Here are some facts on ice bath recovery
Have you ever wondered about the science behind ice bath recovery? These are the facts:
- Ice bath recovery isn’t as simple as chucking a load of ice and cold water into a bath and hoping for the best. It is better than doing nothing, but will mainly just make you cold.
- If you use an ice bath like the CryoSpa ice bath, the effective part is the targeting of the jets. If they hit the right muscles, then your recovery from intense exercise will improve dramatically.
- If you are playing a sport at an intense level twice a week, you are up to SIX times more likely to sustain an injury due to fatigue. An ice bath recovery session will combat fatigue, lowering the risk of injury and aiding performance.
- The effective temperature of an ice bath is between 4 and 10 degrees.
- A bath with ice in it will start to warm up as soon as you get into it, meaning it’s not doing the job properly!
- Your skin temperature prior to a proper ice bath will be around 30 degrees and a CryoSpa Ice Bath will reduce it by 20+ degrees whereas a bath with ice can only reduce it by around 10 to 12 degrees.
- A cryo chamber, i.e. cooling by air, does not have heat convection, so the impact is reduced. A CryoSpa Ice Bath has water directed over the area that you need to recover, so it provides a more penetrating cold to help you recover faster.
- Some people will say that heat and cold have the same impact on recovery. They don’t. An ice bath will reduce the heat of inflammation while a hot bath will not.
- This one you might know. Getting into an ice bath is not a lot of fun.
- Getting out of an ice bath is a lot of fun.
- An ice bath will help you sleep, as it calms down the senses and helps restore the natural balance of the nervous system (homeostasis) after the stresses and strains of sport and exercise.
And what about the benefits of ice baths?
The well-known benefits are faster recovery, improved sleep, pain relief, a positive impact on mental wellbeing and immune health.
For more detailed information, you may want to explore The science behind cold water therapy.
