The impact of postexercise blood flow restriction on local muscle endurance of a remote limb

Studies have examined the influence of postexercise blood flow restriction as a mechanism to activate muscle afferents and assess nonlocal muscle fatigue. Although these studies have assessed fatigue during maximal contractions, less is known about how these afferents may impact submaximal local muscle endurance, which was the purpose of the present study.

Individuals completed two testing visits which involved completing a set of elbow flexion exercises to volitional failure on the nondominant followed by the dominant arm. During both trials, a pneumatic cuff was placed at the top of the nondominant arm before exercise. This cuff was inflated to either 0% (control) or 70% (experimental) of the individual's arterial occlusion pressure immediately after the set was completed. We then evaluated how this impacted local muscle endurance of the dominant arm using a Bayesian paired samples t-test with an uninformed prior width of 0.707 centred on 0.

A total of 36 individuals completed the study (18 females). There was a greater discomfort present in the experimental trial when compared to the control trial (control: 4.5 standard deviation [SD]: 2.4); experimental: 5.8 [SD: 1.9]; BF₁₀  = 61.46), but there were no differences in repetitions completed on the dominant arm (control: 43 [SD: 9], experimental: 43 [SD: 10]; BF₁₀  = 0.179).

Applying blood flow restriction postexercise induced sensations of discomfort but did not alter the local muscle endurance of the contralateral limb. These results suggest that increasing the activation of muscle afferents does not appear to alter the submaximal muscle endurance of a remote limb.