blood Flow Restriction Training with Protein Supplementation on Muscle Mass And Strength in Older Men

• Main Author: Christoph Centner, Denise Zdzieblik, Llion Roberts, Albert Gollhofer, Daniel König
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: University of Uludag 2019-09-01
• Series: Journal of Sports Science and Medicine
• Subjects: Blood flow restriction; sarcopenia; protein supplementation; muscular hypertrophy; magnetic resonance imaging; aging
• Online Access: https://www.jssm.org/hf.php?id=jssm-18-471.xml

Blood flow restriction (BFR) training has been shown to induce favorable changes in muscle mass and strength with a considerably low training load (20 – 30% 1RM). However, it has never been evaluated if an additional post-exercise protein supplementation enhances the effects of this training regimen. Thirty healthy older men (60.1 ± 7.6 years) were enrolled in the 8-week intervention and randomly allocated to one of the following groups: low-load BFR training with protein (collagen hydrolysate) supplementation (BFR-CH), low-load BFR training with placebo (BFR-PLA), or a control group without training, but with protein supplementation (CON). Muscle cross-sectional area (CSA), muscle strength, circulating reactive oxygen species and IGF-1 were measured before and after the intervention. Muscle CSA increased in both BFR-CH and BFR-PLA groups by 6.7 ± 3.2 % (p < 0.001) and 5.7 ± 2.7 % (p < 0.001) respectively. No significant changes were observed in the CON group (1.1 ± 1.7 %, p = 0.124). Evaluation of isometric strength (p = 0.247), insulin-like growth factor 1 (p = 0.705) and the production of reactive oxygen species (pt1 = 0.229; pt2 = 0.741) revealed no significant interaction effect but a significant long-term time effect (p < 0.001). Our results demonstrate that BFR training is an effective alternative for increasing muscle CSA in older men. Although there was a trend towards greater muscle mass adaptations in the BFR-CH group, these findings showed no statistical significance. Further research with larger sample sizes is needed to confirm these results.