Episode 37: Ice Baths

Kurt Kessler: Hey there everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the Higher Powered Podcast. Today we're gonna dive head first into some ice baths. See what I did there. ⁓ so it's time of year where our athletes are getting back into preseason. It's extremely hot out in most parts of the country. And over the last couple years, I've had an increased request for athletes doing ice baths. And so I had a I have had a couple coaches approach me and ask me about some of the effects. Ask me, are they is it beneficial? Last summer, our field hockey team and boys soccer team ⁓ bought several ice bath tubs. That get heavily utilized during the the sports preseason. And so I wanted to at least put something together here to kind of give people an idea of what the effects are of an ice bath. Like what do they really do? Because I'm sure there's ⁓ either some misinformation or at least some ⁓ misunderstood ideas about what ice baths do. And I'm just gonna dive into the evidence ⁓ of of what research says and what the best information we have says about ice baths. So the number one thing, or at least the first thing I'll touch on here, is recovery enhancement. And we're talking more short-term here. So it's ice baths are like very, very effective. For short-term recovery of muscle soreness, short-term recovery of perceived exhaustion or perceived fatigue. restoring muscle strength in short term. The best effects that we see with ice baths are within the first 24 to 96 hours post-exercise. So that's within the first one to four days after exercise, and then especially after. eccentric or high intensity sessions. What that means is ⁓ eccentric would be like ⁓ when you slowly load a muscle ⁓ as it's stretching. ⁓ if you think about if you think about holding a weight in your hand and trying to resist it falling down, but it still kind of goes down slowly. your biceps as it's lengthening has to control that weight as it goes down. You can do this for a number of muscles throughout the body. But the reason why this is important is because that type of exercise, that eccentric type of exercise, is where the little tiny micro tears in the muscle happen so that you can build muscle bigger. And with that typically comes a lot more soreness. So focusing on the eccentric portion, ice baths are really ⁓ beneficial for helping ⁓ soreness in that capacity, or high intensity sessions. So you think about preseason, you think about ⁓ these two-a-day practices or the two weeks of preseason leading up to the start of school or the start of the season. ⁓ introduction to a new sport season where like the preseason is is generally tougher in a lot of ways because you are getting back into an activity full-time, you're pushing your body a lot more, it's hot out. So ice baths, highly effective for helping with muscle soreness. ⁓ helping prevent you from feeling run down and super tired. Helpful for restoring muscle strength short term, and it's most effective in the first one to four days. That evidence comes from a study from Leader et al. ⁓ Beyond that, the second thing. Is let's look at its effect on inflammation and muscle damage. Now, with this, there's some mixed evidence. ⁓ there are a few studies that show a reduction in inflammatory markers, ⁓ but the results are inconsistent. What that means is some studies show that ice baths can help with like bigger inflamm inflammation or bigger you know, if you have like chronic inflammation in in some regards. some studies show that it can the ice baths can be helpful for that, some not as helpful. one thing, one thing that these studies also point out is that like trying to stop some inflammation might not be the best. ⁓ if we want to get super nerdy, inflammation typically brings healing to a joint, ⁓ or an injured tissue or whatever is injured. ⁓ And so one train of thought is like we want to let that process happen. The other train of thought is, well, if it's already swollen, those effects are already taking place. So let's go ahead and control some of that inflammation so that the pain goes down. ⁓ couple studies there, that's from White, that's from Hohenauer. and it really just looks at there being mixed evidence for ice bass helping with inflammation and muscle damage. The next one here, muscle hypertrophy and strength. This is looking more long-term. So muscle hypertrophy is muscle size. Hypertrophy is muscle increasing in size. ⁓ so looking at muscle size and strength with ice baths. And what these studies found is that there is a potentially negative impact on. muscle size and strength long term. Now that's not that's not saying, ⁓ I hopped in an ice bath and now two months from now I'm gonna be weaker. I think the the way that this the study is presented is that if you did an ice bath every single day for three months, it could have negative impacts on your strength or your muscle size. How this was set up here, or some of the things that that the study showed, was that chronic post-exercise use. So meaning if you consistently jump in an ice bath after you exercise, it may slow down hypertrophy and strength gains. ⁓ the reason, I guess it's getting super nerdy, but the reason