Efeitos da compressão pneumática no processo de recuperação de atletas de alto rendimento: uma revisão da literatura

Abstract

Recovery is defined as returning something that has been lost, and in the sporting context, athletes need more than to return to the previous state of training stress, but also adapt to it, increasing their specific physical condition for the sport or task. Stress situations, adverse events, previous injuries, daily difficulties or short recovery time may influence the risk of injury. Immersion in cold water, active recovery treatment, manual drainage and compression garments are recovery treatments commonly used by athletes between training sessions, however they present limitations regarding space and equipment availability in training and competition venues. The present study aimed to report the effects of intermittent pneumatic compression (CPI) on the recovery process of high performance athletes. A literature review of the narrative type was carried out. We included in the present review 6 articles that used CPI as an auxiliary tool for recovery of high performance athletes. Despite being constantly used in the sports field the CPI was not effective to accelerate the recovery process of athletes after exhaustive activities in both subjective pain scale, sports performance after therapy and blood lactate removal. There is no consensus regarding the pressure and quantity of seconds that each bag should be inflated. Further studies are suggested in order to improve the use and parameters for the use of CPI in order to accelerate the recovery of athletes after exhaustive exercises.