KAATSU Push-up Challenge

After 1-2 KAATSU Cycles (Cycle 20 is a great warmup for non-athletes or Cycle 60 for high-level athletes) and perhaps after completing the standard KAATSU 3-point exercises (i.e., hand clenches + biceps curls + triceps extensions), try to do the KAATSU Push-up Challenge (i.e., three sets of push-ups with your Optimal SKU levels in the KAATSU Air Bands).

Do the first set of push-ups until you reach muscular or technical failure. Ideally, your Optimal SKU will allow you to do between 25-40 push-ups.

Then rest 20 seconds and start your second set of push-ups. Do the second set of push-ups until you reach muscular or technical failure.

Ideally, if your Optimal SKU is set properly, you will not be able to repeat the same number of push-ups in the second set as you did in the first set. You may be able to do only 10-20 push-ups on the second set. This is OK and actually exactly what you want.

Then rest 20 seconds and start your third set of push-ups. Do the third set of push-ups until you reach muscular or technical failure.

Ideally, your number of push-ups will decrease again. This indicates you have set your Optimal SKU.

This is a great way to build strength and develop tone in your upper body.

Copyright © 2014 - 2016 by KAATSU Global, Inc.

Training With KAATSU Aqua Bands In The Water

For who? aquatic athletes, Baby Boomers, retirees, student-athletes
For what? Strength, stamina, functional movement, mobility, flexibility, recovery



Sprint butterfly + pull-ups + pull-outs + push-ups with the pneumatic KAATSU Aqua Bands are notoriously difficult. 8 x 25 with 5 pull-ups and 10 push-ups are extraordinarily tough.



Competitive swimmers, open water swimmers, water polo players, triathletes, surfers, and other watermen and waterwomen can use KAATSU Aqua leg bands to enhance speed, stamina, strength and "feel" in the water.



Aquatic athletes can pull a parachute with KAATSU Aqua Bands to enhance speed, stamina, strength and "feel" in the water.



Using the pneumatic KAATSU Aqua Bands by identifying the appropriate Base SKU (compression) and inflated Optimal SKU (compression), swimmers, water polo players and triathletes and everyone from those rehabilitating to individuals simply focused on fitness can really work on their core in the water.



Using the pneumatic KAATSU Aqua Bands in the water and the KAATSU Nano or KAATSU Master on the pool deck, individuals of any ability or any age was do blood flow moderation training for speed, stamina, strength or flexibility.



Long Beach (California) firefighter Mitch Berro trains with KAATSU Aqua Bands by pushing off bottom of pool holding a weight.



Training with KAATSU Aqua Bands by eggbeatering in a pool while holding a weight.



Use a kickboard, use fins, do vertical kicking, or other moves to highly stress the legs and core.



Pull along a parachute to add stress to your KAATSU Swimming.



The pneumatic KAATSU Aqua Bands add stress to sculling in the water with or without hand paddles.



The pneumatic KAATSU Aqua Bands can help strengthen triceps with triceps extensions in the water with or without hand paddles.



The pneumatic KAATSU Aqua Bands can be done while swimming, kicking or pulling butterfly, backstroke, breaststroke or freestyle, or while shooting a water polo ball or doing aqua-therapy, aqua-walking or aqua-jogging.



KAATSU Aqua Walking for those undergoing aqua-therapy or rehabilitation.

Copyright © 2014 - 2016 by KAATSU Global, Inc.

Local And Systemic Mechanisms Of KAATSU Training

Dr. James Stray-Gundersen of the United States Ski & Snowboard Association and Chief Medical Officer of KAATSU Global explains the local and systemic mechanisms of KAATSU Training that is used by elite professional and Olympics athletes and non-athletes alike.

Copyright © 2014 - 2016 by KAATSU Global, Inc.

Details And Differences Between KAATSU And KAATSU Aqua

KAATSU Aqua Bands can be used differently depending on whether the bands are used for with masters swimmers or fitness swimmers or competitive elite swimmers.

In general, the more competitive the swimmer, the higher the pressures. But finding the Optimal SKU (compression) is a function of many factors including whether the bands are on the legs or arms, the percentage of body fat, the tolerance level of high lactate levels, and the amount of experience using KAATSU.

But in general, the intensity of feeling while doing KAATSU Aqua is greater in the water compared to KAATSU done on dryland. The reasons why include the following:

1. Because the body is in the horizontal position while swimming and the body is floating in the water. Therefore, the relative pressure within the veins and capillaries are greater in this situation than on dryland, especially while swimming quickly.

