There are definite health benefits of cold exposure, and there are clear drawbacks. When used correctly, cold showers, ice baths, and other more exotic cold exposure therapies can have beneficial side effects. In this article we will review several pieces of research on cold exposure. We will also cover how to steer clear of its drawbacks, such as limiting your ability to gain muscle mass. Keep reading for a great in depth review.
Cold exposure has become massively popular in the last few years. As a coach, I firmly believe this is a result of seeing professional athletes sitting in ice baths, post competition. In a simplistic way this makes sense. If the pros use ice baths and cold plunges, then it must have some positive benefit right?
The real answer to that question is yes, but it’s more complicated than that. Sure, there are clear performance, and health benefits of cold exposure. However, the important thing we must ask ourselves is why should one partake in deliberate cold exposure, and what is it actually doing for us?
Said simply, cold exposure is providing a shock to our system, that causes a change in its baseline functioning. This change to homeostasis can provide a variety of benefits including: increased athletic recovery (short term), elevated mood, and increased immune response.
Remember that there is no free lunch. Cold exposure provides these benefits at the expense of your bodies ability to build muscle tissue, and strength. Take a quick gander at the cold exposure benefits and drawbacks below.
Cold Exposure Overview
Benefits
- Reduced Muscle Soreness
- Enhanced Muscular Power Recovery
- Immune System Benefits
- Psychological Benefits
- Increased Cardiovascular Health
- Decreased Inflammation
- Quicker Athletic Recovery In Season
Drawbacks
- Decreased ability to build muscle mass
- Decreased ability to build strength
- Logistically Difficult and Expensive
Now that we have a good general overview of the topic, we can dive into the research below. After we cover what the nerds in the lab coats have to say on the topic, I will provided some easy methods of working in cold exposure into your routine, without compromising your ability to build muscle and strength.
We’ll also briefly discuss other research based recovery methods that don’t degrade strength and muscle mass. Without further ado, let’s get to the science. Before we do that, don’t forget to join our email list below.
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7 Health Benefits of Cold Exposure
When we discuss the health benefits of cold exposure we need to separate this topic into two categories. The first category is acute bodily responses, to short term cold exposure, and the second are long term, or systemic responses.
In the short term cold temperatures cause your body to constrict your peripheral blood vessels. You’ll also start shivering, and non shivering thermogenesis, via brown fat activation. However, we’re more interested in the long term health benefits of cold exposure. This is what we’ll discuss in this section. For quick primer on the subject of cold water immersion, and athletic performance, check out this video.
Reduced Muscle Soreness
There is clear evidence that most athletes report less muscle soreness when they’re routinely exposed to cold water immersion, after a training bout. This meta-analysis nicely sums up the topic across 28 different studies. Here are their findings below.
CWI (cold water immersion) was superior to other recovery methods for recovering from muscle soreness, and similar to other methods for recovery of muscular power and flexibility. CWI was more effective than active recovery, contrast water therapy and warm-water immersion for most recovery outcomes. Air cryotherapy was significantly more effective than CWI for the promotion of recovery of muscular strength and the immediate recovery of muscular power (1-h post-exercise). Meta-regression revealed that water temperature and exposure duration were rarely exposure moderators.4
Effects of Cold-Water Immersion Compared with Other Recovery Modalities on Athletic Performance Following Acute Strenuous Exercise in Physically Active Participants: A Systematic Review, Meta-Analysis, and Meta-Regression
Recall that this meta-analysis is strictly looking at recovery outcomes. They found that athletes were ready to train hard, more quickly, after CWI. That doesn’t mean that athletes should constantly use ice baths as a regular part of their training. As you’ll see in the next section, there are some caveats that we must consider.
Enhanced Muscle Power Recovery
Muscle power recovery is a very important aspect to consider, especially for athletes that compete in long duration events. Things like long tournaments, or the CrossFit games are excellent examples of events where muscle power recovery could prove to be a decisive advantage. Check out this excerpt from another great research article.
