Effects of Chronic Cold-Water Immersion in Elite Rugby Players

Abstract

The results from this study demonstrate that CWI may provide some beneficial effect by reducing fatigue and soreness during an intense three week training phase in elite rugby athletes.

Warming to the ice bath: Don’t go cool on cold water immersion just yet!

“…However, recent work by Taveres et al [6] supports the notion that appropriate programming of CWI sessions may negate any adverse effects on strength adaptations to resistance training. Indeed, amongst elite Rugby players, a tendency for improved countermovement jump performance was evident when regular CWI (10 min @ 10°C) was undertaken at the end of each training day, whilst resistance training sessions were undertaken in the morning during a 3-week pre-season training period [6]. Nevertheless, we acknowledge that similar research over a longer training period is warranted to further verify this notion.…”

“…While mechanistic studies such as Cheng et al [2] are crucial to help understand the intramuscular factors influencing muscle function following cooling and heating, the extrapolation and application of such data to a sports science setting needs to be within appropriate context and understanding. CWI involving 10-15 min of immersion at 10-15°C has been shown to improve acute and subsequent day recovery in exercise performance and wellbeing, and may be a useful recovery tool during periods of intensified training or competition [5][6][7]. Such CWI protocols do not seem to impair muscle glycogen re-synthesis 4 h post-exercise [4].…”

The Acute and Longer-Term Effects of Cold Water Immersion in Highly-Trained Volleyball Athletes During an Intense Training Block

“…To the best of our knowledge, studies investigating the longerterm effects of CWI in a highly-trained athletic population are limited to two; one study performed in endurance-trained cyclists (Halson et al, 2014) and the other in professional rugby union athletes (Tavares et al, 2019a). In the cycling study, highly trained cyclists were exposed to CWI four times a week during a 21-days intensification phase followed by a 11-days taper.…”

“…A likely beneficial effect was also observed in the 1-s maximum mean sprint power in the CWI group when compared to the control. In the rugby study (Tavares et al, 2019a), 23 elite male rugby union athletes were randomized to either CWI (10 min at 10 • C, n = 10) or a passive recovery control (CON, n = 13) during 3 weeks of high-volume training. Although no significant differences were observed between CWI and CON for any measure, CWI resulted in lower fatigue markers throughout the study as demonstrated by the moderate effects on muscle soreness (d = 0.58-0.91) and interleukin-6 (d = −0.83) and small effects (d = 0.23-0.38) on countermovement jump in comparison with CON.…”

The Impact of Recovery Practices Adopted by Professional Tennis Players on Fatigue Markers According to Training Type Clusters

“…are available to tennis players. However, inconsistent results have been reported regarding the impacts of different recovery techniques on the fatigue induced by training or competition (Bahnert et al, 2013;Halson et al, 2014;Roberts et al, 2015;Dupuy et al, 2018;Tavares et al, 2019). Elite tennis centers have developed some practical guides regarding recovery techniques that are provided to coaches and athletes; however, no systematic evidence has been reported regarding the efficiencies of these techniques.…”