[This is a guest blog by Liam Sutton. Liam is a senior at Ball State University working towards his bachelor’s degree in exercise science with a concentration in basic and applied sciences. He hopes to attend Australian National University’s Master of Neuroscience program after graduation. He is currently participating in the Athletic Lab Internship Program.] Athletes have always looked for advantages in training and competition to obtain an edge over their competition. The scientific and performance coaching communities have ongoing collaboration in enhancing athlete performance; methods include using optimized training schedules, better nutrition, higher quality sleep, and emerging forms of therapy. The goals of these collaborations are to enhance performance of athletes by reducing fatigue and soreness as well as enhance and accelerate sport specific training adaptations. Elite athletes undergo rigorous training that leads to muscle microtrauma and inflammation, manifesting itself in pain, discomfort, and short-term performance decreases. Reducing, counteracting, and recovering from these body traumas is the primary goal of many emerging therapies aimed at athletes. The sport world is rapidly embracing therapeutic arts and sciences to obtain the benefits of recovery methods designed to combat the entire spectrum of fatigue related performance impairments. This is evidenced by national Olympic, business, and other organizational entities building expensive facilities designed around the research and implementation of recovery modalities and methods to enhance recovery and adaptation. One method that has received recent attention is muscle and limb compression. There are two types of compression therapy. Static compression uses specific garments designed to compress the limbs and torso, while dynamic compression involves manual compression such as a massage and mechanical compression using special devices such as sleeves that envelop limbs and inflate consecutively in compartmentalized cells. This [...]