Cryotherapy (cold therapy) has been around for ages. Athletes and celebrities alike love it, including Floyd Mayweather (see the video below of Floyd using it), Kobe Bryant, Cristiano Ronaldo, Justin Gatlin, the Dallas Mavericks, the Dallas Cowboys, Jennifer Aniston, Demi Moore, Jessica Alba, Mandy Moore, Minka Kelly, and more (according to HERE, HERE, and HERE). I’ve used cold tubs in the past, and like many things in the world, it made intuitive sense to me that it would help me recover. I never really knew how it would help and through which mechanisms it helped, but I just “felt” it working, and I didn’t really question tradition.

The problem with relying on “feeling” is that it could just be temporary and fleeting, it could be due to the Placebo Effect, or it could actually diminish results without us knowing. This is why research is so important; conducting RCT’s allows us to examine short term physiological mechanisms inherent to a particular intervention along with long term changes in performance measures that are associated with a particular intervention.

Many athletes and coaches like to jump into a cold tub immediately following a workout. Hell, cold tubs are common in high end training athletic training facilities around the world. Past research in postexercise cold water immersion is unimpressive. Some studies show minor potential, for example postexercise cold water immersion may improve postexercise lipid peroxidation (HERE), but for the taking a long hard look at the evidence on postesexercise cold water immersion doesn’t justify it’s inclusion in most sports recovery programs – it doesn’t appear to outperform a Placebo (HERE), it doesn’t improve sleep architecture (HERE), a major review paper didn’t approve of it for treating muscle soreness (HERE), and another review paper concluded that it benefited endurance athletes in terms of recovery, but not strength/power athletes (HERE).

A recently accepted article in The Journal of Physiology summarized two eye-opening studies that warrant further attention in the Strength & Conditioning field (HERE). I’m going to copy and paste the abstract, key points, and some author quotes below.

Post-exercise cold water immersion attenuates acute anabolic signalling and long-term adaptations in muscle to strength training

Abstract