O'Brien, IT, Kozerski, AE, Gray, WD, Chen, L, Vargas, LJ, McEnroe, CB, Vanhoover, AC, King, KM, Pantalos, GM, and Caruso, JF. Use of gloves to examine intermittent palm cooling's impact on rowing ergometry. J Strength Cond Res 35(4): 931–940, 2021—The aim of this study was to examine the use of gloves on intermittent palm cooling's impact on rowing ergometry workouts. Our methods had subjects (n = 34) complete 3 rowing ergometer workouts of up to 8 2-minute stages separated by 45- or 60-second rests. They were randomized to one of the following treatments per workout: no palm cooling (NoPC), intermittent palm cooling as they rowed (PCex), or intermittent palm cooling as they rowed and post-exercise (PCex&post). Palm cooling entailed intermittent cold (initial temperature: 8.1° C) application and totaled 10 (PCex) and 20 (PCex&post) minutes, respectively. Workouts began with 8 minutes of rest after which pre-exercise data were obtained, followed by a ten-minute warm-up and the workout, and 20 minutes of post-exercise recovery. Numerous physiological and performance variables were collected before, during, and after workouts, and each was analyzed with either a two- or three-way analysis of variance. Our results include, with a 0.05 alpha and a simple effects post hoc, the distance rowed analysis produced a significant workout effect with PCex, PCex&post > NoPC. There were also significant interworkout differences for heart rate (HR) (NoPC > PCex) and blood lactate concentration (NoPC > PCex, PCex&post). We conclude that lower HRs and blood lactate concentrations from intermittent cooling caused subjects to experience less fatigue during those workouts and enabled more work to be performed. Continued research should identify optimal cooling characteristics to expedite body heat removal. Practical applications suggest that intermittent palm cooling administered with gloves enhance performance by abating physiological markers of fatigue.

Subjects (n=13) did 30 workouts with their left leg on an Inertial Exercise Trainer (IET), while their right leg served as an untreated control. Before and after the 30 workouts, they underwent isokinetic strength tests (knee and ankle extensors of both legs) whose peak torque (PT), time to PT (TTPT), and rate of torque development (RTD) values were each analyzed with 2(leg)×2(time)×3(velocity) analysis of variances (ANOVAs), with repeated measures per independent variable. Peak force (PF) and total work (TW) data were measured from each IET workout, and they represent time course strength changes produced by our exercise intervention. PF and TW values for the three IET exercises that comprised each workout were each analyzed with one-way ANOVAs with time as the independent variable. Results included significant ankle and knee extensor PT increases, whereby the left leg achieved higher values at posttesting, but there were no significant TTPT changes and a time effect for ankle extensor RTD. Our data show that PF and TW each had significant increases over time, with the latter exhibiting greater gains over the 30-workout intervention. Our results imply that the IET yields strength gains over time comparable to standard resistive exercise hardware.

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