A single ischemic preconditioning (IPC) treatment can produce acute increases in VO2max that may impact maximal power output. The purpose of this investigation was to determine if IPC will result in improvements in physical performance of a fatiguing task and enhance recovery from that task.
Young, apparently healthy volunteers (n = 24; 22 men and 2 women) completed two testing sessions during which a 30-second maximal cycling task (Wingate test) was performed to quantify muscle fatigue (% reduction in power output) followed by two subsequent 10-second cycling tests to examine the recovery of power output following the fatigue task. Prior to the respective testing sessions, subjects received IPC or a control (CON) intervention. Repeated measures analysis of variance and paired t-tests analyses revealed no statistical differences of the treatment intervention on muscle fatigue or the recovery from fatigue.
These data suggest that IPC is not beneficial for increasing anaerobic muscle performance.