When athletes suffer knee, ankle, or other chronic injuries, it can take weeks, months, or even years before they can heal and return to play. But what if there was a way to drastically decrease this time and even bounce back better than ever? Such therapy would likely give a competitive edge to athletes and organizations with access to an incredible resource. One example of this kind of therapy is the Accelerated Recovery Performance system, also known as ARP.
When an injury occurs that debilitates an athlete, disuse atrophy commonly occurs around surrounding muscle of the injury site and sets athletes even further back from baseline strength and fitness levels. The damaged tissue also scars over and can inhibit range of motion further prolonging full recovery. To combat this, many athletes undergo physical therapy and other exercise techniques to break down scar tissue and slowly gain range of motion back while decreasing muscular atrophy. In conjunction with these exercises, ARP can better promote healing by sending low-voltage currents that break down scar tissue while also elongating muscles and increasing local blood circulation (Wright et. al., 2019 ). This current allows the body’s natural recuperative ability to be enhanced while also pinpointing the neurological origin of the injury, which in turn speeds up recovery time. Incredibly, ARP has even replaced the need of surgery in multiple patients.
ARP also plays a crucial role in preventing injuries in the first place. Many injuries experienced by athletes are related to the inability of muscles to absorb force, usually due to fatigue. In order to decrease the likelihood of getting injured from forceful movements and collisions, warming up with ARP prior to practice and games has been shown to keep muscles relaxed, which increases the ability to absorb force.
Despite many testimonies of professional athletes such as Bradley Roby, Steve Johnson, and Brandon Marshall that describe ARP as “essential,” there is little literature on ARP and its effectiveness. While the FDA has approved ARP as a class 2 medical device, it is important for researchers and the founders of ARP to have extensive data and studies to provide athletes with in ordered for informed consent to be given. While this device has almost entirely positive reviews, my only critique is that this device needs more evidence that the results being claimed are backed up by data in order for athletes to retain true autonomy over their bodies and no malfeasance is occurring by ARP providers.
Sources:
Wright, A. R., Richardson, A. B., Kikuchi, C. K., Goldberg, D. B., Marumoto, J. M., & Kan, D. M.
(2019). Effectiveness of Accelerated Recovery Performance for Post-ACL Reconstruction Rehabilitation. Hawai’i Journal of Health & Social Welfare, 78(11 Suppl 2), 41–46.
https://www.spineandsports.org/arp-accelerated-recovery-performance/
https://chirofx.net/blog/things-you-should-know-about-arpwave-therapy/
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