What do ice baths do for your body?
Coach Jay - My coach has been telling us to take ice baths to help prevent injuries
and promote recovery. When I get in it just feels like pure pain! What good do ice
baths really do for your body? Is it worth that freezing feeling?

Tim -

I feel your pain Tim...or at least I once felt your pain.  This is a great question and I hope I can shed some light on it, but I'll preface my comments by saying that it is important, but it's not going to be comfortable.  To simplify this discussion we'll assume you're just putting your legs in the water, standing in the bath, with the water coming up to the upper thigh.

Your coach is 100% correct that an ice bath (aka "cold tube" or more scientific, cryotherapy) promotes recovery.  When I was in grad school the term vasoconstriction -  simply blood vessels shrinking in size/diameter - was always listed as the primary reason ice baths worked as inflammation and swelling went down when the diameter of the vessels was smaller.  While vasoconstriction is still important, current science would argue that when you get out of the ice bath and your tissue warms, the vessels open back up.  That tissue is "flushed" with oxygen rich blood which helps repair damaged tissue, and this blood can also clear out any waste (i.e. proteins, enzymes) incurred from the exercise.  So the ice bath constricts the vessels, keeping inflammation low, then when you get out blood rushes to the tissue and both clears out waste and provides oxygen to tissues that are trying to repair.  So that's the technical reason to do it - it improves recovery, allowing you to train again in a shorter period of time.

...but it's still going to hurt.  Personally, when I was a serious runner I'd get nauseous after just a few minutes in the ice bath.  However, after six or seven times in an ice bath I would reach a threshold of about five minutes where past that point I was fine, yet the first five minutes were always painful. 

Bottom line is you need to doing all of the restorative treatments assigned by your coach, even if they're painful.

Good luck Tim and thanks for the question.

Jay Johnson

*Coach Jay's advice is provided as general training information. Use at your own risk. Always consult with your own heath care provider for questions relating to your specific training and nutrition.

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