TMU Mondays

Let’s look at what Cold Water Immersions (CWIs) or ice baths can and can’t do for you.

What is it?

These baths usually have you immersed in water at a temperature of 10 to 15 degree Celsius up to your neck for about 10 to 15 minutes with the intent to help you recover better between subsequent training sessions or matches in a competitive season by reducing fatigue, reduce post workout muscle soreness, and muscle damage.

The low temperatures reduce inflammation by constricting blood vessels and once out of the cold water, blood flow increases which in turn helps eliminating metabolic wastes¹ .

But these benefits are good for short term scenarios in which one might have multiple highly intense training sessions in a day or back to back matches in a tournament but what about long-term effects?

Long term effects:

The post-exercise response from your body like inflammation are also involved in triggering muscle protein synthesis and therefore, muscle growth. Consistently blunting this response from the body is likely to blunt muscle growth as well² . So, for anyone looking to build muscle, going for ice baths may not be a good call for recovery. Research on this is still divided, however.

Alternates:

Anyone who is looking to build muscle and is also looking for good recovery practices post exercise might be better served with more consistently proven practices like getting good 8 hour sleep regularly, getting enough protein and other good nutrition practices, and post-exercise active recovery³ . Active recovery after your exercise session is where you spend around 10 minutes doing very light exercises like walking or cycling to calm your nervous system. One could also practice breathing techniques mentioned here.

In summary, ice baths may be good in the short term for someone who has multiple high intensity exercise sessions or multiple subsequent matches as in a tournament but considering the somewhat divided long-term implications to muscle growth, one might be better served with proven recovery approaches mentioned above.

References:

1. Xiao F, Kabachkova AV, Jiao L, Zhao H, Kapilevich LV. Effects of cold water immersion after exercise on fatigue recovery and exercise performance--meta analysis. Front Physiol. 2023 Jan 20;14:1006512. doi: 10.3389/fphys.2023.1006512. PMID: 36744038; PMCID: PMC9896520.

2. Roberts LA, Raastad T, Markworth JF, Figueiredo VC, Egner IM, Shield A, Cameron-Smith D, Coombes JS, Peake JM. Post-exercise cold water immersion attenuates acute anabolic signalling and long-term adaptations in muscle to strength training. J Physiol. 2015 Sep 15;593(18):4285-301. doi: 10.1113/JP270570. Epub 2015 Aug 13. PMID: 26174323; PMCID: PMC4594298.

3. Peake JM, Roberts LA, Figueiredo VC, Egner I, Krog S, Aas SN, Suzuki K, Markworth JF, Coombes JS, Cameron-Smith D, Raastad T. The effects of cold water immersion and active recovery on inflammation and cell stress responses in human skeletal muscle after resistance exercise. J Physiol. 2017 Feb 1;595(3):695-711. doi: 10.1113/JP272881. Epub 2016 Nov 13. PMID: 27704555; PMCID: PMC5285720.