The Effects of Vibration Therapy as a Recovery Tool After Intense Exercise

Introduction High intensity exercise can lead to muscle damage, resulting in muscle soreness, swelling and reduction in muscle strength (Proske & Allen, 2005). If the recovery is not sufficient or efficient it can increase the risk for injury and decrease the ability of the athlete to perform repetitive exercise and maintain overall performance. Therefore, the use of recovery strategies between practice sessions can be an important factor in the training process, and will allow the athlete to make the most out of the training regime he or she perform.

There are a variety of recovery aids which are being used by athletes, such as: the use of compression garments, massage, cold water immersion, sauna etc. Additional recovery strategy currently growing in popularity is the application of vibration (Rhea et al. 2009; Broadbent et al. 2010). It has been suggested that the application of vibration could increase the blood flow to the muscle, increase muscle temperature, increases metabolite removal rate and accelerate muscle tissue remodeling. All these processes could reduce delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS) and accelerate muscle recovery (Rhea et al. 2009; Broadbent et al. 2010; Lau et al. 2011).

Although DOMS are one of the symptoms of muscle damage, they don't necessarily reflect or provide indication of the ability of the muscle to produce strength. That is, it is possible that an athlete will feel well (with no associated pain) but the ability to produce force is still low compare to baseline measurements.

The ability to produce force is an objective and important measure to quantify the recovery status of an athlete after intense exertion (Warren et al. 1999). The efficacy of vibration therapy for promoting recovery has been tested on a small number of studies with equivocal results. For example, Barnes et al. (2012) tested 8 healthy males who completed 300 eccentric contractions of the quadriceps of one leg on an isokinetic dynamometer. Immediately after exercise and 12 and 24 hours post-exercise, the subjects underwent either vibration therapy or a control treatment - no use of any recovery technique. The vibration therapy included 5 sets of 1min vibration at 26 Hz, with 6 mm peak-to-peak displacement. After two weeks after the initial trial, the subjects completed the second trial using the contralateral leg and other treatment. The study's results revealed that the use of vibration therapy reduced muscle peak force and average peak force 24 hours after the eccentric exercise compared to the control group. Another study tested the use of vibration therapy on muscle recovery and strength. This study found that the recovery of elbow flexor peak isometric torque was unaffected by vibration in untrained participants (Lau et al. 2010). This was further supported by Fuller et al. (2014), who found the use of vibration therapy didn't have an additional contribution to recovery after intense exercise compared to stretching or massage.

The evidences regarding the benefits of vibration therapy as a recovery aid are limited. From the paucity of studies in this area it is suggested that there are no additional benefits for using vibration therapy. Yet, the use of different vibration techniques is currently quite popular among athletes and the several studies performed until today were done on non-athlete populations. Furthermore, these studies haven't tested functional variables such as the ability to produce power and performed a repeated performance. Performing a repeated exercise is similar to situations occasionally occur during ball games. Therefore, the proposed study will examine the use of vibration therapy as a recovery tool. The efficacy of this technique will be measure using functional and field tests.