Cold Plunge Therapy for Athletes: Performance and Recovery

Cold plunge therapy for athletes has become increasingly popular in recent years. This may be in part due to the Huberman Lab podcast, which brought attention to the benefits of cold water immersion. But the benefits of cold plunges are by no means a new phenomenon. It can be traced back to ancient civilizations, including the Greeks and Romans, who used cold baths as part of their wellness rituals. The Nordic countries have a longstanding tradition of ice bathing paired with sauna use to create a contrasting thermal experience.

Today, modern science is discovering the mechanisms behind these ancient practices validating their efficacy and adapting them to modern-day athletes. Continue reading to learn about cold plunges for athletic performance and recovery, as well as the best practices to implement in your training program.

What Is Cold Plunge Therapy?

Cold plunge therapy is an invigorating practice that involves immersing oneself in cold water, typically at temperatures ranging from 37 to 59°F. Athletes and wellness enthusiasts alike use this technique for its variety of health benefits.

One of the primary advantages of cold plunge therapy is its ability to reduce inflammation and muscle soreness in athletes. 

Cold water therapy helps minimize swelling, minimize delayed-onset muscle soreness (DOMS), and accelerate recovery after exercise by constricting blood vessels and decreasing post-exercise inflammation.

Who Is Cold Plunging For?

Studies have shown numerous health benefits of cold plunging for athletes and non-athletes alike. But in this post, we’ll be focusing on the benefits of cold plunging for athletic performance and recovery.

The Science Behind Cold Water Therapy

Immersing yourself in a cold plunge or ice bath is a form of eustress, which is defined as a positive form of stress that has a beneficial effect on health, motivation, performance, and emotional well-being.

When you first enter a cold plunge, your body sees it as a life-or-death situation from an evolutionary point of view. This causes an immediate switch in your central nervous system from parasympathetic (rest and digest) activity to sympathetic (fight or flight) activity. Along with this immediate change, your body also experiences a brief increase in heart rate and breathing rate, vasoconstriction, and the release of norepinephrine and dopamine.

The above changes happen almost immediately upon entering, but staying submerged in a cold plunge for longer will also create further physiological changes. These include a reduction in metabolic activity (to conserve heat energy), a reduction in core body temperature, decreased inflammation, and a decrease in creatine kinase. (​​Elevated levels of CK in the blood serve as a marker of muscle damage.)

How Do Cold Plunges Benefit Athletes?

Improved Recovery

Athletes of all levels know that recovery is one of the most important parts of a training program. And as this study from the American Journal of Physiology states, “Inadequate recovery after exercise may prevent athletes from training at the required intensity or completing the required loads during subsequent training sessions. It may also increase the risk of injury, illness, and overtraining.”

The same study states, “Results suggest that cold water immersion after resistance exercise allows athletes to complete more work during subsequent training sessions, which could enhance long-term training adaptations.”

This is important because, as any athlete knows, any form of training is a marathon, not a sprint. Making progress requires consistent, cumulative, and long-term effort paired with optimal recovery. What this study suggests is that utilizing cold plunge therapy for athletes means they can put in more sustained effort in the long term while still recovering properly, leading to more consistent long-term progress.

Furthermore, this meta-analysis study revealed that “cold water immersion has a more positive effect than passive recovery in terms of immediate and delayed effects.”

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that athletes who use active recovery techniques would recover better than athletes who use passive recovery techniques. But how do cold plunges compare to other active recovery techniques, such as cryotherapy?

This study states, “Cold water immersion was more effective than whole-body cryotherapy in accelerating recovery kinetics. … Cold water immersion also demonstrated lower soreness and higher perceived recovery levels across 24-48 hours post-exercise.”

This finding is significant because athletes are able to recover better between workouts, leading to more effective training sessions in the long term. Most athletes know they can’t perform their best with sore muscles or a taxed central nervous system. The above study suggests that cold water immersion improves recovery between workouts, allowing for higher-quality training sessions over time.

The above studies are pertinent for perceived recovery. But what about actual biomarkers for performance and recovery?

There are two important biomarkers that measure fatigue as well as muscle damage: lactate and creatine kinase. Simply put, the greater the levels of lactate in an athlete’s blood, the greater the degree of fatigue. The greater the level of creatine kinase in an athlete’s blood, the greater the degree of muscle damage.

This meta-analysis found that after cold water immersion therapy post-exercise, “creatine kinase (CK) was lowered at 24 hours [post-exercise], as was lactate at 24 and 48 hours [post-exercise].”

These findings are significant. Self-reported measurements such as rate of perceived effort or delayed-onset muscle soreness (DOMS) are valid in studies like this, but they do present a slight limitation in the sense that they are self-reported by participants. Measuring lactate and creatine kinase both provide measurable biomarkers to further validate the perception of reduced fatigue and DOMS.

Improved Athletic Performance

Improved recovery is a huge part of a successful training program. But can cold water immersion improve actual physical performance? There are at least two studies that suggest it can. 

The study Effect of Hydrotherapy on Recovery From Fatigue tested four different recovery methods. These were cold water immersion, hot water immersion, contrast water therapy, and passive recovery following “strenuous training.” They found that “performance was enhanced across the five-day trial following cold water immersion and cold water therapy when compared to hot water immersion and passive recovery.”

The study concluded that “Overall, cold water immersion and cold water therapy appear to improve recovery from high-intensity cycling when compared to hot water immersion and passive recovery, with athletes better able to maintain performance across a five-day period.”

These findings are important for athletes who train (and/or compete) twice on the same day or on subsequent days.

While the above study determined improvements in aerobic performance, there are other studies that found cold water immersion can be beneficial to strength sports, as well.

This study in the American Journal of Physiology tested maximal and submaximal strength after high-intensity resistance training. The study found that “participants in the present study were able to lift a greater average and total load during the final three sets of the submaximal muscle function test after cold water immersion compared with active recovery.”

The same study continued, “The obvious implication of this finding is that cold water immersion may assist athletes who sometimes need to train (or compete) twice within the same day.”

Much like the above study that measured aerobic performance, the findings and implications for strength sports are similar. Simply put, cold water immersion between bouts of high-intensity resistance training improves subsequent performance.

Cold Water Immersion for Athletes: Best Practices

Cold plunge therapy for athletes is becoming more and more popular. The science says that both cold water immersion and contrast therapy can benefit athletes for both recovery and subsequent performance. But how should athletes implement cold water therapy into their training programs?

Let’s start with water temperature. Most studies on cold water immersion for athletes use water between 10 and 15°C (50 to 59°F). These are similar temperatures you would find in most cold plunges, whether at home or at your local plunge location.

Now, let’s discuss the duration of these cold plunges. All of the trials in the above studies used 10 to 15 minutes of cold water therapy. 

However, this study found that shorter durations and lower temperatures may improve the efficacy of cold water immersion. And Andrew Huberman recommends two to four sessions of one to five minutes per session for a total of 11 minutes per week.

As with any other athletic endeavor, you must find what works best for you. From the research, it seems that 10 to 15 minutes improves biomarkers as well as perceived recovery metrics. But you may experience those same benefits from a shorter duration. Experiment with different temperatures and durations to see what works best for you.

As always, safety should be your number one priority, and never push your limits too hard too quickly!