Studies are beginning to confirm acupuncture's ability to improve athletic performance. One example is a study of basketball players
published in 2009 in the American Journal of Chinese Medicine. The
study of 30 male elite university basketball players were randomly
assigned to 3 groups: acupuncture group, sham group, and a control group. The acupuncture group got real acupuncture on 2
commonly used acupuncture points (P6 and ST36). The sham group had
needles placed 1 cm away from the actual point location. The control
group had no acupuncture. The subjects rode an exercise bike until
exhaustion, and were tested at various intervals before, during and
after exercise for heart rate (HT), oxygen consumption (VO2max) and
blood lactic acid.
The
acupuncture group had significantly lower heart rate, VO2max and blood
lactic acid 30 minutes post exercise than the sham and control group.
60min post exercise the acupuncture group still had lower lactic acid.
The study's authors note:
In
the athletic world, many nations have long strived for developing
competitive advantages in sports by employing various scientific methods
to improve the athletes’ peak performance in hope of winning
competitions. Developing effective methods to help the athletes quickly
recover from muscle fatigue after exercise training or fierce
competitions and to help them achieve the best physiological situations
is deemed essential, especially prior to international competitions.
Acupuncture, one of the traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) techniques,
has long been used in clinic to treat illnesses or release pains for
thousands of years; it was also known to help in recovering from muscle
fatigue after exercise. . .
From the scientific
perspective, athletic ability can be a combination of various elements,
including muscular strength, speed, power, muscular and cardiopulmonary
endurance, flexibility, agility, and balance and coordination, among
others. Cardiopulmonary endurance is perhaps the most essential element
for all types of sports. VO2max is a fundamental indicator for measuring
the cardiovascular endurance. The level of VO2max is one of the
critical elements for succeeding in endurance sports because an upper
limit of oxygen consumption does exist for each person. . .
During
the normal exercise training, it is important to properly adjust the
quantity of exercise, according to the regularity of dynamic changes in
athletes, to prevent them from excessive exercise training or unbearable
load. Prior to competitions, however, designing effective methods to
help the athletes achieve the best situation so as to outperform others
is immediately necessary. Since muscle fatigue was reported to closely
relate to human performance (Bigland-Ritchie and Woods, 1984; So et al.,
2007) and acupuncture has been regarded as an effective method to
improve the rate of muscle recovery after exercise (Ehrlich and Haber,
1992; Qu et al.,1993; Lin et al., 1995;Wang et al., 1999), this study
aimed to conduct scientific experiments on selected athletes to
investigate in-depth the effects of acupuncture stimulation on recovery
abilities.
These results indicated that acupuncture at
Neiguan (PC6) and Zusanli (ST36) could significantly stimulate the
post-exercise recovery of heart rate, oxygen consumption, and blood
lactic acid for the elite basketball athletes. Our findings indicate
that it is beneficial to carry out acupuncture at PC6 and ST36
acupoints, particularly on the eves of competitions, as to enhance the recovery
ability for elite basketball athletes. This study has made an inspiring
attempt to understand in-depth of the recovery system and physiological
profile of basketball athletes by acupuncture. It would facilitate the
coaches to provide more appropriate training schemes and recovery plans
for the elite basketball athletes.
Photo: hitthatswitch, Flickr Creative Commons 2.0
Posts
