Contrary to “common knowledge”, it is possible to get stronger using light weights. You can grow muscle as long as you have an “Adaptive Stress Stimulus“. That’s just a fancy way of saying you need to stress your muscles enough to cause them to grow.
What the science says is that you can either lift relatively heavy weights for a few repetitions (i.e. 10~15), or lighter weights for more repetitions (i.e. 50+). Both approaches will stress your muscles. Heavier weights will stress them faster. Lighter weights will take longer to stress your muscles.
Enter KAATSU
What KAATSU does is increase the “adaptive stress stimulus”. The addition of KAATSU to a workout with light weights (or even no weights) quickly creates more metabolic stress on the muscles. This triggers the body’s natural muscle healing and building mechanisms, so you build more muscle, faster, with less effort.
How Does It Work?
A very simplified explanation is this: you have two types of muscle fibers. Type I are typically used for endurance activities. They produce energy using oxygen. While they’re not super strong, they’re very efficient at producing relatively low levels of power over a long period of time. Type II muscle fibers provide strength. They produce energy without using oxygen. While they’re strong, their endurance is limited.
When you use KAATSU, you wear the pneumatic KAATSU AirBands on your upper arms or upper legs. The KAATSU system adds a little bit of air to the AirBands causing them to gently compress your upper limb. This compression reduces the blood flow OUT of your limb, while blood flow INTO your limb is unaffected. The KAATSU controller will maintain the compression for 30 seconds, then allow the AirBands to deflate for 5 seconds. Then it re-compresses the AirBand at a very slightly higher pressure. This pressure on, pressure off cycle repeats 8 times in one set of KAATSU.
While using KAATSU, blood flow in your limb is slightly reduced. This decreases the oxygen available for your Type I muscle fibers and they fatigue rapidly. This triggers your Type II muscle fibers to pick up the slack. Due to the slightly reduced blood flow, metabolic waste products build up faster in your muscle cells and they also fatigue more rapidly. This provides the Adaptive Stress Stimulus that triggers your body’s muscle healing and building mechanisms. The result: muscle growth with less effort.
It Just Works
The science behind KAATSU is sound. You can check out our KAATSU research page for more details. It’s got a 50+ year track record of being used to grow muscle in Japan. The year KAATSU came to North America was the year “copycat” products emerged. Coincidence? Perhaps, but we like to look at this as a positive. People don’t copy things that don’t work.
When I first heard about KAATSU, I couldn’t believe it worked. Then I bought it and learned that it does indeed work. I liked it so much that I became the Canadian distributor. I wouldn’t have gone through all the effort if I didn’t see results. I hope you’ll try it. I hope you’ll like it. And, I’m confident that if you do, you’ll see results.
Disclaimer: KAATSU protocols have not been evaluated by Health Canada. KAATSU is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease and its use should be evaluated by your own physician before use.