BFR Radio

Using passive BFR to improve swimming performance in elite swimmers

 Hi everyone and welcome back to BFR radio. Thanks for joining in. Hope your training or your coaching's going well. Before I head into today's article review a quick reminder that if you're looking for practical ideas on how to implement BFR into your own training, check out my Instagram, which is @chrisgaviglio, or my YouTube channel,  which is SportsRehabAus.  I've also been added in 60 seconds snippets, and that's been particularly with my Twitter and my Instagram, I'd actually love to hear if you're enjoying the best bits of the podcast. Also, if you have any burning questions, come and join me for your questions answered. This is where you get to ask a question or two and I'll answer it and everyone gets to learn. So if you do have a question, please contact me and we can have a chat. If you're not keen to come onto the podcast, that's fine. I'll fashion the question into my own chat and I'll  just put something together as well.

In today's episode we're going to get off the land and we're looking at the use of BFR to improve swimming performance. Something that I'm not good at, but the article anyway is called,

Remote preconditioning improves maximal performance in highly trained athletes. 

Medicine and science in sports and exercise, 43(7), 1280-1286.

Jean-St-Michel, E., Manlhiot, C., Li, J., Tropak, M., Michelsen, M. M., Schmidt, M. R., ... & Redington, A. N. (2011).

 

This paper in particular focuses on the effect that ischemic preconditioning can have on the swimming performance. There are a few papers that I've actually reviewed on ischemic preconditioning and my podcast with Sam Hally looked at ischemic preconditioning. And he also spoke about a few great papers that he authored as part of his thesis. And the application of ischemic preconditioning is passive. And although the goal of this mini-series was to focus on BFR and sports specific training, this is still a really great paper to go through in respect to specific sports performance.

 

If you enjoy the podcast, please give it a rating on ITunes And if you're interested in purchasing your own set of BFR cuffs, please visit my website, which again is sportsrehab.com.au. And I can also help you with your training so contact me via my website or through my socials, which is @chrisgaviglio.

Once again. Thanks for listening. Appreciate your time remember to keep the pump. 

BFR Running - improve your training session response and performance

Welcome back to this episode of BFR radio.

And this is episode number two in a short mini series on the use of BFR in relation to sports performance or sports performance outcomes. And if you remember, in the previous episode, I said that the Olympics inspired me on this short little mini series here.

At the time  I was actually in Cairns with the Australian track and field team. Within that team, I work with three athletes, Riley Day who ran a massive PB in the women's 200m. And the two decathletes Cedric Dubler and also Ash Maloney. Now, Ash Maloney won a bronze medal, which is, best ever result for an Australian in an Olympics for the decathlon. And also Cedric Dubler who there was some really great images of him encouraging Ash on  to ensure that Ash got home in the correct time or close enough to his other competitors to ensure that he secured that bronze medal. 

But what is even more significant, which was amazing and I alluded to something potentially pretty special in the previous episode was that I'm not sure if anyone knew, but about two and a half to three weeks prior to the start of the competition, Cedric tore his hamstring, a grade two medial hamstring and there was actually a little bit of tendon involvement as well. Now, typically when we rehab a hamstring, it's four to six weeks and more so six weeks plus when we're talking about track and field athletes, because of the velocities that they've got a sprint at.

Now what he was able to do was actually got back to 95% of his maximum speed within 11 days. That's right. Within 11 days. And also within two weeks or so, he actually started the competition and he actually competed comparatively to his personal best.

How did we do it? Aside from good rest, having good physiotherapists, good nutrition, and just being able to focus on training and recovery, I absolutely used BFR to its fullest extent in relation to this rehab. There's been a lot of articles that I've reviewed around improvement in anabolic hormones, improvement in stem cell proliferation, improvement in muscle repair, decreasing in pain improvement in recovery. And I used it three to four times a day. Whether it was activating the correct musculature prior to strength or  running sessions, whether it was to be used in between sessions to help with recovery, whether we used it with upper body, when he couldn't train his lower body in that really initial acute phase, I really maximized all the activation of the different pathways that potentially could have helped. And I really can't explain it how we did it any quicker. Some say that medial hamstrings potentially you can run quicker on them than, other hamstring injuries. But this guy competed at an elite level at Olympics in just over two weeks. So it was really amazing. And perhaps if you want to hear this a little bit more, I'll put this into a podcast so please do let me know. So that was really exciting for me.  So well done to Cedric for believing in the process and perhaps believing in that a lot of work needs to be done and that it can be done within two weeks. 

