Cold water immersion, does one-size-fit-all?

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Background & Objective

Cold water immersion (CWI) is frequently implemented by athletes to speed-up recovery. It has previously been identified that an athlete’s characteristics such as body composition influence the effects of CWI. This study compared the effects of a customized CWI (CWIc) protocol, a standard CWI (CWIs) protocol and an active recovery (AR) protocol on different measures of fatigue.

What They Did

Across three consecutive weeks, ten physical active male participants performed a fatiguing protocol (60 squat jumps and a 2 min and 30s all-out cycling time-trial). After the fatiguing protocol, the participants were exposed to the CWIc protocol (12°C, 10-17 min), CWIs protocol (15°C, 10 min), or the AR protocol (60 W, 10 min). During the CWIc, participants were exposed to a fixed temperature of 12°C with a variable immersion duration for each participant. The individual durations were calculated using the ProCcare software which is designed to predict the responses of an individual’s body temperature to CWI.

Measures of fatigue were obtained on the day prior to the fatiguing protocol, as well as 0 and 24 h after the fatiguing protocol was completed. The measures of fatigue obtained included:

 Heart rate variability (HRV) as HRVrecovery (HRVr): Difference between the HRV obtained after the fatiguing protocol and after the recovery protocol;

 Muscle power (MP) as the mean power of all squat jumps performed over 30 s: Difference between MP obtained at the baseline and after the recovery protocol;

Muscle soreness (MS) on a scale of 1-10 obtained after recovery and 24 h after.

What They Found

HRVr was significantly lower using AR in comparison to both CWI protocols. Although, HRVr was significantly greater in CWIc when compared to CWIs, no differences were obtained in HRV following the CWIc and CWIs.

The decline in MP was significantly greater in CWIs in comparison to CWIc. No differences were observed between CWI protocols and AR.

No differences between groups were observed in MS after following each protocol and 24 h following.

Practical Takeaways

The findings from this study suggest that a customized CWI protocol may enhance acute recovery in comparison to a standard CWI and AR. Typically, customizing a CWI protocol is conducted by increasing exposure time, water temperature or a combination of both. This though can sometimes be challenging as due to individualised body composition characteristics such as fat mass and body weight) athletes may be exposed to varying levels of CWI intensity. By using this model, practitioners can customize CWI protocols to each athlete, therefore increasing the effectiveness of the recovery intervention.

Reviewer’s Comments

“The authors found that CWIc can have a beneficial effect on HRVr and MP in comparison to CWIs. Although, no differences were observed on the HRV post-exercise between CWI groups, suggesting that CWI may have a limited effect on HRV. Interestingly, no differences were observed for MP between CWIs or CWIc and AR. Changes in muscle temperature are associated to differences in the environmental temperature (i.e. water) and duration of exposure. As individuals using the CWIc protocol in comparison to the CWIs protocol were exposed to lower temperatures (12°C vs 15°C, respectively) and longer durations (13.0 ± 2.7 min vs 10 min, respectively), it is expected that muscle temperatures were also decreased to a greater extent. Nevertheless, if objective measures of muscle temperature were collected, it would aid to understand the observed beneficial effects of CWIc in comparison to CWIs in MP.

Although the observed effects on CWIc are a consequence of the lower temperatures and longer durations, it would be interesting if one of the CWI variables, such as temperature or duration was controlled between CWI groups. Furthermore, understanding the effects of CWIc on greater levels of fatigue (i.e. rugby match) would likely lead to a more pronounced effect of the customisation of CWI protocol.

From a personal perspective, I had the chance to try the software used to individualise the CWI protocols (ProCcare) and itis great as it offers the possibility to generate an individualise a CWI protocol by entering basic body composition measures such as body weight, height and fat mass, but also allows you to enter more complex measures such as skin area.

As mentioned in the Performance Digest issue #15, from an applied stand point, a coach or practitioner can divide the squad in two or more groups, e.g. a high and a lowfat group, and create different CWI protocols, e.g. 8 min in the CWI bin for the low-fat group and 12 min in the bin for the high-fat group. This allows for a more individualised approach to the recovery process.”

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