Ice baths are a favorite for elite athletes these days as it helps heal microtears in the muscles, as well as flush out by-products out of your blood vessels by vasoconstriction.
The old days of sitting in a hot tub after a strenuous sport are only for recreational sports or winter sports for social reasons.
At the last Olympics, the Canadian Athletics team went out and bought huge plastic garbage bins (I’m referring to the yard trimming variety you get at Home Depot) and filled them with ice and cold water. Instead of celebrating a good race with a beer, one sits in an ice cold garbage can for therapy! How romantic!
Yet hot and cold do have their place in sports medicine. I talked about ice baths for recovery, Chinese heat & muscle rubs, and treating sore muscles in previous articles. Some other methods are:
- contrast baths (hot/cold )
- Epsom salts
What are Contrast Baths and Showers?
I’ll be the first to admit I hated these.
It’s 3 sets of 3 minutes hot water immersion followed by one minute of cold water immersion. Always end the session in cold water. 12 minutes of hell. Having 2 baths side by side is a luxury. You could use a bath for hot, then shower for cold. Or use showers for both if you have no choice.
Hot and cold, as the name implies, will help in circulation (good nutrients like oxygen to affected areas, bad byproducts flushed out) as well as shrinking inflammation and microtears.
If you hear strange yelling and screaming in the showers, now you know why!
Old Wives Tale: You Catch a Cold from Cold Weather and Changes
If you believe being out in the cold without a jacket or scarf can instigate the common cold, then contrast baths will be beneficial. Same with the theory of “sudden changes” or “change of weather” causing a common cold.
Contrast baths and showers will make you more resistant to catching the common cold along with taking extra doses of Vitamin C.
But we all know why you catch colds? In winter months being indoors, you are locked up and exposed to the rhinovirus. Carpets are also bad news. Catching a cold really has nothing to do with the cold weather, at least not directly.
Epsom Salt
Epsom salt is simply magnesium sulfate. It’s just another kind of “salt” like sodium chloride (NaCl, or table salt).
How much salt to add?
We’re not talking about a handful for Italian pasta, or those fancy packages from LUSH either. We are talking between a half a kilogram to one full kilogram of Epsom salt added to a hot bath. One big box of salt would be good for two baths. Don’t worry, it’s not expensive, at least in Vancouver when I tried it last.
Reported benefits: it helps you relax.
Unfortunately there no scientific proof it really works other than making the water feel silky. There’s no way to do a double blind study because you can tell which water is which.
Now, I know the benefits of magnesium (like in ZMA) but I have a hard time believing it can cross the skin barrier, no matter how long you soak. After all, that’s why we have skin! So we won’t desiccate.
If it does make you relax, then It’s probably the hot water. But for a couple of dollars, it might be interesting to try out.
Optimal Performance
To sum it all up:
Ice baths immediately after a hard workout then contrast bath or hot bath (with or without Epsom salt) later in the evening before bedtime.
Your parents, roommates or partner may start to wonder why you are spending a lot of time in the bathroom!
Jimson Lee
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WRT Epsom Salts (magnesium sulfate) there is a way you can test the efficacy of epsom salts vs nothing or even hot water.
The next time your quads or knees are hurting a bit after a hard workout dissolve as much epsom salts as possible in a cup of room temperature water.
Dip your hand in the water, scoop some out and spread it onto the sore spots on one leg. Wait 5 minutes. After 5 minutes, move around and determine for yourself if that leg feels better than the other.
You can also try sitting in a hot water bath with one let out of the water. Treat the dry leg with the same mixture.
Cooling after training is actually quite controversial as it may negatively interfere with supercompensation, read e.g. “Post-exercise leg and forearm flexor muscle cooling in humans attenuates endurance and resistance training effects on muscle performance and on circulatory adaptation” by Yamane et al. at http://www.springerlink.com/content/f810p6kr7867t26p/
Not saying every type of cooling is always wrong, just that there may be drawbacks.
Certainly competition is different as you want to recover as quickly as you can before your next race and supercompensation is not on the horizon anyway (timeframe too short).
epsom salts are a drawing agent- they actually pull more water out of your body through the skin- so they need to be used judiciously, especially in full body baths. They are particularly helpful in cold water as a way to stem swelling after injury to extremities. The “relaxation” is similar to getting drunk- it’s dehydration, so it has to be coordinated with lots of fluid intake, but when the body is working hard, that kind of flushing is helpful, if not always comfortable…