THE EFFECT OF COMPRESSION CLOTHING ON MUSCULAR STRENGTH AND ENDURANCE
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Purpose: Claims have been made in the popular press as to the efficacy of compression clothing to improve endurance and jumping performance. The press has reported a 30% enhancement of endurance and power. Dupont, Brooks, Spalding, and other companies have incorporated the compression concept into athletic clothing according to magazine reports. The purpose of the proposed study was to determine the efficacy of compression athletic clothing to enhance muscular strength and endurance in target muscle groups. METHOD: The study was a repeated measure cross over design. Four compression garments (Bioconcepts, Phoenix, Arizona) were custom fabricated for each athlete. Two were “t-shirts” that extended to the elbow bilaterally and two garments were “shorts” that extended to the knees. The garments were designed to provide 40mm Hg compression unilaterally, and the second garment provided compression to the opposite side. Varsity, provincial and national level athletes (n = 15) from a variety of sports were recruited to perform repeated isokinetic testing (Biodex 3, Shirley, New York) of elbow flexion/extension and knee flexion extension at 120 degrees/second wearing each of the garments. Statistically, eight within-subject comparisons were made. We evaluated whether there were statistically significant differences between compressed and non-compressed conditions for each direction (flexion/extension), on each limb. For example, we tested whether there was a statistically significant difference between right elbow flexion when compressed compared to non-compressed. Summary of Results: There were no statistically significant differences in performance using compression garments for 7 of 8 tests (p-values ranged from 0.2 to 0.9). Left elbow extension demonstrated a statistically significant decrement in performance with compression (p = 0.03). Discussion: A randomized repeated measure design provides a strong scientific method to investigate the effect of compression athletic garments. We would expect, given the magazine reports, to find consistent improvements in muscular performance. However, none of the cross over tests provided support for any consistent benefit from the use of compression garments. Therefore, the use of compression garments remains a personal preference rather than a demonstrable advantage. The current study has limitations. Most important is the variability in the perceived compression. Some subjects only noticed a small difference between sides, whereas others felt compression to an uncomfortable level. We did not measure the actual level of compression. More subjects are needed to determine if the results of the current study are consistent and reproducible. Acknowledgements: The Olympic Oval and the Olympic Oval Endowment Fund, Calgary, Alberta provided funding.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".