Back to the mini-series, today's episode is something that most of us can do and it's called, "The effect of muscle blood flow restriction during running training on measures of aerobic capacity and run time to exhaustion". The primary author is Carl Peyton and comes out of the Institute of technology, Napier in New Zealand.

 

Hope you enjoy this one.

 

Before I go, a couple of favors from me to you. If you know of someone who would benefit from this episode, please share it.  

If you're enjoying the podcast, please give it a rating on iTunes.

And if you're interested in purchasing your own set of BFR cuffs, please visit my website, which is sportsrehab.com.au.

And I can also help you with your training. So contact me via my website or DME through my socials, which is @chrisgaviglio.  

Thanks for listening, see you next episode, and remember to keep the pump.

Using BFR in Futsal small sided games to improve game specific fitness

 Welcome back to this episode of BFR radio.

As I'm recording this episode, it actually coincides with the start of the 2020, or should I say 2021 Tokyo Olympic summer games. I'm actually currently sitting in my hotel room in Cairns far, north Queensland, helping out with the Australian track and field team in particular, I work with three athletes, one sprinter, female, 200 meter runner  Riley Day and also 2 decathletes, Ashley Moloney and Cedric Dubler.

And there'll be competing very soon. So keeping an eye out for them.  With respect to these athletes, I mainly do their strength programs, but I'm also the shot put and discus coach for the two decathletes, it's actually been a really exciting few weeks seeing the athletes finalize their preparation.

And as it's the Olympics, I thought it would be fitting that this mini series would look at how to use BFR in sporting movements  or for the benefit or performance of sporting outcomes. I thought that was fitted well with the theme of the Olympics, and it might give a sports coach and idea for their own athletes on how they can incorporate it for the benefit of sporting perform.

Now, also remember that they are contra-indications for BFR use and this needs to be taken in the correct context. For example, if your athletes have a low training age, you need to firstly, ensure that they're covering the big rocks with respect to training and recovery, and you actually might have more benefit in getting the simple things correct before even contemplating doing blood flow restriction.

 Onto the article  and the one that I'm going to review today is called,

Occlusion training during specific futsal training improves aspects of physiological and physical performance.

Journal of sports science & medicine, 19(2), 374.

Amani-Shalamzari, S., Sarikhani, A., Paton, C., Rajabi, H., Bayati, M., Nikolaidis, P. T., & Knechtle, B. (2020).  

 Although, futsal is not in the Olympics, soccer for my southern hemisphere friends, or  football for my European friends is. Therefore I thought that the concept in the training of, and the movements performed are quite similar.

This is a great practical use of BFR in a sporting movement. Hope you enjoy it.

Before you head off and listen to the podcast, a couple of favours from me to you.

If you know of someone who would benefit from this episode, please share it.

And also, if you're enjoying the podcast, please give it a rating on iTunes.

If you're interested in purchasing your own set of BFR cuffs, I've got my own brand called the Sports Rehab Tourniquet And you can get this by visiting my website, which is www.sportsrehab.com.au.

I could also help you with your training so contact me via my website or DM me through my socials, which is @chrisgaviglio Instagram and also Twitter. For video training ideas also check out my YouTube channel SportsRehabAus.

 

Thanks for listening and remember to keep the pump. 

Using BFR to improve recovery & rehab from shoulder & ankle surgery - Your Questions Answered

Welcome back to BFR radio. Thanks for joining in. Today's episode is Your Questions Answered and I've really been enjoying this so if you, have a burning question about BFR and how you're going to use it in your own setting or scenario get ahold of me and we'll set up a call on the internet and I'll be able to actually tailor this to exactly what you need and hopefully demystify everything about BFR and put a real practical spin on it.

Before I get into today's episode, remember if you're looking for BFR cuffs, you can actually get it from my website, which is www.sportsrehab.com.au  and I have tons of content on my Instagram, which is @chrisgaviglio  and also on my YouTube channel, which is SportsRehabAus.  Today's episode is a gentleman called Declan Dinnen and he plays for the Bond University Premier rugby team based on the Gold Coast.

 Now, two things he's going on. One is his shoulder. He's had major surgery on his right shoulder and he's about three months post and he's having struggling a little bit with some range of movement.

