Physiological Responses to a Single Bout of Resistance Exercise Between Men and Women

Abstract

It has been shown that blood flow restriction (BFR) exercise provides similar physiological muscular adaptations to traditional high intensity resistance exercise; however, there is still ambiguity about whether males and females respond similarly to BFR exercise. PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the acute physiological responses between males and females following a bout of practical BFR, controlled BFR, low intensity resistance exercise and traditional high intensity resistance exercise by observing lactate, hematocrit, muscle swelling and electromyography before and after exercise. METHODS: Recreationally trained men (n=14) and women (n=15) aged between 18-30 years participated in a randomized crossover design. Subjects visited the lab on 6 occasions. The first 2 visits consisted of paperwork, finding occlusion pressure and 1 repetition maximum for leg press and knee extension, ankle-brachial index, blood pressure and familiarization of exercises. The last 4 visits were the randomized exercise protocols: controlled BFR (cBFR), practical BFR (pBFR), high intensity (HI) and low intensity (LI) resistance exercise. Each visit involved a leg press exercise followed by a knee extension exercise with cBFR, which consisted of an inflated cuff, pBFR consisted of an elastic cuff, HI was a traditional high-intensity exercise and LI was a low-intensity resistance exercise day. Each subject attempted 4 sets of 30-15-15-15 repetitions for cBFR, pBFR and LI, while the HI condition consisted of 3 sets of 8-10 repetitions, with a minute of rest between each set. Lactate, hematocrit, thigh circumference, muscle thickness and electromyography were collected before exercise, immediately post-exercise, 5-minutes post-exercise and 15-minutes post-exercise. There was a wash-out period of at least 3 days between conditions. RESULTS: Through this investigation, males typically had significantly larger responses to all of the testing conditions for thigh circumference, lactate, hematocrit, and muscle activation. However, there was no gender difference for muscle thickness for any of the conditions. Typically, the HI and cBFR conditions produced similar physiological responses. Additionally, males typically reported higher RPE and discomfort ratings, which corresponds to greater muscle activation for males during cBFR and HI exercise conditions. CONCLUSION: This study concluded that cBFR and pBFR for males and females do not produce the same physiological responses, but HI and cBFR produced similar physiological responses.