Straight After Training - Using hot & cold to recover?
Former Member
Hi all - my post is in relation to recovery techniques used by people after training. I know that refuelling with the right food, staying hydrated, stretching, rest and getting some deep tissue / massage done all helps the body to recover between training. This recovery is key in performance improvment and injury prevention.
What I'm wondering about here is the use of hot / cold after training. At the moment, I just tend to hit the sauna for 10 minutes, take a shower (usually warm) and stretch a it in the 2 of them. However, I've come across some research and articles that seem to suggest this could be done better and just wondering what people think / what they currently do about this.
The area is in relation to the use of alternate hot and cold after training to aid blood flow and therefore recovery, to minimise Delayed onset muscles soreness (DOMS) which is basically the tightness you get 1-2 days after you train hard. The science behind this is simple enough from what I can see -through the process the science geeks :) call vasodilation (using heat to open the area up) and vasoconstriction (using cold to close the area up) and basically an alternating of cold and hot you increase the blood flow in the area which seems to aid recovery.
Basically all that is required is an alternating of cold and hot (apparently it's better to start with the cold first to help contractiong as the area will be naturally quite warm after training). The most common way seems to be "Contrast Showers" which involve going from as cold as you can handle, to as hot as you can handle every minute or so for 5-10 minutes. I've also read about people doing a cold shower (2 minutes), sauna (5 minutes) and then some constrast showers too.
So basically I'm planning to be a guinea pig to see if this helps with DOMS :) and for the next few weeks after training I'm going to do the following (unless someone suggests something better please!)
- 2 minute cold shower
- 5-10 minute sauna
- 5 mins spent in constrast shower (doing 1 min cold, hot, cold, hot, cold etc)
So just wondering does anyone do this? Have an opinion on this? Feel it could be done better etc?
My recovery is in your hands :)
Cheers!
Parents
Former Member
This definitely works. I hardly ever use it for swimming, but an ice-cold bath for the legs is a staple for me after a really hard run. One of my favorite running routines is to do a hard trail run and then stand in the frigid waters of Puget Sound for intervals of 30 seconds to 3 minutes (depending on temperature and my pain threshold of the day). If no natural body of water is available, I simply fill the tub with the coldest water possible, then sit in there. There is a big benefit the next day. The ice bath makes my legs feel almost as if I did nothing at all, compared with the typical soreness when I don't do the cold treatment.
I have also done the alternating cold-hot shower routine after swimming, but not very often. The prison showers at the gym have a lot of spillover, and I don't think my fellow swimmers would appreciate their involuntary participation in that routine.
This definitely works. I hardly ever use it for swimming, but an ice-cold bath for the legs is a staple for me after a really hard run. One of my favorite running routines is to do a hard trail run and then stand in the frigid waters of Puget Sound for intervals of 30 seconds to 3 minutes (depending on temperature and my pain threshold of the day). If no natural body of water is available, I simply fill the tub with the coldest water possible, then sit in there. There is a big benefit the next day. The ice bath makes my legs feel almost as if I did nothing at all, compared with the typical soreness when I don't do the cold treatment.
I have also done the alternating cold-hot shower routine after swimming, but not very often. The prison showers at the gym have a lot of spillover, and I don't think my fellow swimmers would appreciate their involuntary participation in that routine.