And the second thing is that he has got a Haglund's deformity. In his ankle on both legs and he is shortly going to go into surgery. As you will find out in my conversation with Declan, he really struggles to move and to do anything that's dynamic.

Today's podcast is really practical and I cover a lot of information which I am sure you'll get a lot out of it. As I get to the end of the conversation, we then talk a little more so stayed tuned all of the way until the end. 

Hope you enjoy this podcast. If you know of someone who will benefit from the episode please share it and if you enjoy it please give it a rating on iTunes.   

Thanks for listening and remember to keep the pump.

 

Chris

 

Wrestling training with BFR – how to improve physical & technical capacity of wrestlers

Hi everyone. And welcome back to this episode of BFR radio. Hope your own training is going well. Thank you for all of your questions about blood flow restriction. And if you do have any burning questions of your own, please DM me through my social channels, which is @chrisgaviglio or my website contact us page, which is www.sportsrehab.com.au.

A reminder that I have an introduction to BFR presentation on the play education platform. That's P L AE. This is a fantastic initiative by PLAE. And the goal is actually to extend my one hour to my full BFR workshop on this online platform. So stay tuned for that. And I'll definitely let you know. There's also a lot of other fantastic presentations and courses on this platform so make sure you check it out. Click here: https://plaeacademy.com

 

Today's episode is going to be the last episode in relation to this upper body short mini series in BFR. And recently I've been focusing on how BFR can be used effectively in different upper body scenarios. 

In particular, we looked at the muscular benefits with low load BFR bench, press and practical bicep curls. The third episode highlighted the benefits of using BFR for wrist fractures and the fourth, and the penultimate episode showed that we can improve grip, strength and size using something very simple as hand squeezing type exercises.

Hence, I thought it was a really great segue to today's episode, which is more of a practical sporting example, and really the title says it all:

Effect of exercise program with blood flow restriction on upper limb vasculature and performance in wrestlers.

Ghoraba, M., Ghazy, M., & El Tomey, M. (2017).

IJSSA, 2, 298-327.

 

In the study I mentioned a technique called a Gut Wrench. Here is the link to a good video explaining it if you're interested:

Click here to see Gut Wrench technique video

I really like this study with respect to the practical applications of BFR to a sport. There's actually a few other sports specific studies starting to appear in literature, which really highlights the positive application of BFR.

In closing, if there's a topic of interest you'd like me to cover in this short mini series please let me know, as I'm really interested in knowing what interests you. Thanks again for listening.

Hope you've enjoyed it.

If you do know of someone who would benefit from this episode, please share it.

And if you haven't got a set of your own BFR cuffs, please visit my website, which is www.sportsrehab.com.au, where you can purchase the Sports Rehab Tourniquet.

I can also help you with your training. So please contact me via my website. or, DM me through my socials, which is @chrisgaviglio.

Lastly, if you're enjoying the podcast, please give it a rating on iTunes. Thanks for listening and remember to keep the pump.

BFR Handgrip training - improve your grip strength & forearm size.

Welcome back to this episode of BFR Radio, hope you're doing well. Remember if you have any questions about BFR, please DM me through my social channels, which is @chrisgaviglio on Instagram or Twitter, or alternatively through my website, contact us, or actually it's just me page, which is sportsrehab.com.au. I've been actually receiving a few messages, so thanks for reaching out and I'll definitely be incorporating them into the podcast over the coming episodes. If you're looking for some good BFR learning opportunities, I've teamed up with PLAE who are known for  really top quality sports flooring.  They have an education arm as well and I've produced an introduction to BFR presentation.  This is an hour long presentation, which has some learning opportunities or learning questions along the way. So you can actually test your understanding of BFR and actual goal is to put my full BFR workshop on this online learning platform. So stay tuned for that.

Click here for the PLAE website and access my course: https://plaeacademy.com

 

There are lots of other great courses that are available to you from some of the top S&C coaches, all around the world so make sure you check them out.

And also talking about just general BFR information, I also appear on another podcast with a fellow health specialist. Her name is Zora, and she actually goes by the Instagram handle @hackmyage. And overall she interviews lots of fantastic guests looking at ways to, I guess, Biohack their own health.  This can range from anything, from exercise to nutrition, to breathing, cold water immersion, and so forth.

Click here to check out her website & other great information: Click to find out more about Zora

Click here to link to my podcast with Zora on BFR: Podcast with Zora

So moving on to today's article we're going to look at hand grip strength. And in particular, it's called:

Effects of handgrip training with venous restriction on brachial artery vasodilation

Credeur, D. P., Hollis, B. C., & Welsch, M. A. (2010).

