Thread: Post workout hot/cold bath

A lot of old time strongmen used to use cold water dousing as a regular part of their training, and it's getting popular again the last few years as a way to toughen yourself mentally more than anything else.

The logic behind it is kind of the opposite of what you would expect. In a cold bath or during dousing you'll lower your external temperature suddenely and stimulate the body to warm itself up by increasing heart rate, blood flow, and raising your core temperature to stop you from freezing. Your muscles will also contract rapidly making you shiver, which also increases heat production. There may also be an anti-inflammatory effect from the cold.

I wouldn't worry about hypothermia, because you're literally in and out. Lots of spa treatments revolve around the process of moving between the extremes of heat and cold to stimulate blood flow, and it does relax the hell out of you.

I'm not saying i agree with using it in training, i don't do anything like this. Ask yourself what you'll get out of it.

this originally started back in the day like in the 50's-60's as an old practice to "flush" lactic acid from skeletal muscle by making the muscle contract from the extreme cold. this would help to reduce/eliminate DOMS

today we know that some lactic acid is necessary for optimum hypertrophy and that DOMS is caused not only my microtrauma to skeletal muscle but also from the loss of calcium homeostasis