| Keywords |
Pressurization training ; Cardiorespiratory fitness ; Skeletal muscle ; Short-term walk |
| Abstract |
Pressurization training (PT) is designed to perform short term training using exclusive pneumatic belt applying pressure on upper parts of arms and legs to reduce blood flow to limbs. It has not completely been proved whether PT could improve the cardiorespiratory fitness and skeletal muscle function. Subjects were divided into two groups, which were 8 PT group (21.6±1.7 years) and 8 control group without pressurization (23.4±0.6 years). All subjects completed 2 week walk training program. PT group performed walk training with specially designed elastic band wrapped around upper parts of both legs. Pressure was maintained with 220 mmHg for the rest of training period. Control group performed walk training program without pressure on leg's blood flow. The result showed that VEmax and strength of knee flexor were significantly increased in PT group and cross sectional areas of quadriceps on both right and left leg were increased by 2.0 and 1.4%, respectively. VO2max tended to increase (6%), but there was no significant difference. There were no significant differences in resting levels of IGF-1, testosterone, growth hormone, and myoglobin. It is concluded that short-term walk PT could improve cardiorespiratory function at low intensity and may also be useful method to improve skeletal muscle function such as muscle strength and muscle hypertrophy. |