Ice baths don’t help repair muscle

This 2015 filepic shows some of our national football players in an ice bath after training. While immersing in an ice bath will help reduce muscle soreness, it is unlikely to help in the repairing or building of muscles, as some athletes believe.

Successful athletes such as tennis player Andy Murray and track-and-field athlete Jessica Ennis-Hill are known for using ice baths after exercise.

However, new research has thrown cold water on this strategy.

New research suggests that ice baths aren’t helpful for repairing and building muscle over time, because they decrease the generation of protein in muscles.

That’s according to new research published recently in The Journal of Physiology.

Ice baths, also known as cold-water immersion, are still touted as a popular strategy for both acute recovery on a timescale of hours and days, as well as adaptation to training over weeks and months.

Researchers at Maastricht University in Germany found that ice baths are particularly ineffective for the latter.

The idea behind ice baths is that by reducing body temperature, blood flow, swelling and inflammation in tissues of the muscles are also reduced.

It’s the same concept as the one behind icing a sprained ankle.

While research has, in fact, confirmed that ice baths can be helpful for reducing muscle soreness, its effects on the formation of new proteins in the body – important for repairing and building muscle – are more controversial.

The researchers studied the impact of ice baths on the generation of new protein in muscles, which usually increases after we exercise, and also after we eat protein.

They measured this using stable isotope tracers and muscle biopsies in a group of participants that did resistance exercise of both legs for two weeks (in total, seven exercise sessions).

After every exercise session, the participants immersed one leg in cold water (8°C) and found a decrease in the amount of protein generation in that leg.

Study co-author Cas Fuchs said: “Everyone exercising, whether they be weekend warriors or elite athletes, wants to get the most out of their workouts.

“Our research doesn’t discount cold-water immersion altogether, but does suggest that if the athlete aims to repair and/or build their muscle, perhaps they should reconsider using ice baths.”