Ice Baths Before or After a Workout – Which Is Better?
Whether to incorporate ice baths before or after a workout has been a subject of interest and debate within the fitness community. There’s no doubting that cold therapy has the potential to be good for you.
Using the cold pre or post largely depends on what benefits you are looking to achieve from cold therapy and what type of workout you are doing around the cold therapy. To make an informed decision, it's crucial to understand the science behind the effects of cold exposure on the body, both before and after exercise.
When considering the appropriateness of cold therapy around training, it is good to assess how long your recovery window is, how big was your session or workout, and when are next needing to perform.
In this article, we will delve deeper into the potential drawbacks of using ice baths after strength-based hypertrophy style workouts and when might be the best time to use ice baths around training.
Ice Bath Before Exercise (Pre-cooling)
Enhanced Performance in Heat: Pre-cooling with an ice bath before exercise, especially in hot environments, may help lower the body's core temperature. This can improve exercise performance by delaying the onset of heat-related fatigue.
Improved Endurance: Cooling the body before exercise might help improve endurance, as a lower core temperature may slow the rate at which the body heats up during prolonged activity.
Reduced Perceived Effort: Pre-cooling has been associated with a reduction in the perception of effort during exercise. Athletes may feel that they can exert themselves more without experiencing the same level of perceived difficulty.
Minimised Muscle Damage: By preemptively reducing muscle temperature, pre-cooling may mitigate exercise-induced muscle damage, potentially reducing soreness and promoting faster recovery.
Ice Bath After Exercise
Reduced Inflammation: Post-exercise ice baths are commonly used to reduce inflammation and limit the extent of muscle damage that occurs during intense training.
Faster Recovery: Cold therapy after exercise may accelerate the recovery process by minimising inflammation, alleviating muscle soreness, and promoting faster restoration of muscle function.
Pain Relief: Ice baths can provide immediate pain relief, making them beneficial for athletes dealing with acute injuries or experiencing significant post-exercise muscle soreness.
Improved Muscle Function: Cooling muscles post-exercise may help restore optimal muscle function more rapidly, allowing athletes to return to training or competition sooner.
Instances When Pre-cooling Might Be More Beneficial
High-Intensity Exercise in Heat: Pre-cooling is particularly relevant when engaging in high-intensity exercise in hot conditions, such as endurance races or training sessions in a warm climate.
Sports with Prolonged Duration: Athletes involved in activities with prolonged durations, such as long-distance running or cycling, may benefit from pre-cooling to enhance endurance.
Maximal Effort Workouts: When aiming for maximal effort in a workout or training session, pre-cooling might help athletes push their limits by delaying the onset of fatigue.
Instances When Post-Exercise Ice Baths Might Be More Beneficial
Endurance Training Sessions: After high-intensity or endurance based training sessions, post-exercise ice baths can assist in reducing inflammation and muscle soreness.
Recovery Between Multiple Sessions: Athletes participating in multiple training sessions per day may find post-exercise ice baths helpful in speeding up recovery between sessions.
Management of Acute Injuries: When dealing with acute injuries or localised soreness, applying cold therapy after exercise can help manage pain and inflammation.
Instances When to Avoid Cold Therapy
During Warm-ups: Cold therapy, especially before exercise, may hinder muscle flexibility and the warm-up process. It's generally not recommended as a substitute for proper warm-up routines.
Chronic Conditions: Individuals with certain medical conditions, such as Raynaud's disease or circulatory issues, may need to avoid cold therapy due to potential complications.
Individual Preference: Some athletes may simply not respond well to cold therapy, experiencing discomfort or negative psychological effects. In such cases, alternative recovery methods may be more suitable.
Drawbacks of Ice Baths After Strength-Based Hypertrophy Style Workouts:
While ice baths offer benefits, there is growing evidence suggesting potential drawbacks, especially when used immediately after strength-based hypertrophy style training.
Reduced Muscle Adaptations: The anti-inflammatory effects of ice baths might interfere with the normal inflammatory response required for muscle repair and growth. This interference could potentially compromise the long-term adaptations in muscle strength and hypertrophy.
Inhibition of mTOR Signalling: Cold exposure after strength training has been shown to inhibit the activation of mTOR, a crucial signalling pathway for muscle protein synthesis. This inhibition may impede the optimal conditions necessary for muscle growth and repair.