CWI was an effective recovery tool after high-intensity exercise, with positive outcomes occurring for muscular power, muscle soreness, CK, and perceived recovery 24 h after exercise. However, after eccentric exercise, CWI was only effective for positively influencing muscular power 24 h after exercise. Dose–response relationships emerged for positively influencing endurance performance and reducing serum CK, indicating that shorter durations and lower temperatures may improve the efficacy of CWI if used after high-intensity exercise.
Impact of Cold-Water Immersion Compared with Passive Recovery Following a Single Bout of Strenuous Exercise on Athletic Performance in Physically Active Participants: A Systematic Review with Meta-analysis and Meta-regression
This meta-analysis highlights that most of the athletes were better recovered in their muscular power and soreness after 24 hours. It proved to be less effective when eccentric exercise was used. This makes sense, as heavy eccentric loading (think a lot of wall balls) causes more muscular damage.
Interestingly enough, it does seem that it may be more beneficial for endurance related activities. Next we’ll talk about cold exposure and the immune system.
Immune System Benefits
This is one area where cold water exposure shows an increase in immune cells including: T lymphocytes, interleukin-6, and T helper cells, among other white blood cells. What is not so clear is if this increase in immune cell proliferation actually translates to lower levels of sickness. Here’s an excerpt.
A clinical study of upper respiratory tract infections (URTI) in cold-water swimmers compared to pool swimmers found no significant difference in the prevalence of these infections, although there was some evidence of less URTI in cold-water swimmers compared to non-swimmers [89]. Interestingly, the same study showed that both cold swimmers and pool swimmers who had partners that were non-swimmers, and that the latter had significantly more URTIs than their swimming partners.
Collier N, Massey HC, Lomax M, et al. Cold water swimming and upper respiratory tract infections. Extreme Physiol Med. 2015;4(1):A36. [Google Scholar]
Even though there are clearly more immune cells present, in folks that undergo regular cold exposure, that doesn’t always translate to less illness, like the common cold. It seems that the researchers may have discovered that regular aerobic training decreases sickness. This aligns with my own personal experience, from my recent weight loss challenge. In the next section, we’ll discuss some psychological benefits.
Psychological Benefits of Cold Exposure
Many people report mental health benefits as a result of cold exposure. Some researchers attribute this to the adrenaline dump your body produces as a result of CWI. I think it’s clear that more research is needed to explain this phenomenon, however this research study did show a clear psychological benefit.
Theoretical and practical training in cold immersion in the winter did not induce anxiety. Regular cold exposure led to a significant (p=0.045) increase of 6.2% in self-perceived sexual satisfaction compared with the pre-exposure measurements. Furthermore, considerable increase (6.3% compared with the pre-exposure period) was observed in self-perceived health satisfaction; the change was borderline significant (p=0.052). In men, there was a reduction in waist circumference (1.3%, p=0.029) and abdominal fat (5.5%, p=0.042). Systematic exposure to cold significantly lowered perceived anxiety in the entire test group (p=0.032).
Impact of cold exposure on life satisfaction and physical composition of soldiers
These are marginal, but statistically significant improvements in mood, and general well being. It’s interesting that they reported a reduction in abdominal fat, as most research shows that the increase in metabolic rate to be negligible.
Commonly this increase in metabolic activity is a result of the conversion of normal white adipose tissue, to brown adipose tissue (BAT). BAT’s job is to burn fat cells and create heat. It does this very efficiently, however, there are only a few hundred grams of BAT in your body, compared to pounds of conventional white fat tissue. Next we’ll talk about circulatory system health.
Increased Cardiovascular Health
This is also one area where research studies show mixed results. In general there seems to be an improvement for cold adapted subjects in biological markers of cardiovascular health. However, there is also some indication that things like cold water swimming cause increased stress on the heart, as compared to normal core body temperature exercise.
