Background: Compression garments are elastic, body-tight pieces of clothing with different pressure gradients used as a recovery method after exercise, such as strength training. Compression garments have increased in popularity within recreational and elite athletes as it is believed that they promote a reduction of muscle soreness and inflammation, which in turn may enhance performance. However, the exact physiological, psychological and performance enhancing effects of compression garments after recovery still remain unknown. Aim: To investigate whether female and male recreational athletes wearing full leg customised compression garments for at least 15 hours following a personalised strength training workout leads to an improvement in anaerobic sprint cycling performance as well as a reduction of perceived muscle soreness. Additionally a sleep quality assessment was conducted to assess the effects of the garments during sleep. Methods: Thirteen male and female subjects took part of a cross-over, randomised, controlled study. Subjects performed the first set of tests including Wingate anaerobic sprint test followed by their personalised strength training workout, after which they recovered with Compression Garments (CGS) or without compression garments (CON). They then returned 24hrs later to perform the second set of tests. Ten days later the same procedure was conducted however the other recovery method was used. Results: No significantdifferences were found between CGS and CON for the Wingate anaerobic test performance. Perceived muscle soreness was lower when subjects wore the garments and they felt better recovered 24hrs post-intervention compared to the CON condition. Some aspects of sleep were affected by wearing the compression garments during sleep however it was unclear whether this had an impact on performance. Conclusion: Recovering with customised full leg compression garments did not promote an improvement of physiological power performance 24 hours after a personalised strength training workout session. However perceived muscle soreness was reduced and the perception of recovery improved. The compression garments caused some sleep disturbances as subjects rated that they were too warm, suggesting a possible drawback of recovering with garments if worn during sleep.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:hh-31928 |
| Date | January 2016 |
| Creators | Arlegui, Leigh |
| Publisher | Högskolan i Halmstad, Akademin för ekonomi, teknik och naturvetenskap |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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