Palm Cooling Delays
Fatigue during HighIntensity Bench Press
Exercise
Grant Weaver, Sam Vaninger, Brett Vihnanek
The purpose of this study was to test
whether or not local palm cooling (PC)
during rest intervals between progressive
weight training sets will increase total
repetitions and exercise volume in
resistance trained subjects exercising in a
thermoneutral environment.
 Hypothesis was that palm cooling would
increase total reps and total volume lifted
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Purpose
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Sixteen healthy male subjects (mean: 26, SD +/- 6
yrs)
Volunteers
Had participated in regular, intense weight training for
a minimum of 5 years
Ratio of weight pressed during bench press was more
than 80% of age based upper body strength.
All screened for cardiovascular and musculoskeletal
diseases.
Instructed not to exercise the day before a trial, to
refrain from caffeine ingestion, to follow their normal
diet, and to eat a light meal 2 hours before coming to
the lab.
Subjects
Subjects familiarized with testing protocol.
Warm up of 10 reps at 50% of predicted 1 rep
max (1RM), 5 reps at 70% of 1RM, 3 reps at
80% of 1RM, 1 rep at 90% of 1 RM
 Followed by 3 attempts to determine exact 1RM
 All subjects given 3 min rest between sets
 After 1RM was determined, subjects were given a
5 min rest period and then completed as many
reps as possible at 85% of 1RM
 Position of little finger on bar was marked for
each subject, so each subject performed lift the
exact same way in each of their trials
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Procedure: Day 1
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3 different treatments: Palm heating (PH),
Palm cooling (PC), thermoneutral (TN)
Heating and cooling was induced by placing a
rapid thermal exchanger (RTX) on each hand.
Works by creating seal around the wrist and
pulling air out of the device, creating
negative pressure.
Water temperature in device was 10 C during
cooling and 45 C during heating. For the TN
trials, hand was placed in RTX with negative
pressure but no hot or cold water was applied
Procedure: Treatment explanation
Each subject warmed up in the exact
same way they did on day one, finishing
their warm up with their 1RM
 After another 5 min of rest, 4 sets of 85%
of 1RM were performed until fatigue
 1st set: 85% of 1RM
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Procedure: Testing days 2,3,4
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2nd, 3rd 4th sets: The subjects all were then
given each treatment (PC, PH, TN) on these
sets
15 seconds transition, 2.5 min of treatment,
15 sec transition in between each trial
Counterbalanced design so that each subject
experienced the treatments in different
orders on each day
All tests were performed at the same time of
day for each subject
3 days of rest given in between each test
Procedure (cont)
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Total Exercise Volume for all sets:
PC mean: 2480 +/- 636 kg
PH mean: 2156 +/- 668 kg
TN mean: 1972 +/- 632 kg
Total reps per set:
PC mean: 5.9 +/- 2.1
PH mean: 5.1 +/- 1.1
TN mean: 4.7 +/- 2.2
It is clear that palm cooling increased total volume
lifted as well as total reps performed. The differences
in TN and PH were considered statistically
insignificant in the study
Results
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Interaction of selection and treatment: The
study only concerned healthy resistance
trained subjects, and that is who was tested,
so it is safe to generalize.
Interaction of setting and treatment: Tests
were all done in a thermoneutral
environment. Most bench pressing would be
done in this sort of environment, so this was
not a threat.
Interaction of history and treatment: All
subjects performed their tests at the same
time of day each time, so this is not a threat.
External Validity
IV: Palm temperature (PC, PH, TN)
DV: Number of reps, total volume lifted
The rapid thermal exchanger is an effective way to
regulate palm temperature
 The study only concerned bench press and palm
temperature, and both were measured and performed
pretty much perfectly to our understanding.
 Further increasing the temp in the RTX for palm
heating and further decreasing the temp for palm
cooling may have produced different results, but from
the results of the experiment it seems they would
only further prove the results already obtained.
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Construct Validity
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A counterbalanced study design was used
Each subject experienced all the treatments
each day. Each day the order in which they
received the treatments was altered to
minimize learning or order effects.
None of the threats to internal validity
seemed to apply here, as all the subjects had
full knowledge of the experiment. They
weren’t really separated into any groups,
they all underwent multiple treatments.
Internal Validity
The experimental design of this
experiment was set up in a way which
seemed to eliminate any threats to
validity
 We found that this study had extremely
good validity across all 3 types, and
therefore the results appear to be very
valid
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Conclusion