How to perform blood flow restriction

Description

Blood Flow Restriction or "BFR" is a unique intensity technique. It requires elastic cuffs or a tourniquet to restrict blood flow from the muscle.

There's only 2 places to place the cuffs. At the top of your arms, just below your shoulders and at the top of your legs.

You'll want to tighten the cuffs so that you feel a fluid shift, but not so tight that it causes pain.

The actual training with the cuffs on can induce discomfort, but there shouldn't be any pain or discomfort when you're not actually lifting.

1. You'll perform the first set with higher reps ~25-30 reps (around 20% of 1RM).
2. Leaving the cuffs on, you'll rest for 15-20 sec.
3. Next you'll perform another set, but only for 15 reps.
4. Rest again for 15-20 sec. and repeat the cycle for two more sets of 15 reps.

There hasn't been any research indicating that this is a dangerous training modality. You're not completely cutting off your circulation, you're simply restricting the blood flow out of the muscle. It's also not recommended to leave the cuffs on for longer than ~5 min.

BFR is not more anabolic than normal training but it allows you to get a similar hypertrophy response using a much lighter load in a short period of time