If you’ve ever seen an elite athlete getting ready for an event, you may have seen them take the plunge into an ice bath. Whether before or after they’ve competed, the benefits of ice baths for workout recovery are well known. From alleviating some of the pain and inflammation that your muscles experience after training to helping with sleep and reducing your chances of injury, ice baths aren’t relegated only to top-level sportspeople.
Whether you have a hobby sport that you train for regularly or are at a club level with your local team, you can enjoy the benefits of ice baths at home. Discover how they work and our tips for making the most out of your own at-home ice bath.
Maximising Post-Workout Recovery with Ice Baths
When you use an ice bath regularly during your recovery periods, you can reduce the soreness your muscles experience, and even improve your recovery time. These ice bath benefits alone are well worth bracing the cold for, but in reducing soreness and recovery time, you’ll also decrease the chances of injuring yourself.
Reducing Muscle Soreness
In the same way that you’d apply an ice pack to a sprained ankle or pulled muscle, ice baths can be used across the full body to reduce swelling and pain. This works because the cold temperatures of an ice bath help to inhibit the body's inflammatory response.
Used preventatively, they can help your muscles reset after strenuous exercise and leave you feeling more refreshed and less stiff post-workout.
Enhancing Recovery Time
Less muscle soreness and a shorter recovery time are due to the reaction within your body when it’s exposed to the cold. Vasoconstriction is when your blood vessels contract to send less blood to the surface of your skin and your extremities.
When you get out of your ice bath tub, the blood vessels will rapidly dilate again to bring fresh blood to the skin and limbs. This process helps flush metabolic waste like lactic acid while also bringing oxygen and nutrient-rich blood to the tissues.
This helps your body begin the recovery process more rapidly, with the microtears in your muscles beginning their healing process more quickly - without as much soreness.
Tips for Effective Ice Baths
When you’re starting out, you should gradually build up your session time. Ideally, you should start off with a minimum of 2 or 3 minutes and aim to increase it to 10 or 15. Aim to increase your time by one minute for every ice bath session you do, you can set a timer on your phone and watch it run down to help motivate you. This helps your body adjust over time but also builds your mental resilience.
As you build up the time you spend in the ice bath each session, you should also be lowering the temperature in each session as well. We recommend starting out at a maximum temperature of 10℃ but go lower if you think you can manage it. You want to aim for a lowest temperature of 3℃ or 0℃ in the longer term. For complete temperature control, an ice bath chiller is the perfect choice, and it can be easily controlled from your phone.
When you begin using your ice bath, you don’t need to get fully submerged straight away. As with any bath, your body will take a moment to adjust to the extreme change in temperature. Start off by putting both your legs in and gradually lowering the rest of your body. For the first few sessions, you may want to keep your arms out and eventually put them under the water once you’re more used to the shock.
Once you’re used to putting your full body in, we don’t recommend putting your head under the water. Your head is one of the body parts that loses heat the fastest, and you don’t need to submerge your entire body to enjoy the inflammation-relieving properties of an ice bath.
When it comes to the timing of when you should take your ice bath, we recommend getting in within two hours of finishing your workout. If you do it any later, you’ll notice a reduction in the anti-inflammatory effects. If you’re exercising after your ice bath, wait for 20 to 30 minutes after you get out. Your muscles will have regained their normal level of blood flow while also being primed and ready to be active.
Another tip is to adjust your ice bath schedule to match your training. When you’re actively working towards an event, whether that’s a team sport competition or marathon, you’ll want to use your ice bath more frequently. Check in with your body and see how you feel but three to five ice bath sessions a week can make a world of difference in helping you feel more rested and less achy when you’re training heavily.
Maintaining an ice bath at home is easier than you think. Having access to one can be an invigorating part of your day, making the recovery process after exercise easier while also helping you feel refreshed more quickly.
Ice baths are a wonderful addition to your wellness routine, helping to alleviate muscle soreness and improving your recovery time. Whether you opt for a chiller or an ice bathtub, they’re an invigorating option that helps to build up your mental fortitude along with supporting your body’s innate strength.
If you have any questions about which Kiva Wellness ice bath option is best for you, you can contact us at any time for more information and a personal recommendation.