Ice baths. What are the benefits?

Ice Baths are used widely by professional athletes to aid recovery, with benefits including:

• Delayed onset of muscle soreness (DOMS)

• Vasoconstriction of blood vessels to flush waste products (eg lactic acid) from affected tissues

• Reduces swelling and tissue breakdown (Leteef, 2010)

But what would this actually do to my performance?

10 Minutes of cold water immersion found improved muscle strength in the quadriceps after 24 hours, and reduced muscle soreness in the quadriceps, calf and adductors in male national league junior footballers (Ascensao, 2010)

14 Minutes cold water immersion restored repeated sprint ability of a controlled group of professional footballers both 24 and 48 hours post match compared to a passive recovery group (no cold water immersion) who remained slower (Elias, 2012)

This study also found a reduction in fatigue after 48 hours from the cold water immersion group, and an increase in restoration of static and counter movement jump, compared to the passive recovery players.

Despite the outlined benefits, recent research has questioned ice baths efficiency, with suggestions alternative methods such as active recovery on an exercise bike provides similar recovery parameters due to limited research on cold waters effect on the reduction of inflammation in skeletal muscle (Peake, 2017).

Despite evolving findings, ice baths still remain popular within sporting population, and with local games coming thick and fast at the moment, and injury risk increasing 6.2x in footballers playing 2 games per week as opposed to 1, they are still a great way to enhance your recovery and improve performance (Dupont, 2010)

“Cold water immersion is effective during acute periods of match congestion in order to regain performance levels faster and repress the acute inflammatory process.” - nedelec 2013