2. Swimming is an activity where breathing is different and less efficient than on land. That is, even great swimmers breathe differently while swimming than while exercising on land. Therefore, there is an even greater hypoxia in the limbs in the water than on land.

3. Swimming is an activity where there is almost never a "pumping out" of the lactate like there is with exercises like biceps curls. In other words, when the athlete is correctly doing biceps curls with KAATSU Air Bands on land, the limbs become saturated with blood and lactate. But the pumping action of the curls naturally forces some blood and lactate out of the muscle, past the KAATSU Air Bands. But when one is swimming freestyle, backstroke or butterfly, this "pumping out" of the lactate does not occur so effectively. The arms are simply swinging around the body (over and below the water surface) in a rather static position. Therefore, more lactate stays in the muscle...and therefore discomfort comes earlier.

4. Because swimming is such a technical sport, even slight changes in the head or body or knee or elbow positions can dramatically change the speed of the swimmer. So when the swimmer starts to feel the lactate building, their technique quickly deteriorates and speed significantly decreases.

Coaches want their swimmers to swim with as best technique as possible. Therefore, swimming with KAATSU Aqua Bands is generally and best limited to 25-50 meter distances - performed at top speed and with as best technique as possible.

Swimming sets for competitive elite swimmers can be done towards the end of their workouts and can be limited to breakouts (10-15 meter practices of turns off the wall), 25-meter or 50-meter swims of high intensity.

Examples of sets with KAATSU Aqua Bands include:

* 10 x 25 with a 20-second rest
* 10 x 40 swims in a 25-yard or 25-meter pool where a strong pace is maintained for the first lap followed by a strong turn and breakout. Swim easy to the wall after the breakout.
* 5-10 x racing starts with KAATSU Aqua Bands or until technical failure is reached. Followed by 2-3 racing starts without bands.
* 5 x 25 of each stroke (butterfly, backstroke, breaststroke and freestyle) with a 20-second rest
* 8 x 15-meter race-pace breakouts of each stroke (butterfly, backstroke, breaststroke and freestyle) with a 20-second rest
* 8 x 50 (or 4 x 100) pulling with hand paddles and/or buoys with arm bands
* 8 x 50 race-pace kicking with or without a kickboard with leg bands
* 8 x 30-second vertical kicking sets with leg bands
* 8 x vertical jumps off the bottom of the pool with leg bands

Notes:
1. The sets can be done alternatively with the arm bands and leg bands on alternative days.
2. If there is sufficient time within a workout, the sets above can be done first with the arms bands and then with the leg bands.
3. In each set, each swimmer should swim with their own Optimal SKU.
4. The swimmer should take additional rest and/or temporarily release the air in the KAATSU Aqua Bands when technical failure is reached (where technical failure is judged by a breakdown of proper swimming technique).

Copyright © 2016 by KAATSU Global, Inc.

Olympic Swim Coach On His Use Of KAATSU Aqua

Chris Morgan, a 2008 Olympic swimming coach, teaches and advises a number of athletes about KAATSU the original BFR on dryland and KAATSU Aqua in the water from Olympic swimming medalists and Olympic Trials finalists to masters swimmers (24- 75 years), competitive age group swimmers and collegiate swimmers.

"KAATSU Aqua is beneficial for those athletes aiming for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and non-athletes recovering from injuries," says Morgan who explained how Roy-Allan Burch [see below] used KAATSU to recover from a double patella tendon rupture and qualified for the Olympics.







































Morgan [see video below] explains, "We work on speed, strength and stamina every workout at the Gator's Swim Club in Waltham, Massachusetts [the 2015 New England Senior Swimming Championship Team].

Like other competitive age-group swim teams, we augment those hard training sessions with a focus on proper technique, good balanced nutrition, and all kinds of 'outside the box' dry-land training.

This year, our athletes began an innovative addition to our entire training regime that has resulted in some unprecedented drops in time."

Over a 3-month period, some of the representative swims include the following:

Henry Gaissert (17 years old)
• 100 freestyle: from 47.0 to 44.8 (44.1 relay split)
• 100 butterfly: from 52.4 to 49.8
Maddie Wallis (16 years old)
• 100 backstroke: from 57.1 to 54.9
• 200 backstroke: from 2:07.9 to 2:00.3
Johnny Prindle (17 years old)
• 100 freestyle: from 48.1 to a 45.9 relay split
• 200 freestyle: from 1:47.2 to 1:41.5
• 100 breaststroke: from 59.0 to 57.5

Their secret…?

