Ice Bath For Muscle Recovery

Your body needs to gradually warm itself up producing a steady flow of oxygen to your muscles.

Ice bath for muscle recovery.

However while ice baths do reduce muscle soreness it only decreases the irritation by about 20. This will kill the muscle recovery process and make the ice bath useless. For instance a 2019 paper published in the journal of physiology found that ice baths can hamper the. Ice baths also known as cold water immersion or cold water therapy can be an effective recovery method to flush out lactic acid diminish muscle soreness and leave athletes feeling fresh for their next training session.

The advantage of an ice bath submersion is that a large area of intertwined musculature can be treated rather than limiting the cold therapy to a concentrated area with a localized ice pack. When your timer goes off the first thing your going to want to do is jump into a hot shower. A hard run creates micro tears in the muscles that cause an inflammatory response leading to pain and swelling. The ice bath reduced muscle soreness by about 20 he says.

There were no differences when cold water immersion was compared to other popular recovery interventions he says. A 2018 metanalysis of 99 studies looked at the effectiveness of several recovery methods including contrast water therapy. So the best active. Ice baths or cold water immersion cwi have long been used by high level strength and power athletes to enhance recovery from high intensity matches and training sessions.

Muscle soreness is a familiar and dreaded companion for competitive athletes in training. Ice baths are thought to limit this reaction by constricting blood vessels which. Don t speed up this process. However newer research has found ice baths may not be a recovery cure all for your muscles.

Additionally studies seem to be inconclusive on the benefits of ice baths over other recovery methods such as compression post workout nutrition or taking ibuprofen.