Research article - (2019)18, 471 - 478
Effects of Blood Flow Restriction Training with Protein Supplementation on Muscle Mass And Strength in Older Men
Christoph Centner1,, Denise Zdzieblik1, Llion Roberts2, Albert Gollhofer1, Daniel König1
1Department of Sport and Sport Science, University of Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany
2School of Allied Health Sciences, Griffith University, Gold Coast, Australia

Christoph Centner
✉ Department of Sport and Sport Science, University of Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany
Email: christoph.centner@sport.uni-freiburg.de
Received: 28-02-2019 -- Accepted: 22-05-2019
Published (online): 01-08-2019

ABSTRACT

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.

Key words: Blood flow restriction, sarcopenia, protein supplementation, muscular hypertrophy, magnetic resonance imaging, aging

Key Points
  • Blood flow restriction training is an effective training strategy for increasing muscle adaptations in older people.
  • The addition of collagen hydrolysate demonstrated a positive trend towards higher increases in muscle mass and strength but did not reach statistical significance.
  • Further studies are needed to verify these effects with bigger sample sizes.








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