KAATSU.

KAATSU is the advantage that Olympic and professional athletes from Japan, and increasingly in teams from the United States and Switzerland to Tunisia and Hungary, have been using to gain specific strength in order to improve speed and increase stamina.

Morgan continues, "Years ago, Olympic champion Misty Hyman from Stanford University did something vaguely similar. The 200-meter butterfly Olympic champion in the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games placed several thick postage rubber bands around her arms and legs. She would at times swim as much as 8,000 meters with the bands at AFOX in Arizona under the guidance of its coach Bob Gillette as a high school student. Her unusual training method started in Arizona as a top age-grouper and continued at Stanford University under Richard Quick - where I served as an assistant coach.

But we learned from Dr. Yoshiaki Sato and our KAATSU Global colleagues that very specific pressures with carefully engineered pneumatic bands used in short durations is the key to significant improvements in speed, strength and stamina. We use the KAATSU Master and KAATSU Nano devices to identify two types of specific pressures (called Base SKU and Optimal SKU where SKU stands for Standard KAATSU Unit). These pressures are specific for each athlete that can vary from day to day and workout to workout. Those specific pressures, that vary from athlete to athlete, are how our athletes have maximized the benefits of KAATSU or "blood flow moderation training."

Invented in 1966 and perfected by 1973 by Dr. Sato of Tokyo, the KAATSU inventor was honored by the Japanese Olympic Committee in 1992. Word eventually leaked out from Japan about KAATSU beginning in the 1980s and throughout the 1990s, but it was mostly adopted without knowledge of the Base SKU and Optimal SKU, the smart pneumatic bands, or the use of the KAATSU Cycle protocols by the bodybuilding community.

These bodybuilders, looking to achieve muscle hypertrophy, never understood the existence of pneumatic bands that maintain its structural integrity as they inflate, or the importance of identifying one's Base SKU or Optimal SKU, or integrating the KAATSU Cycle protocols as a means of post-workout recovery. Eventually, the bodybuilding community resorted to using knee wraps and other sorts of restrictive, occasionally non-elastic, bands as occlusion training or tourniquet training tools. But acceptance of the thick postage rubber bands or knee wraps never took off in amateur or professional sports in the West, especially in the aquatic community.

But for years and even a cursory search on Amazon, a growing number of American and European bodybuilders and trainers simply tie knee wraps and other bands around their arms in order to build bulk based on information they learned from the Internet and two-dimensional photos they saw of KAATSU bands.

In contrast to the specific KAATSU protocols to identify optimal pressures, bodybuilders tie their limbs with occlusion bands using a pain scale from 1 to 10, with 7-8 being the recommended level of pain by various American researchers and strength coaches. This kind of simplified and frankly dangerous* means to occlude blood flow in the limbs was neither possible nor practical for age-group swimmers or older masters swimmers. "Or frankly, anyone," reminds Morgan. "In contrast to those focused on muscle hypertrophy, we wanted a proven, safe and effective means to help our young athletes improve their speed, strength and stamina - not a means simply to get bulkier.

Since the Center for KAATSU Research at the Harvard Medical School was established in 2013, I first used KAATSU on myself** and learned the proper protocols and how to safely use the KAATSU equipment. With that knowledge and experience, the athletes of the Gator's Swim Club have been experimenting with KAATSU and our age-group swimmers, several who are national-caliber swimmers.

I quickly learned how we could replicate 'race pain' without the need for a time-consuming test set by using the KAATSU equipment. By engorging the muscles in blood - instead of keeping blood out like the bodybuilders and their knee wraps, I studied how this revolutionary training technique could be utilized by competitive swimmers whether they are focused on their local high school championships and getting into college or others like Roy Burch and Mohamed Hussein who qualified for the 2016 Rio Olympic Games."

Coach Morgan now uses KAATSU in three fundamental ways:

1. In rehabilitation
2. For recovery
3. During training

Rehabilitation
Swimmers use KAATSU to quickly resolve sore shoulders and the tweaks of overuse injuries from both our age-groupers and masters swimmers. "We use the KAATSU Cycle modality that starts off with lower pressures and gradually builds up to higher pressures. These protocols are the same protocols that are used by Olympic gold medalists and members of the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics USA team and professional soccer players."***

Recovery
"We use the KAATSU Cycle modality between races and between the preliminary and final events in a multi-day event (e.g., the 2015 Winter Junior National Championships in Atlanta, Georgia) and KAATSU Cycle has been used at the World University Games and United States Olympic Trials in both swimming and track & field."

