Cold water immersion is a popular strategy to recover for exercise. Cold water baths also have a positive impact on RMR of athletes, which gives athletes the idea that these baths are a good strategy for them to use. But, there is little research done on the affect of regular cold water immersion and muscles adaptations to strength training.
In a new articles published in the Journal of Physiology researchers talked this question. The abstract for the article can be found here: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1113/JP270570/abstract;jsessionid=E72B033E26CF731BF21CE1660AC26797.f03t02
These researchers investigated the functional, morphological, and molecular to strength training and cold water immersion (CWI) through two separate studies. In one study 21 men strength trained for 12 weeks with either 10 min of CWI or active recovery after training. Strength and muscles mass increased more in the active recovery group than in the CWI group while isokinetic work, type II muscle fiber cross-sectional area, and the number of myonuclei per fiber only increased in the active recovery group.
In the second study they took muscle biopsies 2, 24 and 48 hours after exercise. The looked at the number of satellite cells expressing neural cell adhesion molecule (NCAM) (10−30%) and paired box protein (Pax7) (20−50%), which showed an increase 24-48 hours after active recovery. Phosphorylation of p70S6 kinase increase in both conditions but was significantly greater in active recovery. These data suggest that CWI attenuates the acute changes in satellite cell numbers and activity of kinases that regulate muscle hypertrophy. This may translate into smaller long-term gains in strength and muscle hypertrophy.
This shows that CWI, even though great for increasing RMR and reducing inflammation or stiffness needs to be reconsidered as an appropriate post-exercise recovery strategy needs to be reconsidered. According to the results of this article a strategy of active rest should be employed after strength training and then maybe do some CWI 48 hours after the bout of exercise. I think this is a very interesting topic and hope that more people start to do research into this, as I use to use CWI as a post-exercise strategy all the time and it might have actually inhibited my abilities on the football field.
This is definitely interesting, though I wish they would have seen what CWI plus ACT do together. When I was in cross country, we would take ice baths after hard workouts, or about 3 days a week, but we would also have recovery runs the next day, so I was essentially doing both, CWI and ACT. I wonder if I was inhibiting myself to run a faster 6k by not making right post-exercise choices.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed reading this and find it very interesting because I actually believe that the ice baths or CWI don't help my muscles recover faster than going for a light jog immediately after games and our coach here at Regis has mandatory ice baths which I skillfully avoid. I found an article related to this topic in the European Journal of Sports Science by Linsday et. al; an abstract can be found here: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25854282 . Researchers performed a study on 37 professional rugby players after and 36 hours after five home games, observing their urine and saliva samples. Players completed either cold water immersion or a pool session recovery immediately for post-game recovery and had the choice the next day for what they wanted to do either one or a combination or CWI, pool session, or active recovery/stretching and it was suggested that the immediate post-game recovery intervention following the game is more important than the "next-day" intervention. So I wonder if the pool session post-exercise would show a better result than CWI and the active recovery the next day, since this shows that the most important thing is the immediate post-exercise recovery.
ReplyDeleteThis was a great article and a better study. I always looked at going straight from the basketball court to the ice bath similar to going straight from the locker room to practice without a warm up. Just as we must warm our muscles and bodies up to prepare ourselves for high intensity training, we should also perform a cool down or active recovery as stated in the article. I think this article has laid some groundwork that in an area that clearly needs more research to determine the most efficient way to strength train.
ReplyDeleteOne of the more difficult aspects of this field is understanding that there is not one "end all be all" way to strength train. Every human body is different and no matter how hard we try to figure out the best way to train, we cannot find one method that works for everybody. There are so many factors that are immeasurable that need to be taken into account such as pain tolerance and muscle soreness. I have worked with some athletes that can run for hours, wake up the next day and do it again. Whereas another athlete can perform just as well the first day but burnout and crash the next. Genetics plays a large role in strength training that we still do not fully understand.
This isn't to say that there have not been tried and true methods that have been working for individuals for years, but just because one method has worked for many does not mean it will benefit every individual.