I think this is one area that simply needs more research. Right now scientists are measuring blood bio-markers and noting whether or not they change. There’s not much research evidence to say, with a high degree of certainty, that these changes are indicative of better heart health, or a reduction in heart disease. Here’s an example of what I’m talking about.
After any strenuous exercise, your blood cortisol levels go up drastically. As you know, cortisol is a stress hormone, that is associated with many chronic diseases. On a simplistic level you could say that you should never exercise because of this cortisol increase. Unfortunately, you’d be seriously wrong!
This increase is normal, and expected after physical activity. We have hundreds of studies that show this increase is necessary and not harmful. Take these studies with a grain of salt.
Decreased Inflammation
This is one area where the scientific picture is a bit clearer. Cold water immersion, and other cold therapies, do reduce inflammation. In fact, this reduction in short term inflammation, is likely the reason why athletes feel less soreness after a big workout.
As you’ll see later on, this reduction in soreness is a double edged sword. Sure, you feel better more quickly, but you’re blunting your bodies ability to repair cellular damage. Depending on your goal, this might be just the ticket, or it might ruin all your hard work. Not to worry, I’ll cover some do’s and don’ts later on.
Quicker Athletic Recovery In Season
This is where cold water therapy and cold water treatments really shine. There is a lot of evidence of enhanced sprint recovery, muscle recovery, and subjective readiness to train when regular cold water immersion is used. Check out this research excerpt.
The CWI group was associated with improved recovery time of sprint speed 24 hours post-exercise and an attenuated efflux of CK. The reduction in CK associated with reduced muscle damage may be due to reduced muscle blood flow [97]. Similar findings were found in another study, and may be explained by a decreased muscle metabolic activity without affecting the tissue oxygenation necessary for normal muscle recovery [98].
Health effects of voluntary exposure to cold water – a continuing subject of debate
These studies seem to indicate that cold water immersion could be a very good option for endurance based athletes, or athletes that don’t need to build a lot of strength or muscle mass. It would be nice to see a long term study on endurance runners or cyclists to see what effects it has.
Now that we’ve covered the 7 health benefits of cold exposure, let’s move on to the 3 primary drawbacks. After that we’ll review some best practices for implementing it into your recovery routine.
3 Drawbacks of Cold Exposure
There are three clear drawbacks of cold exposure. The first is that it clearly inhibits your bodies ability to gain muscle mass. Secondly, it also slows your ability to gain strength. Lastly, it can be quite costly to purchase a cold plunge tub, or ice machines.
Decreased Ability to Build Muscle Mass
Most people don’t really understand what happens when you’re trying to build muscle mass. Let’s say you’re following one my hypertrophy programs. You’ve just finished a workout, and you’re cursing my name. Your body immediately kicks off the recovery process by signally for inflammation.
This is a standard body alarm response to any type of injury. That’s why you often experience swelling and pain when you have acute injuries. This signals your body to activate a very complex genetic process of repairing and rebuilding muscle cells. From the end of your workout, it takes around 4 hours for your body to return back to normal.
That doesn’t mean you are recovered, it simply means that the signal to begin recovery has been sent. Full muscular recovery can take up to 72 hours or more, depending on how hard you worked. Here’s a great recent study to illustrate this point.
In this paper the scientists had athletes complete 12 weeks of lower body strength training. One group sat in cold water to their chests afterwards, the other group pedaled an exercise bike at 60 watts for 10min after their workout.
The group that sat in the cold water gained 103 grams of muscle mass. The group that did active recovery on the bike, gained 309 grams of muscle mass. In other words, active recovery tripled the muscle mass gained. That is a big difference! Now let’s look at the strength gains in this same study.
Reduced Ability to Build Strength
In the same 12 week study, that we spoke about above, the researchers also measured lower body strength improvements, comparing them from the cold water immersion group to the active recovery group. I doubt you’ll be surprised that the cold water group gained much less strength.