Key Considerations
What are you recovering from (type of stress)?
One of the key aspects of taking an ice bath is the anti-inflammatory effects produced by the cold. For pain and swelling this is a great benefit of the cold, but when inflammation is a desired part of the process, avoid the ice.
Ice baths have been shown to blunt the inflammatory process required for muscular hypertrophy following strength based training, so if your workout has been strength based, it is best to avoid cold exposure within 4-8 hours post training to allow for the full inflammatory process necessary for muscular hypertrophy to take effect.
On the flip side, if the type of stress was from endurance based training then cold is your friend.
What do you require from your workout – repeated performance or adaptation?
When training for an upcoming event or race, or looking for repeated performance, it is important to know in which scenario it is ideal to use cold therapy.
If you are an athlete who is looking to repeat performance for days of back to back races or matches, for example, cold therapy would be ideal as repeated performance is the goal and you are taking advantage of all of the anti-inflammatory, analgesic and swelling reducing qualities of cold therapy.
If, on the other hand you are seeking adaptation from the workout, it may be more beneficial to avoid cold plunge and opt for heat therapy from sauna as your optimal recovery modality. The reason for this is, the cold is effective at reducing the inflammatory response and blood flow which in turn blunts the delivery of important oxygen rich blood and other nutrients to the muscles which are required for repair. An ice bath will blunt the desired adaptation by slowing down the natural repair process that makes you stronger or faster.
When do you next need to perform (recovery window)?
This question ties in somewhat with the previous. If you recovery window is short, and you therefore are seeking repeat performance, taking an ice bath will be the optimal recovery modality for you.
If your recovery window is long and you have more than a few days for recovery, then an ice bath may not be your best option for recovery, or you might get more benefit from a contrast therapy style recovery protocol whereby you mix short periods of cold therapy with moderate bouts of sauna at 10-15 minutes per exposure, repeating a couple of rounds.
An example of using contrast therapy for recovering from a workout or race with the intention of repeated performance would be:
10 mins sauna > 2 minutes ice > repeat x 3
5 minutes sauna > 1 minute cold > repeat x 6
An example of using contrast therapy for recovering with the goal of adaptation would be :
15 minutes sauna > 1 minute ice > repeat x 2
10 minutes sauna > 30 seconds ice > repeat x 3
When to Avoid Ice Baths
Considering the potential drawbacks, it's advisable to exercise caution with ice baths after strength-based hypertrophy style workouts.
Individual Variability: Responses to cold exposure can vary among individuals, and some may find that ice baths hinder their recovery or have minimal impact.
While ice baths have some clear benefits, particularly in terms of recovery and pre-cooling for specific performance scenarios, caution should be exercised after strength-based hypertrophy style workouts. If you’re a cold therapy connoisseur and simply can’t go without, the science based recommendation from Dr. Andrew Huberman are to wait at least 4-6 hours post strength training for engaging in cold water therapy, to avoid the inflammatory effects required for muscular hypertrophy being blunted.
The intricate interplay between cold exposure and muscle adaptations necessitates further research to establish more precise guidelines for the optimal use of ice baths in various training contexts.
Conclusion
In conclusion, ice baths can be employed strategically both before and after exercise to enhance performance and expedite recovery. The decision to use ice baths before or after exercise should be based on specific training goals, environmental conditions, and individual preferences.
Pre-cooling is advantageous for activities demanding endurance and taking place in hot environments, while post-exercise ice baths excel in minimising inflammation and promoting swift recovery after intense workouts. By incorporating ice baths into their overall training and recovery strategies, athletes can harness the physiological benefits of cold therapy to optimise their performance and well-being.
References:
N Am J Med Sci. 2014 May; 6(5): 199–209. Scientific Evidence-Based Effects of Hydrotherapy on Various Systems of the Body.
Roberts, L. A., Raastad, T., Markworth, J. F., Figueiredo, V. C., Egner, I. M., Shield, A., Cameron-Smith, D., Coombes, J. S., & Peake, J. M. (2015). Post-exercise cold water immersion attenuates acute anabolic signalling and long-term adaptations in muscle to strength training. Journal of Physiology, 593(18), 4285–4301.