Medicine and science in sports and exercise, 42(7), 1296.

And this serves as a really good segue for my next episode, where it'll actually be the last in the mini series on BFR upper body. And it's actually going to look at how you can use BFR in upper body training to help athletes where improved grip or grappling ability is really important.

And if you do know of someone who would benefit from this episode, please share it. I really do appreciate all your interactions.  And if you haven't got your own set of BFR cuffs, please visit my website, which is sportsrehab.com.au.

And I can also help you with your own training so once again, contact me through my website or my socials.  

If you enjoy the podcast, I'd appreciate if you give it a rating, on iTunes.

Thanks for listening, see at the next episode. And remember to keep the pump.

Using BFR to rehab from a foot (navicular) fracture - Your Questions Answered.

Thanks again for joining me on this month's episode and the last three episodes we've delved into the upper body BFR mini series. In particular, we looked at article reviews with respect to muscular benefits of BFR Bench Press, and bicep curls.

And the last episode we looked at how it could be used to improve recovery from a hand fracture or more so improving pain and function with the addition of BFR to a normal rehab program for a hand fracture. 

And for today's episode, like they say, variety's the spice of life. So we're going to take a small break from the mini-series and we're actually going to go into your questions answered. And although this wasn't a specific, your questions answered, I do get a lot of questions from people out there, like yourself who have actually got their own question.

And afterwards I sat down and I wrote some notes and I thought I'd actually formulate it into this episode you've got here. The question I have today is from an athletics Sprint's coach, and he has an athlete who has a foot fracture of the navicular bone. Now this  can be quite a serious injury if not looked after properly.

His question was around how we could use BFR within his rehab and return to run program. With respect to this injury, I'm going to be talking about the affected limb and that's going to be the foot that has the fracture.

 

This is a really practical episode with lots of different uses for BFR in this scenario. I hope you enjoy it.  

 

If you know of someone who has a similar kind of injury and you would benefit from listening to this episode, please share it.

If you are actually going through the same injury and you want some guidance on how you could be using in your own training, I could actually help you with that as well. So please contact me via my website or DM me through my socials on Twitter or Instagram, which is @chrisgaviglio.

Also there's loads of information on my website, which is www.sportsrehab.com.au. And I also have a YouTube channel, which has SportsRehabAus. Thanks for listening. I'll see you next week, when we're going to get back into the upper body mini series. Good luck with your training and remember to keep the pump.

 

Chris

Using BFR for hand fracture rehab - a rehab tool to enhance your therapy.

Welcome back to this episode of BFR radio,hope you're doing well and enjoying this upper body series.

Just a friendly reminder about my sports rehab tourniquet BFR cuffs is that I've got new valves. I've actually had them for a few months now and everyone's loving them and looked the concept's pretty simple.

There's two valves which connect together and they help inflate the cuff.  It's a little bit nicer. The connections are a lot firmer. Everyone that is using the new valves on the cuffs are loving it. So if you have the older style connection, which was a simple tube into an twist valve, you can actually upgrade your cuffs. All you have to do is head to my website, which is sports rehab.com. I've got a little video with it as well at which it's really simple and quick to change them over and I guarantee you'll love the new upgrade.

 

Onto this episode, this is the third article review in the upper body series. Today we move away from the muscular benefits of BFR and look at the benefits with respect to bone fractures. Episode seven of BFR Radio actually reviewed an article that looked at the role of BFR and the rationale for improving bone reformation. In animal studies the use of BFR has been shown to improve fracture, healing time and there's actually a few human case studies as well. So see, episode 10, if you're a little bit more interested in this concept. Getting straight into the article, it's called:

Blood flow restriction therapy after closed treatment of distal radius fractures.

Cancio, J. M., Sgromolo, N. M., & Rhee, P. C. (2019).  Journal of wrist surgery, 8(4), 288.s," 

 

If you know of someone who would benefit from this episode, please share it.  Alternatively, if you're going through this same rehab and interesting in purchasing your own set of BFR cuffs, please visit my website, which is www.sportsrehab.com.au

And also once again, do you enjoy the 60 seconds snippets? If so, make sure you let me know, give it a comment, give it a thumbs up. Thanks for listening. And remember to keep the pump.

How to use BFR to maximise Bicep Hypertrophy.

