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Hump Day Hustling – Weekly Research Summary – November 30, 2022

by | Nov 30, 2022 | Hump Day Hustling

Drop sets for hypertrophy? Marijuana for pain? Answers to these questions and more in this week’s Hump Day Hustling! Enjoy this episode and if you want to dive deeper with ICE Physio we’ve got over 200 courses slated for 2023, check out our Upcoming Dates and Locations to reserve your spot!

Marijuana and Pain

A case of where hype helps?

As the world seeks an alternative to opioids for chronic pain management cannabis has gotten more than its share of attention, and that attention itself might be giving the drug a big efficacy boost. This recent open access systematic review in JAMA showed that cannabis doesn’t have a significantly greater effect on pain versus placebo. BUT, that isn’t to say neither works, in fact the opposite is true, they are both associated with very meaningful pain reduction. Authors speculate that the amount of public attention may be boosting the placebo effect, in fact the lowest risk of bias studies showed the strongest placebo effect which adds support to this hypothesis.

Drop Sets

The secret to hypertrophy right?

The theory makes sense – if decreased rest time and increased metabolic demand result in greater hypertrophy then drop sets should be superior to traditional training when muscle growth is the goal. Alas, this is not what Shoenfeld et al found in their most recent open access systematic review. Both strength (where one might hypothesize traditional training would be superior) and hypertrophy were examined with trivial non-significant differences found between the two training methods for either goal. This is a relatively small review with only 5 studies meeting the inclusion criteria, but it contributes to a growing data set that high effort/intensity are gonna give you both. Make sure to take a peek at the full text conclusion section for an important note on leveraging this method to increase training efficiency

Fitness Testing

Force plates as a time/efficiency hack?

Wouldn’t it be amazing if you could get a comprehensive snapshot of someone’s fitness by simply having them do a vertical jump on a force plate?? It sure would, but you can’t, at least not per the findings in this open access paper from November’s Frontiers Journal. Turns out fitness tests, not jumping on force plates, are best for testing fitness.

Neural Mobilizations

Examining their role in cervical radiculopathy

Widely used but poorly understood, sliders/gliders/tensioners seem to be a popular intervention that can’t quite find a home. The struggle continues with this recent systematic review and meta-analysis in the Journal of Sport Rehabilitation. Authors found that while nerve mobs might be better than nothing, they are not superior to other interventions.

Running Injuries

Taking force off the anterior knee

Knee pain , specifically anterior knee pain, is the number one injury that sidelines runners. That makes the findings in this paper out of JSCR quite exciting. Runners who leaned forward approx. 25 degrees at the trunk while running on uneven ground had a significant reduction in patellofemoral stress compared to those with a vertical trunk (0 deg) or backwards lean (-15 deg). It’s “Controlled Falling” for the win!

PTonICE Rewind

Did you miss any of our ICE Physio podcasts last week? Well here you go!

Monday: “2 weeks postpartum: The PT visit 3 ways” (Christina Prevett)
Tuesday: “Post-surgical dry needling: A paradigm shift” (Paul Killoren)
Wednesday: “Spectrum of dual tasking” (Alex Germano)
Thursday: “Uncelebrated excellence: Giving thanks” (Jeff Moore)
Friday: “RX+ your scaling” (Joe Hanisko)

Thank You! – ICE Faculty

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📢 On Virtual ICE next week we’ve got “Home Health 2.0” with ICE Faculty Julie Brauer! Not in our virtual mentorship program? Find out how to enroll and learn more HERE