After Exercise Ice Bath - Does It Help Recovery?

[mish.dias]

One should alter between cold and hot, example 1min cold 3min hot reapetedly but ending of with cold...otherwise 5min cold and one should not have a hot shower straight away otherwise its a waste so one should wait 30min... After all that put on ur compression socks

[Wyatt Earp]

I've been doing this cold water thing over winter, just using the pool which is currently 13º so not quite an ice bath, standing just so my butt is dry. I stand for between 3 and 10 minutes. Followed by a hot shower.

 

I have found my legs feel much better than the used to on similar workouts. The tired stiff feeling is no longer evident, the result is very similar in fact to a post session massage. But quicker and free.

 

Can't see why it shouldn't work

 

It's commonly known that you should use ice to bring down swelling and then do heat treatment to get the blood flowing.

[seven]

We are comparing lots of different things there that do not all have the same aim or mechanisms.

1. Ice baths/Icing an injury/compression socks

These all work by decreasing bloodflow. That is the aim. The decreased bloodflow reduces the amount of inflammation and swelling one gets after prolonged/high intensity exercise. You would want to do this in the 1st 24/72hrs (after an injury for example). To allow the cold te penetrate through all the fat under the skin and actually get to the muscle, cold therapy needs to be sustained for a significant period (>15').

2. Heat/massage (especially deaper massage) should only be applied after 72hrs (once inflammation has subsited) - the idea with this is to increase bloodflow to allow better repair of the damaged muscle. An alternative with this is to use combination clod/heat which will also increase bloodflow.

 

Answer: Ice batch do help - but its probably more psychological, EXCEPT on multi-day/really high intensity stuff where you get a lot of muscle damage (e.g. Epic) - then its probably an absolute must!