Training
"We do a variety of sets with KAATSU in order to improve technique, speed, strength and stamina. None of these sets last over 20 minutes, as per the standard KAATSU protocols. Some of the sets involve using arm bands and some of the sets involve using leg bands, including sets that exclusively focus on starts or turns.

These sets can range from 10 x 15m breakouts to 10 x 50 at a specific pressure.

Not only have our athletes and their parents accepted KAATSU and appreciate its benefits, but we also have some of our graduating seniors requesting the KAATSU machines accompany them to their new collegiate teams."

* Clinical Journal of Sport Medicine. 2010 May; 20(3): 218-9: Low-load ischemic exercise-induced rhabdomyolysis

** In 2013, Morgan competed in a Tough Mudder obstacle race near Boston. He used the KAATSU Master to improve his fitness level, but on the day of the event, at mile #10, he slipped on a log, smashed his side, and broke 2 ribs. For 7 days immediately after the injury, he used the KAATSU Master and KAATSU Air Bands as prescribed for broken bones. By day 7, the pain and sensitivity of the broken ribs had vanished. Ten days after the first x-rays revealed the broken ribs, he took a second set of x-rays at Harvard University that showed a complete recovery. "Ever since that time, I wanted the athletes who I work with to benefit from a clear and methodical use of KAATSU."

*** Get Stronger, Go Longer. KAATSU is Blowing Researchers' Minds (Military Times) and KAATSU Japanese Blood Flow Routine (Outside Magazine)

*

Copyright © 2014 - 2016 by KAATSU Global

John Welbourn Interviews Dr. Sato On Power Athlete HQ

John Welbourn, a 9-year veteran of the NFL, is the CEO of Power Athlete and creator of CrossFit Football. He interviewed Dr. Yoshiaki Sato, chairman of KAATSU Global, at last week's 2016 Biohacking Convention in Pasadena, California about KAATSU from its invention to its applications.

A graduate of the University of California at Berkeley in 1998, Welbourn was drafted with the 97th pick in 1999 NFL Draft and went on to be a starter for the Philadelphia Eagles from 1999-2003, appearing in 3 NFC Championship games, and for the Kansas City Chiefs from 2004-2007. In 2008, he played for the New England Patriots until a pre-season injury ended his season. Over the course of his career, Welbourn started over 100 games in addition to 10 playoff appearances.

Since retiring from the NFL in 2009, Welbourn has trained athletes in MLB, NHL, NFL, CrossFit and the Olympics. He has also worked in the same capacity for Naval Special Warfare, teaching performance and training for Navy SEALs, and travels the world lecturing on performance and nutrition and as an expert on food for performance.

Welbourn started experimenting with BFR (Blood Flow Restriction) training, but was introduced to KAATSU by his colleagues in the NFL. He has since become a KAATSU Specialist and wanted to learn more directly from Dr. Sato during his visit to the Bulletproof Biohacking Convention.

Dr. Sato's interpreter Manako Ihaya assists with the communications between Welbourn and Dr. Sato that will be edited and broadcast in full soon on Welbourn's POWER ATHLETE™ Blog. This is only the beginning of the full program.




























Copyright © 2014 - 2016 by KAATSU Global

Andre Metzger on Making Weight with KAATSU

World championship bronze medalist and two-time NCAA wrestling champion Andre Metzger describes how KAATSU helps his collegiate wrestlers make weight before their bouts.

Metzger uses a KAATSU Nano and KAATSU Air Bands on his wrestlers' arms and legs (separately) with the appropriate Base SKU (compression) and Optimal SKU (compression).

For individuals who use the KAATSU Master 2.0 or KAATSU Cycle 2.0 and want to maintain or loss weight should limit their food intake at least 90 minutes after doing KAATSU. Because the vascular tissue is made more elastic with efficient and effective KAATSU Cycles, there is a period of time where more energy is required for the vascular tissue to expand in this state. As your body is burning more energy, it is great to stay hydrated, but less optional to consume food if weight control or weight reduction is the goal.

Copyright © 2014 - 2016 by KAATSU Global