The researchers measured the participants one rep max on a leg press machine. The cold water group gained 130kg or 286 pounds of strength, over 12 weeks of the program. The active recovery group gained 201 kg or 442 pounds of strength, on their leg press. Now you see why I always recommend active recovery in all of my best muscle building programs, like the one below!
Logistically Difficult
While this isn’t an insurmountable obstacle, I think it is worth covering. You really only have a few options if you want to regularly use cold water immersion. You can do something like a cold shower, but that’s going to have minimal effects.
You next option is a tub that you can fill full of cold water. That’s probably the most economical option. You can check out this option from Amazon (affiliate link). It costs less than $90, but it’s literally only a tub. It doesn’t cool the water or make ice.
You’d still need something like this ice machine, which makes 40 pounds per day, to get the water under 60 degrees Fahrenheit. That ice machine with this tub is around $300 bucks. There are obviously better units that are designed to cool the water for athletes, but they’re thousands of dollars.
Personally, I don’t think spending thousands of dollars on something you might only occasionally use, is great value for most folks. That doesn’t mean that I would never recommend cold water immersion. In the next section we’ll review some guidelines on when, and how to use this tool.
How to Best Use Cold Therapy
I think it’s clear that we don’t want to use cold water immersion, or any other cold therapies when you’re trying to gain muscle mass, or strength. For many of you reading this article, that’s the majority of your training time. Not to worry, there are several beneficial recovery methods you can still use, which we’ll cover in a bit.
I think CWI and related treatments are best used as far away from strength and muscle building workouts as possible. At a minimum, you should wait 4 hours between lifting and using cold water immersion. Ideally, you’d want to wait up to 24 hours between lifting sessions and CWI. This should minimize the blunting of strength and mass gains.
In general, it’s probably best to stay away from frequent CWI if you want to gain strength or mass. I would think of it like using Aspirin or other NSAIDs. It can be useful when you really need it, but it’s just not good when used frequently.
If you have a big athletic event coming up, especially if it last’s several hours or several days, then a cold bath would be a great option. You’ll want to stay in water around 50-60 deg Fahrenheit or 11-15 deg Celsius for 10-15 minutes. You don’t need to expose yourself to extreme cold, in frigid water, to maximize its potential benefits. Next we’ll talk about other recovery methods that you can use more frequently.
Scientific Recovery Methods for Athletes
The best recovery method is easy active recovery after a workout. Walk, cycle, or row at a very easy pace for 10min. You’ll feel better afterwards, and research shows that it helps you train harder sooner, without any drawbacks.
If you want to reduce muscle soreness, you can wear compression garments. Research shows that wearing them during and after hard workouts, drastically reduces delayed onset muscle soreness or DOMS. I can provide anecdotal evidence that these garments do reduce DOMS, in my own personal training.
Lastly, and most importantly, make sure you pick a good program. I can’t tell you how many bodybuilding or strength training programs I’ve seen that have way too much volume in each session. This is also true of many functional fitness programs.
We’ve all done workouts that make you sore for a week, and I can tell you that that amount of volume is above optimal. It’s normal to be sore like that every once in a while, but if that’s an every week thing, then you aren’t recovering from your workouts.
If you want an awesome fitness program, that will build mass, and athletic performance, then check out this program below.
Final Thoughts
This has been a long article, so let’s review some key points. There are good health benefits of cold exposure, but it’s not a general tool that you should use year round. If you like the mental benefits of CWI, then space it out as far as possible from your hard lifting workouts.
Keep the water temperatures in the 50 degree range, and aim for 10-15 minutes in the tub. Feel free to use this tool as much as you need during strenuous, prolonged athletic events, especially if they’re more endurance oriented.
Just like any tool, it has the ability to be of great use, or make you curse when you slip and misuse it. If this interests you then I encourage you to try it from time to time, and see what your personal experiences are with it. Now get out there and get training, and don’t forget to join the email list below!
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