for this is likely due to dampened. MTOR signaling and protein synthesis. So just like the connection between the muscle and the rest of the system and its ability to utilize protein to restore those muscles or recover those muscles or help build up those muscles. ⁓ If you're in an ice bath every day for long periods of time, ⁓ can have those negative effects on muscle size or strength. ⁓ that that study comes from Roberts, another one from Fife and Yamani. ⁓ the next one. The fourth thing here to touch on psychological effects and perceived recovery. Evidence shows a lot of positive effects ⁓ in this regard. ⁓ says that ice baths enhance subjective recovery, meaning ⁓ People will jump in the ice bath and they will tell you that it feels good or that their recovery feels better. it enhances their readiness and their well-being overall, even when objective markers show minimal change. So even in situations where the things that are measured in terms of recovery don't really change, don't really see a benefit, the person's psychological perception of being in the ice bath is helpful. So ⁓ there'll be one one crowd that says, Well, if nothing's changing objectively, if nothing if we can't measure any difference, then they're really not helping, so don't do it. On the other hand, there's gonna be another group of people that say, Well, if the athlete or the person thinks that they are feeling better, then they're they probably are feeling better. So ⁓ do with that as you may, but ⁓ there is evidence of positive effects. Of ice bass in terms of how people perceive themselves or their body afterwards. That evidence comes from Broach and Housen. And then the last topic that I will touch on here is sleep and autonomic function, or the the functions that your body does automatically without you thinking or doing anything about it. And the effects here are kind of inconclusive or not quite studied enough. There's some evidence that shows your parasympathetic system, the system that controls your your sleep performs better. but the data's pretty limited, ⁓ limited enough that, you know, I wouldn't confidently say that there's a huge difference. ⁓ and that likely the individual response and the context around that individual are really a lot more important than just the ice bath itself. that lukewarm evidence comes from Stanley and another name I can't really pronounce. Isan. So what do we do with all these studies and recommendations? So I I kind of ⁓ kind of wrapped up the takeaways here. So the practical uses ⁓ in terms of effectiveness, recommendation, really good for muscle soreness, really good for kind of preventing fatigue in the short term. That evidence is really strong. Ice baths will help with muscle soreness short term. They will help you recover a little bit better. ⁓ strong evidence for that, especially after competition or really hard training sessions. But in terms of like muscle growth and strength long term, ice baths not really good for that. I would avoid frequent and long-term use of ice baths afterwards. especially after maybe like a I would say more like a heavy lifting session. Probably not so helpful in terms of building muscle. And then in terms of inflammation, muscle damage, really mixed results, You can use it situationally. evidence for psychological recovery, really strong. It's really helpful for helping people feel ready, whether it's a placebo or not, still helpful if the person feels like it's helpful. And then with sleep and recovery of our automatic systems, really limited. There's some promising evidence, but definitely not ⁓ anything definitive. ⁓ just a couple of parameters. If you are hopping in an ice bath or if someone is preparing one for you, the best practice in terms of setting up an ice bath, you want that temperature between ten and fifteen degrees Celsius, which is about fifty to fifty nine degrees Fahrenheit. ⁓ we always Like to have our ice baths monitored just to make sure that there's no ill effects of cold happening. ⁓ but that recommendation, 50 to 59 degrees Fahrenheit is pretty much the sweet spot we're looking at. You're thinking about staying in there for like 10 to 15 minutes, you the timing of it, you want to do that immediately, up to like one hour after your exercise or after your training session. Beyond that, ⁓ you know, potentially the benefits are not quite as strong. And the frequency, I would say use sparingly, especially during times or seasons where you're trying to build muscle or strength. ⁓ if you're in a season where you're you're doing some heavy strength training blocks, probably wanna avoid ⁓ frequent ice baths. So that's kind of the that's kind of the the best ⁓ best use, the best case ⁓ for it. But ⁓ in the way that we use them at the high school, definitely heavily utilized in the first week when training is pretty intense and muscles are feeling pretty sore. really effective for that scenario. Hope that was helpful. apply as you will. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out. Thanks for listening. You can find ways to connect or my ⁓ information in the show notes, or you can find me on Instagram at higherpower sports PT. Thanks, and we'll see you next time.