Cold Showers

If your following along, you know that I’ve sustained an injury to my knee. It sucks, enough said. I currently don’t think I need surgery, and am already taking steps to rehab/prevent more damage. Sadly, this means no more squats or deadlifts for a while, at least until I can get to the point where I can run or even ride a bike without pain. We shall see.

However, in thinking about my woes, though, I am brought back to the topic of recovery. Its obvious that I get alot of training volume in every week, anywhere from 4-8 sessions. Enough to kill some people. Well, part of it is obviously adaptation. I didn’t wake up one day and decide I would start performing 4 strength sessions and up to 3 condition sessions a week. A quick aside, the unfortunate thing about adaptation is that it takes more and more work, or more creative ways of doing work, to gain the same benefits as a new lifter on a full body, 3 sessions a week program could see (obviously, in percentage strength gain, not over all numbers). Anyway, part of the reason…until recently… that I was able to do this was taking care of my body both before and after each lifting session. A brief run down includes, waking up at least 2 hours before my lift to allow my intervertebral discs to dehydrate a bit, eat a solid meal of fats, protein, and fruit before a lift, protein shakes post workout, healthy solid meals through out the day, and getting adequate sleep (at least 7 hours) about 90% of the time. Fish oil (I’ve written article singing its praise) as well as knowing when to back off…most of the time. However, one of my favorite new ones is what I often call (to sound smart) frigid hydrotherapy… or cold showers post workout.

ICE Bath for ultimate recovery! She's doing it right!

Now, at some point, most people have felt the stinging relief ice brings to the table when we’ve had an acute injury, a migraine, or a fever. And long distance runners and high performance athletes are well known for taking ice baths and cold showers after strenuous workouts. I think, what most people fail to realize is that this isn’t just to cool down. Icing down helps an athlete recover and mitigate the effects of inflammation. As you work out, you damage muscle tissue, whether you are running, sprinting, lifting, swimming or whatever is your fancy. As long as you did not severely hurt yourself, this damage, in the muscle tissue, is mostly micro tears, that at least in lifting (and most sports where force is produced quickly) will heal and take that stimuli as a sign to grow bigger and stronger. That being said, there is usually a good deal of inflammation associated with this stimuli, and too much inflammation can be damaging, due to the metabolites produced.

However, research has been done showing that icing injuries reduces the perception of pain; that is, a stimuli that should be severely painful seem less than it really is (Kakigi et al). Well that’s good (though it might make you think you can over do it). Physiologically, we know that cold lowers the local tissue temperature, leading to vasoconstriction and decrease the amount of harmful metabolites being produced as well as shuttled to other parts of the body. This effect helps to reduce inflammation and local swelling (Enemeka et al). It is almost like tricking your body into healing faster by producing less of the bad stuff. I don’t know much about this field of study, and as an outsider looking in, I would wonder if it also decreased the growth response to exercise because you are interfering with the inflammation and rebuilding cycle. But then again, athletes have been doing this years, and as inflammation generally “slows you down” in your training cycle, maybe such concerns are unwarranted.

All that being said, I’ve made a post workout cold shower a daily part of my routine, and it has definitely brought about a huge change in how I feel post workout and 24-48 hours after a strenuous workout. It may also be the reason why I pushed myself further, because suddenly, normal levels of inflammation were not occurring, and I thought I was adapting too rapidly. Additionally, I feel alot more tolerant of cold in general. I’d suggest giving it a shot. Not that you have to do it everyday, but it helps, and with the heat of the summer approaching, I’m sure you won’t mind too much.

Unfortunately, do to this post, I know some ICE jokes are coming my way…

Kakigi R., et al. Pain relief by various kinds of interference stimulation applied to the peripheral skin in humans: pain-related brain potentials following CO2 laser stimulation. J peripher Nerv Syst 1996;1:189-198.

Enwemeka, C.S., Allen, C., Avila, P., Bina, J., Konrade, J. and Munns, S., 2002. Soft tissue thermodynamics before, during, and after cold pack therapy. Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise 34 1, pp. 45–50.