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Home » recovery » Study Says Ice Baths Do Not Work

Study Says Ice Baths Do Not Work

November 15, 2012 By Gregor Winter

Did you see this report on ice baths last week?

Scientists at the University of Portsmouth have found cold water immersion is no more and no less effective in helping an athlete recover after sport than light cool-down exercise.

As for why previous studies showed signs of efficacy they speculate that:

It might be that previous studies have used as a control group athletes who do nothing to warm down versus those who are immersed in cold water.

[…] We found athletes who cooled down using light exercise recovered at the same rate as those in cold water.

They also mention that ice baths pose serious health risks, but they don’t mention what these risks are.

As is unfortunately typical with science reporting, they didn’t link to the study. You can’t access it freely, but here is the abstract.

Just to add a picture to this post, here is Professor Louis Sugarman a.k.a. “the human polar bear”, who in the 1890s, brought that practice to the United States.

Prof Sugarman Ice Bath

Filed Under: recovery, science

About Gregor Winter

Hi, I run ATG.

Follow me on instagram @gregorwinter (and ATG @atginsta).

Comments

  1. Daniel Jørgensen says

    November 15, 2012 at 08:06

    As far as I know there’s many different studies on ice bathing but all state different points.

    But what are criteria for success of the recovery? ANd what kind of work are we talking?

    I believe many of the diverse results are dues to differences in these….

  2. Simon Klimesh says

    November 15, 2012 at 08:20

    Ice baths can help with pain control. Athletes sacrifice their bodies daily, being numb for an amount of time can be great. I say do what ever you have to in order to get in that comfort zone so you can relax outside of training.

    • Angie "Beastess" says

      November 16, 2012 at 15:45

      I agree. I don’t so much use it for inflammation or recovery. I use it as a pain/discomfort management tool. After some hard training cycles nothing feels better than numbing out from about the waist down.

  3. Fredrik Kvist Gyllensten says

    November 15, 2012 at 08:24

    Why is this study not to be found on PubMed?

    • Kpapangelis says

      November 15, 2012 at 13:15

      Cause not all studies (to be honest a very low percentage of American studies goes there) go on PubMed. This is from a European University, so most like is getting indexed by web of science, scopus, etc.

  4. Guest says

    November 15, 2012 at 08:47

    Hot baths are where it’s at.

    • GregorATG says

      November 15, 2012 at 11:50

      Hot baths and sauna.

  5. CBo says

    November 15, 2012 at 16:03

    See Here https://allthingsgym.com/2012/07/kelly-starrett-on-rice/

  6. Jeff J says

    November 15, 2012 at 19:25

    Kstar did a great piece on icing injuries: http://www.mobilitywod.com/2012/08/people-weve-got-to-stop-icing-we-were-wrong-sooo-wrong.html

  7. Jay Blais says

    November 16, 2012 at 14:16

    icing is for inflammation, not recovery

  8. jeff j says

    November 24, 2012 at 21:33

    i got the full study pdf if anyone is interested,

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