Welcome back to welcome back to this episode of BFR radio. Before I head into today's article review a quick reminder that if you're looking for practical ideas on how to implement BFR into your own training, check out my Instagram, which is @chrisgaviglio or my YouTube channel, which is SportsRehabAus.

 

If you follow me on Instagram or Twitter, you would have seen that I've been adding in 60 seconds snippets, which are short 60 seconds snippets of the previous podcasts that I've done. I would actually love to hear if you're enjoying these best bits of the podcast. It's always good to know that my work's being well-received. If you have any questions, please ask and I'll get to them as soon as I can.

 

Onto today's episode, which is the second article review in the upper body series and what wouldn't be an upper body BFR article review without looking at some bicep curls.

On a more serious note there's some really great uses for BFR aside from just the bicep curls. But this article again, looks at the difference between high load non BFR and low load BFR periodization models. And why I keep talking about this is because I really think that understanding how the difference between a low load and a high load periodisation model with or without BFR on certain exercises can result in similar outcomes, I think has really positive outcomes for you as a practitioner.

 

Today's article is called:

Practical blood flow restriction training increases muscle hypertrophy during a periodized resistance training programme.

 Lowery, R. P., Joy, J. M., Loenneke, J. P., de Souza, E. O., Machado, M., Dudeck, J. E., & Wilson, J. M. (2014). 

Clinical physiology and functional imaging, 34(4), 317-321.

 

This is a really simple article, but I think it's quite nice to show that something as simple as this can be quite effective and the next article review we'll move away from the muscular benefits and we'll look at how BFR could be used to improve recovery of hand fractures. And I have spoken about  the role that BFR plays in improved formation which I think is a fascinating concept with respect to how we're training our clients or our athletes who may have fractures.

 If you want any more information about BFR or you want to order a set of your own BFR costs, please head to my website, which is https://www.sportsrehab.com.au

And if you want to contact me, you can do so via the contact us, or the contact me on my website or just DM me through my socials on Instagram or Twitter, which is @chrisgaviglio. Finally, if you enjoy the podcast, please give it a rating in iTunes and also share it with someone who may benefit from this information.

 

Thanks for listening and remember to keep the pump.

Supercharge your Bench Press training - combining BFR low load & high load training (article review)

Hi everyone and welcome back to this episode of BFR radio.

Not sure if you've noticed, but I've been trying a few different things of late. Firstly, I'm trying to increase the frequency of podcasts released to fortnightly, which was from once a month. And there's also a new segment, which is called your questions answered. A lot of people are asking some great questions. So my mantra around this is that if you have a question, I'm sure that there's lots of other people out there as well with that same question or something similar. Therefore, if you have a question and you're happy to come online, please contact me and we can have a chat.

 

 You'll also notice that recently in the last couple of weeks, that on my socials, which is @chrisgaviglio, I've been releasing 60 seconds snippets of the previous podcast. These are the best bits of the podcast and hopefully a great reminder of what was covered. If you love it, let me know and I'll continue doing that for you.

With the article reviews I've also tried to group them together to give the use of BFR better context. The first article series that I did recently was around the use of BFR in surgery and in particular, looking at knee surgery, if you missed them, check them out.

 And this brings me onto the next series of BFR articles, and this will focus on the upper body. In one of my earlier BFR radio podcast episodes I reviewed an article on high-frequency Bench Press. Today's article, which kicks off this series, again, looks at the bench press, but rather this looks at combining protocols of both high load and low load BFR Bench Press training within the same week. This article is called:

 

Combined effects of low-intensity blood flow restriction training and high-intensity resistance training on muscle strength and size. 

Yasuda, T., Ogasawara, R., Sakamaki, M., Ozaki, H., Sato, Y., & Abe, T. (2011).

European journal of applied physiology, 111(10), 2525-2533.

 

I truly think that this series will once again, like the knee surgery series highlight some great ways of using BFR aside from just using it for bicep curls and bench press. If you want to know more information about BFR or you want to order your own set of BFR cuffs please head to my website, which is www.sportsrehab.com.au.

If you want to contact me, you can do this via the contact us, or should be contact me on the website, or just DM me through my socials on Instagram or Twitter, which is @chrisgaviglio.

Twitter - click here

Instagram - click here

If you enjoy the podcast, please give it a writing an iTunes, and also share it with someone who may benefit from this information. Thanks for listening. See you next time and remember to keep the pump.