The Secret to Recovery and Regeneration
As an athlete or active individual, do you wish you could find a way to feel rejuvenated after a tough workout or training session? There’s nothing worse the muscle soreness and fatigue that comes the first or second day after a tough workout. Whether you are training for your next competition or just want to stay in shape, missing a day due to muscle soreness is not an option. The use of products like ThermalPlunge and PolarPlunge pools offer total body solutions that no longer require the effort of gathering multiple ice bags and sitting for what seems like hours following your workout.
After a hard work out, hot and cold plunge pools can have a sooth effect. Clinicians like Lance Walker, the Director of Performance at Michael Johnson Performance, believe in the use of contrast therapy. Contrasting between the hot and cold plunge pools has shown tremendous performance regeneration benefits for individuals, beyond just using a cold therapy pool. “The contrasting is very time efficient,” states Walker, “taking less than 10 minutes to fully complete a 2:1 or 1:1 cycle of hot:cold immersion with massage.” Walker hits on the most crucial reason for using this type of recovery therapy,
The athletes are back the next session with high functioning levels of neuro-muscular firing and reductions in ‘wasted’ training sessions due to staleness or effects of over-training –which is usually a result of ‘under recovering.
Being able to return to training the next day, feeling rested and recovery is a top priority, if not the main priority. According to the Institute for Integrative Healthcare Studies, the use of contrasting temperatures– also known as contrast therapy– has been used as a healing tool for thousands of years. The contrast between hot and cold is believed to exert a physiological effect in your body’s pain gate mechanism.
So the next time you reach for those ice bags after your tough conditioning session, think about combining heat and cold therapies for enhanced regeneration.
If you are searching for ways to reduce soreness and enhance muscle recovery, hot and cold water therapy could be the solution you have been looking for! Learn all about the benefits of contrasting hot and cold plunge pools with our ‘Hot and Cold Plunge Pools Tip Sheet.‘
To see how the plunge pool can be used for recovery, specifically for ‘muscle stripping’ with the massage hose, watch the “DEEP-TISSUE MUSCLE STRIPPING” video on our video library.