PPP 004: Good Vibrations: Your Key to Faster Recovery
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The information you are about to hear is for education purposes only. Please consult your doctor before attempting to implement anything covered in the following episode.
What you will learn in this podcast
- What is whole body periodic acceleration
- The difference between concentric and eccentric muscular contractions
- Why whole body periodic acceleration speeds recovery from muscle damage
- How it can help you
- How to apply it to your restoration & regeneration (recovery) plan
Research Review:
Medicine & Science In Sports & Exercise
The official Journal of the American College of Sports Medicine
Volume 48 * Number 8 August 2016
Whole Body Periodic Acceleration Improves Muscle Recovery after Eccentric Exercise
Jose Rafael Lopez, Alfredo Mijares
Dept. of Molecular Biosciences, School of Veterinary Medicine, University of California, Davis
This is a very interesting study and is useful for most athletes, since virtually all athletes utilize some degree of eccentric movements (from power lifter lifters, gymnasts, Cross-fitters, obstacle racers, runners or team sports players).
To begin, let’s just briefly review what is meant by eccentric exercise.
Eccentric Exercises involve movements that require muscles to produce a contraction force while lengthening. Best example is doing a negative, where one lays on a flat bench, grabs a weighted bar off the rack and slowly lowers the weight to their chest. The pectoral muscles and anterior deltoids and triceps are firing or producing a contraction force while the muscle fibers themselves are lengthening. These types of movements have long been shown to produce more muscle damage as compared to concentric exercises which involve movements that require muscles to produce contraction forces while shortening. Any of you who have done negative workouts will attest to this, how much more sore you after such a workout compared to a typical more concentric based workout.
Because Eccentric exercise creates more damage compared to concentric exercises they are often better choices for those looking to make the most strength gains because the added damage induces the body to rebuild the worked muscles a greater degree than what occurs after concentric exercise (greater supercompensation). The only catch is, and it is a significant one, is that recovery from eccentric exercises is longer.
The majority of athletes that that strength train will utilize eccentric exercise at some point to maximize their gains, often done in the off-season when the focus is on building overall strength & power.
Many sports require eccentric movements throughout each training session or competition. Rapid deceleration, is probably the most commonly seen eccentric movement in all of sports. The examples are really endless. Pitchers eccentrically fire muscles to slow down their arm after they immediately release the ball, as do tennis players the moment they strike every ball. Football, basketball and soccer players need to eccentrically fire leg muscles when quickly breaking to change direction and so on.
THE Essence of Study;
Took mice, had them run on a downhill simulating treadmill which produced the additional muscle damage as expected compared to standard running. The underwent 1 training session of 45min to produce the muscle damage.
Control group: received no recover tx.
Test group: received 1 hr per day of whole body periodic acceleration by means of a motion platform (Scilogex, SK-L 180 Pro)
Results: Whole body periodic acceleration group showed statistically significant improvements in recovery as compared to the control group. What is particularly interesting is how many different aspects of physiology where positively affected.
- Accelerated the recovery of muscle cell contractions of both calcium ions and sodium ions
- Accelerated the return of normal membrane potential
- Decreased the degree of muscle actual damage, which typically peaks 24-48hr after the EE
Mechanisms of action, the headward-footward (vertical displacement) direction of the repetitive motion caused by the motion platform is responsible for a number of positive physiological effects in the muscle cells.
- Induces the formation of nitric oxide which itself does the following
- improves circulation by causing vasodilation of blood vessels
- Improves muscle glucose uptake, speeding recovery
- Improves mitochondrial function
- Aids to regulate inflammation and improves myogenesis by stimulating myoblast proliferation
Application:
For Athletes that undergo eccentric exercise muscle damage (planned or unplanned) incorporating whole body periodic acceleration, beginning on the day of exercise may significantly speed the recovery process.
How:
Whole body vibration plate. They have exploded in popularity over the last 10 or so years and can now be found in many sports medicine centers, athletic training facilities and even individual homes as smaller more cost effective units are now available.
Looking for a low tech solution: Try a rebounder 10-15min. Although the frequency and amplitude will be significantly different than any motor driven vibration plate, one would think that there should be some gains to be had in terms of recovery since the body will be moving in a headward-footward motion with a relatively even period…outside the box but cheap, easy to implement and already proven to improve lymphatic system flow….that’s my final cent or two on that.
I hope you found this study as interesting as I did, again it can be found in
Medicine & Science In Sports & Exercise
The official Journal of the American College of Sports Medicine
Volume 48 * Number 8 August 2016
LINKS
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